CHAPTER XXVTHE THIRTEEN ROCKS
“He’s coming this way! Use your pistol, quick!”
Crack! Crack! Both of the pistols spoke up, and the lion was hit in the head and in the left foreleg. Then the two Rover boys fired again, this time at even closer range, one bullet piercing the beast’s ear and the other plowing through the skin of his back.
But nothing stopped the rush of the ferocious lion, and it was only by leaping to the rear of the nearest rock that Jack and Randy escaped the onslaught.
In the next few minutes so many things happened that it is almost impossible to describe them. The lion, with another roar and snarling from pain, came around the rocks just as the boys leaped up. Then, standing several feet above the beast, they fired once more. The lion retreated, got wedged in between a tree and a rock, and turned savagely, probably thinking in his excitementthat he had in some way been attacked from the rear.
“There’s a shelf just above us!” exclaimed Jack, glancing around for some means of escape. “Let’s get up there!”
Roar after roar came from the lion, the sound so terrifying it was enough to make anybody tremble. The goat was leaping from rock to rock, and now disappeared from sight. The shelf the young major mentioned was a rocky one about three feet above their heads. Over it grew a few vines, and Randy clutched these only to have them come away in his hands.
“Here, let me boost you up, Randy!” exclaimed Jack. “Quick! That lion may take it into his head to leap at us!”
“But what of you?”
“I’ll get up somehow! Hurry! We have no time to waste!”
In a few seconds Randy was boosted to the shelf. Looking around, he saw a place where he could dig in with his toes, and he promptly lay flat, extending his hands downward as he did so.
“Come on! I’ll help pull you up!” he gasped. “Hurry up! The lion is getting ready to jump.”
Thus assisted, the young major managed to scale the wall and reach the rocky shelf. He hadscarcely done so when the lion, crouching low, made a wild leap upward.
The distance the beast covered was fully fifteen feet, and both the Rover boys felt that he might have gained the rocky shelf had it not been for Randy’s quick action. Beside him lay a jagged stone half as big as his head. This he scooped up and launched at the beast when the lion was less than a yard away. The stone did little damage to the lion physically, but the attack was so unexpected that the forward movement of the king of the jungle was stopped, and he dropped down on the rocks from which he had come.
“Fire at him, Jack!” called out Randy. “Give him every bullet you’ve got!” And then both boys emptied their pistols into the beast as he stood there, evidently trying to make up his mind what next to do.
Some of the shots went wild, but two hit the lion squarely in the side, and now with roars of pain and fear the beast suddenly retreated and the next instant disappeared in the undergrowth on the edge of the jungle.
“He’s gone!”
“Maybe he’ll come back!”
“Let’s reload just as fast as we can.”
The last suggestion was a good one, and theycarried it out immediately. In the meanwhile, they kept their eyes on the jungle, but the lion did not show himself.
“Maybe he’s mortally wounded,” suggested Randy.
“I hope so,” answered his cousin. “But we can’t take any chances on such a big beast as that. Gee! when he leaped for this shelf, I was scared. I thought he was about ready to eat us up.”
“He’d have killed us both, Jack, if he could have gotten at us,” answered Randy, with a shudder.
The boys realized that they had been in great danger, and if they were exceedingly nervous, who could blame them? With reloaded pistols, they waited where they stood, straining their eyes and ears for any other movement the lion might make.
“And the worst of it is,” said Jack, “if that lion and that goat came ashore from theCoryanda, for all we know, all the other beasts, and maybe the snakes, came ashore too.”
“They could only do that if the steam yacht was completely wrecked so that the cages were broken open.”
“Well, those cages didn’t look very secure tome. Don’t forget how that snake and that tiger got loose.”
“We’ve got to get back to camp somehow and warn the others. But I must confess I don’t feel much like going through that jungle to where we left the little raft.”
“Nor do I. I’d rather try to climb over the rocks and get to the bay, somehow or other, that way.”
The boys made an investigation and presently found a place at the end of the narrow shelf where two or three rough steps led upward. Neither of them wished to trust himself in the jungle, and so they kept on for over half an hour, climbing one rocky height after another in their endeavor to reach the bay without taking to the heavy growth to the westward.
“Hurrah! I see the ocean!” cried Randy, presently. “I think if we keep on in this direction we’ll soon get to a point where we can get down to the bay. But, of course, we’ll be quite a distance from where we left that raft.”
“Never mind. Maybe we can swim back to the raft,” answered Jack. He felt that anything would be better than facing such wild beasts as might now be roaming the otherwise deserted island.
It was hard work climbing over the rocks, which in many places were sharp and irregular.
“Look out that you don’t go down into some deep hole,” warned Jack. “You might get wedged so tight you’d never get out.”
“I suppose that goat got along easily enough. A goat loves to leap the rocks.”
“Yes, but we’re not goats. Come on! We want to get back before night.”
The boys moved forward, but the going was now more perilous than ever, and presently, having leaped to a spot that looked fairly easy to negotiate, they found further progress all but impossible.
“Looks like we were stuck, Randy,” said the young major, scratching his head.
“Oh, don’t say that, Jack! We don’t want to go back after coming all this distance!”
“Yes, but if we can’t go ahead we’ll have to go back.”
For ten minutes the two youths searched around, and then managed to find a split between two of the rocks and beyond this a rocky slope leading still farther upward.
“We might as well try this,” said Randy. “If it doesn’t lead to anywhere we can go back.”
The rocky slope ended in something of a plateau. The boys were now at one of the highestpoints on the island and could see in almost all directions, the heavy jungle cutting off only a small part of the coast line in the southwest. To the north and the east, as well as the southeast, rolled the mighty Atlantic, flashing in the rays of the declining sun. To the eastward on the island were innumerable rocks, some of them fantastic in shape and forming a sort of bowl, the bottom of which was now shrouded in shadows.
“My gracious! this whole end of the island is nothing but rocks,” declared Randy.
“Look!” exclaimed Jack, pointing to the coast southward. “Unless I’m greatly mistaken there is the wreck of theCoryanda!”
“It’s the old steam yacht just as sure as you’re born!” answered his cousin.
“No wonder I didn’t see the wreck from the top of that palm tree,” went on the young major. “See how she’s wedged in between the rocks.”
“Yes, and it looks to me as if her backbone was broken, Jack. Anyway, she’s split bow and stern. No wonder the animals got loose. Smashing up on the rocks that way must have loosened everything.”
“Maybe most of the animals were killed by the shocks.”
“I hope they were.”
The two boys walked to a nearby rock in an endeavor to get a better view of the wreck, which was all of a quarter of a mile away.
“We’d have a hard job getting down to her, I’m thinking,” remarked Jack. “I don’t believe we’d ever be able to get over those rocks. We’d have either to sail around to the eastward, or otherwise make our way to the south shore and get to her from that point.”
“Well, I’m glad we located her, Jack; aren’t you?”
“To be sure I am, Randy. If we have to stay on this island any great length of time we’ll probably need everything we can get from the yacht. We didn’t have any great variety on the raft, remember, and we need some clothing as well as food.”
“And don’t forget that we want a flag to hoist upside down as a signal of distress.”
Having inspected the wreck as well as they could from such a distance, the boys began speculating on how they might get down from the rocks to the eastern shore of the little bay. They had to go forward with caution, because at every step the way seemed to become more perilous.
“I don’t believe any human being was ever on these rocks before,” was Randy’s comment.
“I guess you’re right,” answered Jack.“What would bring a person up to such an out-of-the-way place, anyhow? There isn’t much to this island, and I don’t wonder the natives give it the go-by.”
The boys went a few yards farther, and then both leaped to a rock that seemed to be secure, but which was not. Under their combined weight it tilted unexpectedly, and they suddenly found themselves sliding they knew not to where.
“Grab hold!” yelled Jack, and did what he could to stop his progress, and Randy did likewise.
Down they went over one slippery rock after another, bringing up at last in a sort of pocket on the side of a cliff. Here they stood panting for breath and rubbing their shins and their elbows, which had been sadly scraped in the descent.
“Great Cæsar! I thought we were going down to kingdom come,” gasped Randy.
“Now we are in a pickle!” returned the young major. “How ever are we going to get out of this place?”
Jack began to look around, wondering what their next move might be. An instant later he let out an exclamation of astonishment.
“What is it, Jack?” queried his cousin, as he saw the young major pointing his finger and counting slowly to himself.
“Look there, Randy! Am I right, or am I only dreaming? Do you see these sharp-pointed rocks all around us? Well, just count them, will you?”
Catching what was in Jack’s mind, Randy began to count the huge circle of sharp-pointed rocks.
“Why, there are thirteen of them!” he burst out. “Oh, Jack! do you think——”
“That this is the place Ira Small has been talking about? Well, it certainly looks like it!”