They had probably been there for a considerable period, not daring to descend while that howling, dancing mob held the grounds.

Perhaps they even fancied that those yells and ear-splitting squeals were directed against them.

They must have thought so when Don Pike crawled out on the limb toward them, followed by Buck Badger.
The cats looked about, meowing anxiously.

There was no other bough near which they could gain by a leap.

And as Pike, looking back and gasping with fright, crawled straight on toward them, the cat that was farthest out on the end of the limb launched itself through the air in a desperate leap for the ground.
There was no cleared space in which it could alight, and it struck Bink Stubbs on the top of the head, jamming his hat down over his eyes and hurling him backward.
"Dog my cuc-cuc-cuc-cats!" stuttered Joe Gamp, looking up in open-mouthed wonder.
"The sky is raining cats!" whooped Danny.
"Somebody amputate its tail!" yelled a student.
"Cut off its shirt-tab!" shouted another.
Bink and Danny, Gamp and all the others of Merriwell's friends who chanced to be grouped there, had already suffered the amputation of their shirt-tabs, and having no further fear on that point, were hilariously anxious that not a shirt-tab should be worn by a Yale man that night.