CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
THE SCALING LADDERS.
The cutting down of the trees did not occupy them a very long time.
They chose only those of slender girth--the more slender the better, so long as they answered the requirements as to length.

Trees of about fifty feet in total height were the best: as these, when the weaker part of the tops was cut off, yielded lengths of thirty or more feet.

Where they were only a few inches in diameter, there was very little trouble in reducing them to the proper size for the sides of the ladders--only to strip off the bark and split them in twain.
Making the rounds was also an easy operation--except that it required considerable time, as there were so many of them.
The most difficult part of the work--and this they had foreseen--would be the drilling of the holes to receive the rounds; and it was the task which proved the most dilatory--taking up more time in its accomplishment than both the cutting of the timber, and reducing it to its proper shapes and dimensions.
Had they owned an auger or a mortising chisel, or even a good gimlet, the thing would have been easy enough.

Easier still had they possessed a "breast bit." But of course not any of these tools could be obtained; nor any other by which a hole might be bored big enough to have admitted the points of their little fingers.

Hundreds of holes would be needed; and how were they to be made?
With the blades of their small knives it would have been possible to scoop out a cavity--that is, with much trouble and waste of time; but vast time and trouble would it take to scoop out four hundred; and at least that number would be needed.