Very soon David, running toward it, saw why.

By a long leather strip it was fastened securely to a stake in the ground.
"Oh, oh, oh!" exclaimed David, in sympathetic consternation.

"Here, you just wait a minute.

I'll fix it." With confident celerity David whipped out his jackknife to cut the thong; but he found then that to "fix it" and to say he would "fix it" were two different matters.
The crow did not seem to recognize in David a friend.

He saw in him, apparently, but another of the stone-throwing, gun-shooting, torturing humans who were responsible for his present hateful captivity.