Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/171

Rh "Quiet! Quiet!" begged Joe. "I've got to make him hear!"

"Make a megaphone—here's a newspaper," suggested a man. He quickly rolled it into a cone, tore off the small end to make a mouthpiece and Joe had an improvised megaphone. Through it he begged the crowd to keep silent, and at last they heard and understood.

"I'm going to throw you a ball of cord!" called Joe through the paper cone to the man on the tower. "Catch it, and when I yell again, pull up the rope. Fasten it to the tower and we'll hold the ground end out and away from the flames. Then slide down."

The man waved his hands to show that he understood. Then Joe got ready to throw up the cord.

"He can't do it! He'll never be able to get that ball up to the man. It will fall short or go into the flames," said Luke Fodick.

"He can't, eh?" asked Tom, who came back, helping to pull the long rope. "You don't know how Joe Matson can throw. Just watch him."

And, amid a silence that was painfully tense, the young pitcher got ready to deliver a ball on which more depended than on any other he had ever thrown in all his life.