And this was exactly what he _did_ do; and after heating it some hundreds of times, and applying it as often to the sides of the different ladders, he at last succeeded in burning out as many holes as there were rounds to go into them, multiplied exactly by two.
It is needless to say that this wonderful boring operation was not accomplished at a single "spell," nor yet in a single day.

On the contrary, it took Karl many an hour and many a day, and cost him many a wet skin--by perspiration, I mean--before he had completed the boring of those four hundred holes.

Numerous were the tears drawn from the eyes of the plant-hunter--not by grief, but by the smoke of the seething cedar wood.
When Karl had finished the peculiar task he had thus assigned to himself, but little more remained to be done--only to set each pair of sides together, stick in the rounds, bind fast at each end, and there was a ladder finished and ready to be scaled.
One by one they were thus turned off; and one by one earned to the foot of the cliff, up which the ascent was to be _attempted_.
Sad are we to say that it was still only an attempt; and sadder yet that that attempt proved a failure.
One by one were the ladders raised to their respective ledges--until three-fourths of the cliff had been successfully scaled.

Here, alas! was their climbing brought to a conclusion, by a circumstance up to this time unforeseen.

On reaching one of the ledges--the fourth from the top of the cliff--they found, to their chagrin, that the rock above it, instead of receding a little, as with all the others, _hung over_-- projecting several inches beyond the outer line of the ledge.