“That telephone wire,” Quade said after a while. “There are two strands of it. If we could get a thousand yards, I think — I think we would have a chance. The wires are broken somewhere along the line because the phone was dead. I could put that wire to work for us, I believe. Will you get it?”
Sheriff Starkey snorted. “What good would wire do you?”
Quade pointed toward the promontory on the far side of the river. “If we could get this wire there we could rig up a sort of breeches buoy and I think we could all get away.”
“Yeah, but how you going to get the wire there?” demanded Lynn Crosby.
Quade said with more confidence than he felt: “If the rest of you will get the wire I’ll get it across the river.”
“How? You said no one could swim that current,” exclaimed Clarence, the mousy one.
“Get the wire,” said Quade. “I promise to get it over there.”
There was some grumbling but finally the men went out to get the wire from the telegraph poles.
Quade trotted down to the ruins of the Olcott house. He began pulling at some beams and two-by-fours. He dragged out several sizable timbers that had not been burned too much.
“Just what are you going to build?” asked Martha Olcott after watching him for some time.
Quade wiped the excess moisture from one of the saws on his trousers. He grinned, the first grin that had been seen on the little island since the night before.
“I’m going to make a catapult,” he said.
Martha Olcott looked at him as if he had suddenly gone insane. “A catapult?” she repeated. “What — what for?”
“To throw that wire over to the mainland. You remember your history?”
She nodded. “Yes, I know that the Ancients used catapults in their warfare. They threw stones and things with them. But—”
“They threw stones big enough to batter down walls distances of twelve to fifteen hundred feet,” said Quade. “So why can’t we throw a wire that far?”
“Have you ever built a catapult before?”
He shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen one.”
She drew in her breath. “Then how do you know you can build one?”
He grinned at her. “You forget I’m the Human Encyclopedia.”
She grimaced impatiently. “Yes, yes, I heard you arguing with the men last night. I’ll admit that you seem to know an amazing number of things. But is building a catapult one of those things?”
“I know everything, Miss Olcott. Everything that man has ever known… or that got into print. I’ve read the Encyclopedia from cover to cover four times.”
She gasped. “You’re joking!”
“No. I sell encyclopedias because I believe in them. I practice what I preach. Fifteen years ago I started reading the set I sold and I’ve been reading it ever since. The Encyclopedia contains all the knowledge of the ages. That stuff I pulled last night was on the level. I’ve an unusual memory. I remember everything I read and therefore I know everything that’s in the encyclopedia. And there’s a very fine drawing of a catapult the Crusaders used at the siege of Acre. They battered down the best fortifications of Saladin with it. I’m going to build a catapult like it.”
She looked strangely at him for a moment. Then she said, “Mr. Quade, I really believe you can do it. Let me help you.”
“Fine,” he said. “Go down there then and poke around in those ruins. Find the spears that were hanging on the walls of the living room last night. The heads, I mean. The shafts are burned, I imagine.”
Quade sawed and hammered. After an hour the men began trooping back with long lengths of dead telephone wire they had cut from the telephone poles. They complained of exhaustion, but after resting a while and seeing Quade working without stopping, they went back for more wire.
They had fourteen hundred feet of wire by noon. That was all that was obtainable. The poles beyond that distance were too close to the raging river.
By that time Quade had the framework of the catapult built. It was a massive structure, resting on solid eight-inch beams.
At two o’clock they had twisted the rope hawser into place, and the other men had spliced the wire and coiled it in a neat pile beside the makeshift catapult.
Martha Olcott had found two spear heads and Quade spent a half-hour fashioning shafts for them and attaching the end of one to the telephone wire.
At last everything was finished. The rain was a mere drizzle then, but the water had risen a couple of inches more.
The recent college graduates, Clarence Olcott and Lynn Crosby, examined the catapult with extreme skepticism. “It won’t work,” Clarence declared. “You need some sort of spring attachment to throw that thing.”
“My friend,” said Quade, “did the ancient Greeks have springs? They did not. This rope twisted in here is all the spring that’s necessary. Here, we’ll try it out with a stone first.”
There was a narrow slot running down the back of the catapult. Quade adjusted things and dropped the stone into the slot. Everyone on the tiny island gathered around.
Quade took a deep breath. Up to now he’d bolstered up his confidence. He remembered the details of the plans in the encyclopedia, accurately, but suppose — suppose the artist who had drawn them had made an error?
“All right,” he said. He touched a wooden lever with his foot. The lever released the trigger and there was a swish and twang and the stone was hurtled out of the catapult. It sailed up in a swift arc, so fast that the eye could hardly follow it. Then it disappeared out of sight. But Quade watched the water and saw no splash. He knew that the stone had gone beyond the water.
Exclamations of awe went up all around Quade. “It worked!” Lynn Crosby cried.
Quade was adjusting the spear which was attached to the wire when Clarence, the scoffer, voiced another doubt. “How you going to make the spear stick over there?”
That was the thing that had worried Quade most. “There are plenty of thick trees over there. I’m hoping it will hit one of them squarely.”
“Suppose it does. Will it have enough force to stick hard enough for the wire to hold up a person?”
“If the spear hits a twelve-inch tree there’s sufficient force to drive it clear through the tree!”
Quade dropped to the soggy ground and looked out along the slot of the catapult. He had aimed the thing high to give the spear a trajectory but still it shouldn’t go too high or too low.
The ropes were twisted tight again. The threaded spear was laid in the slot. Quade shot the trigger.
The spear hurtled out of the slot, drawing the wire with it. It sailed high in the air, went far out and then began dropping. Quade held his breath as the spear began falling — and his spirits fell with the spear.
“It didn’t make it!” cried Lynn Crosby.
It was true. The spear had fallen a hundred feet short. The disappointment of all was heavy. Quade began hauling in the wire.
“What are you going to do now?” scoffed Sheriff Starkey.
“Try again.”
It took a half hour to haul in the wire, coil it carefully and get the catapult ready for another trial. Quade moved the machine back a few inches and elevated it slightly and twisted the rope hawsers until they couldn’t be twisted another sixty-fourth of an inch.
He was as taut as the twisted rope, when he placed the spear into the slot for the second trial. He knew if the catapult didn’t have enough power now, there was no use trying any more. The fault lay in the hawser; it wasn’t thick enough.
“If it doesn’t go this time,” he said grimly to those around him, “figure on spending a week or so here; without food or shelter.”