"That's a good plan.How are you going to do it?""I'll show you.I'll shake 'em down if you will catch them when they reach the ring.""Yes, but be careful that you don't fall." "Don't you worry about me!"Teddy untied a rope from a quarter pole, straightened it out and throwing off his coat and hat, began going up the rope hand over hand.The monkeys peered down curiously from their perches, chattering and discussing the little figure that was on its way up to join them.
Teddy reached the platform of the trapeze performers.From there he climbed a short rope that led to a smaller trapeze bar higher up, thence to the aerial bars, where the whole bunch of monkeys were sitting, scolding loudly.
"Shoo!" said Teddy."Get out of here! Better get a net and catch them down there," shouted Teddy, standing up on the bars without apparent thought of his own danger.
"Look out that we don't have to catch you!" called Mr.Sparling warningly.
Teddy picked his way gingerly across the bars shooing the monkeys ahead of him, now holding to a guide rope so that he might not by any chance slip through and drop to the ring forty feet below him, and all the while waving his free hand to frighten the monkeys.
A few of them leaped to a rope some eight or ten feet away, down which they went to the ring and up another set of ropes before the show people below could catch them.
While Teddy was thus engaged, the whole troop of monkeys swung back on the under side of the aerial bars beneath his feet.
"Shoo! Shoo!" he shouted."You rascals, I'll fix you when I get hold of you, and don't you forget that for a minute."He turned, cautiously making his way back, when the lively, mischievous little fellows shinned up the rope by which he had let himself down to the serial bars.
"I'll drive you all over the top of this tent, but I'll get you," Teddy cried.
Down below the audience was shouting and jeering.The people refused to leave the tent so long as such an exhibition was going on.No one paid the least attention to the "grand concert" that was in progress at one end of the big top, so interested were all in the Circus Boy's giddy chase.
"I'm afraid he will fall and kill himself," groaned Mr.Sparling.
"You can't hurt Teddy," laughed Phil."He can go almost anywhere that a monkey could climb.But he'll never get them." Phil was laughing with the others, for the sight was really a funny one.
"Oh, look what they've done!" exclaimed one of the performers."They've pulled up the rope," said Mr.Sparling hopelessly."Now he certainly is in a fix," laughed Phil.
The monkeys, after shinning the rope, had mischievously hauled it up after them, acting with almost human intelligence.One of them carried the free end of it off to one side and dropped it over a guy rope.This left Tucker high and dry on the aerial bars with no means at hand to enable him to get back to earth.
The audience caught the significance of it and howled lustily.
"Now, I should like to know how you are going to get down?" shouted Mr.Sparling.
Teddy looked about him questioningly, and off at the grinning monkeys, that perched on rope and trapeze, appeared to be enjoying his discomfiture to the full.
"I--I guess I'll have to do the world's record high dive!" he called down.There seemed no other way out of it.
