The Professor used a roll of films in snap-shotting the stone table while we were breaking camp. He photographed it from every point of the compass, and made a magnificent effort to dislocate his collarbone by falling from a tree up which Holman had urged him to climb so that he could get a view of the upper surface. In his mad pursuit of antiquities the Professor forgot that tree climbing was an accomplishment that he had never mastered properly in the days of his youth, and our departure was somewhat delayed by the shock which he received from the fall. The camera fell upon the pile of leaves which Leith had used as a mattress, and it escaped with abrasions that were microscopical compared to those received by the Professor, who glared angrily at Holman as Edith Herndon attended to his injuries.
"I thought you could climb," murmured the youngster. "'Pon my word I did. I wouldn't have urged you to get up there if I didn't think you could hang to a limb."
"I am acquainted with a number of persons who would look well hanging to a limb," retorted the Professor, as he rubbed his ankles.
"Same here," said Holman, unperturbed by the sharp retort. "When I think over their actions, Professor, I wonder how they escaped being suspended from such places. Especially when you consider that trees are plentiful."
We made slow progress during the morning. The Professor's accident robbed him of a lot of the nimbleness which had been noticeable during the two preceding days, and the other members of the expedition had to move at a pace that would suit his stiff limbs.
"I'm unlucky," whispered Holman, as he sat beside me at the midday halt. "I tried to show him how he could get a good snapshot, and now he's as poisonous as a red-necked cobra just because he was silly enough to skin his shins."
We crossed the lowest part of the valley during the early afternoon, and commenced to ascend gradually toward the black walls on the far side. Leith had remarked at the lunch table that we would probably reach our destination on the following morning, and the information brought a thrill of expectation in spite of the suspicions we entertained. The undefined dread had upset our nerves, and I think the two girls, as well as Holman and myself, were looking forward anxiously to the arrival at the objective point so that our suspicions could be either verified or abandoned. Leith was more affable than usual on that afternoon, and he held forth in such a gloomy fashion upon the wonders that were within reach that the Professor almost forgot his injuries and his animus against Holman as he listened to the description.
"It is my opinion that the island was the burial ground of the chiefs of the nearby groups," remarked Leith. "There is every indication that the people who were buried here were not ordinary people, as you will see when you view the wonders that will meet your eyes to-morrow."
The Professor beamed through his thick glasses, and, forgetting his injuries, gave a little jump in negotiating an obstruction, but the look of agony which passed across his face proved that his injured limb objected to useless gambols.
"We may be wrong after all," muttered Holman, after he had listened to Leith's description of the wonders of the tombs of the long-dead members of Polynesian royal families. "I hate to be suspicious of a fellow, and I'll be glad if he proves genuine in the end."
"So will I," I remarked. "If he measures up all right I'll be half inclined to apologize before I go back to take a gruelling from Captain Newmarch."
It was Kaipi who stampeded the small ray of charity that had pierced the cluster of suspicions we had collected. The little Fijian performed the trick about seven o'clock in the evening, and it was done in a most effective manner. When we had made camp, Leith had sent Soma on ahead with the ostensible purpose of locating the easiest route to the base of the cliffs, and an hour afterward Kaipi managed to attract my attention, and he indicated by signs that he had information to impart. I seized a chance to help him with the small tent which sheltered the two sisters, and as we tugged at the knots he slipped a small piece of paper into my hand.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Soma drop it," he explained nervously. "I follow him just little way think get good chance kill him, but no chance come. He drop little piece of paper from his belt; me pick 'em up. I no know what it say; you read."
I crammed the note into my pocket as Leith approached, but at the first opportunity I dived into a thicket of leaves and opened it with nervous fingers. It was brief, exceedingly brief, but no number of words could have produced the same cold chill of dread which took possession of me as I glanced over the scrawl upon the paper. The note read:
"Five babies for kindergarten. Arrange everything. Meet at the Long Gallery."
I stumbled out on the clearing in a half stupor. The arrival of the long-expected confirmation of our suspicions had the same effect upon me as a blow from a sandbag. Leith was apparently everything that Holman and the girls had suspected him of being, and as I looked around at the nearly impenetrable jungle growth upon which the night had come down with that appalling swiftness of the tropics, I understood the helpless condition in which we were placed. Soma and the other five carriers were evidently tools of the big bully; the person or persons to whom the note was addressed would also stand behind him in a fray, and against this little army there was Holman, Kaipi, the two sisters, and myself. The Professor's insane craving for a sight of the antiquities would probably make him a partisan of the big brute till his devilish tricks were laid sufficiently bare to allow the childish mind of the scientist to see through them. The situation was pitiful to contemplate, and sick with terror at thoughts of the fate of the two girls, I found Holman and pulled him out of the circle of light thrown by the fire which Kaipi was tending.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I've got proof!" I cried. "Soma dropped a note that Leith sent him off with when we halted. Kaipi found it and brought it to me."
I recited the few words that were now pounding madly through my brain, but the mere recitation would not satisfy Holman. He wanted to see the words—to stare at them, so that his eyes might confirm the information which his ears had gathered, and together we dived deeper into the creepers till it was safe for him to light a match by which he could view the scrawl.
"My God!" he cried hoarsely. "He's a devil, Verslun! We're fools! Infernal fools! Do you hear me? I'll shoot the brute now!"
He flung aside my hands and made a dash toward the fire, plunging through the creepers with a strength born of the sudden flame of temper which had come with the confirmation of Leith's duplicity. The boy's love for Barbara Herndon made him a madman as he raced madly to obtain vengeance from the brute who had led us into the trap.
Like two maniacs we rushed into the light of the fire, but only the two girls and the Professor were seated round it. Leith was not in sight.
"Where is he?" gasped Holman.
The Professor looked up in mild astonishment. "Who?" he asked.
"Leith!" cried the boy. "Where has he gone?"
"Mr. Leith has gone forward to help Soma," squeaked the Professor. "It will be moonlight, so he took the opportunity of making certain about the direction we were to go in the morning. He said he would not be back before daylight."
Holman mastered his anger, and I beckoned the Professor to one side. It was necessary to make an attempt to convince the foolish old scientist that we were in the hands of a scoundrel, and I determined to place the note and our suspicions before him.
I told hurriedly of the appearance of the figure upon the stone table on the previous evening, but before I had time to tell of the note, the doddering old imbecile interrupted.
"What's that?" he cried. "Some one else upon the island? Well, they can't steal the honour of the discoveries. I have first claim upon everything we find upon the place. Mr. Leith and I made that arrangement before we left Sydney. Besides, it is Mr. Leith's island, and if other scientists are here—
"Oh, confound it! Who said they were scientists?" roared Holman. "It's bad luck for us that they are not. Scientists are harmless, but these are natives or something worse."
"Leith will fix 'em!" cried the Professor, ignoring the youngster's comment on the inoffensive nature of men of his type. "Leith will put them off the place—"
"Stop chattering and read that!" I interrupted. "Your precious friend sent this ahead by Soma. He dropped it and we got hold of it."
Holman struck a match and held it over the scrap of paper while the scientist stared at it through his thick glasses.
"Well?" he queried. "What has this nonsense to do with me?"
"The five babies," snapped Holman.
"Five babies?" repeated the Professor. "I know nothing about babies!"
His small head wagged backward and forward as he made the statement, and his evident inability to see that the reference concerned us irritated the youngster beyond measure.
"You're the biggest baby of the five!" he roared. "You're a madman! Come away, Verslun; it's no use arguing with him!"
The Professor gave an indignant snort, straightened his small body, as if he contemplated an attack upon the youngster, then dashed madly back to the fire, where we watched him bobbing his head up and down as he spoke to the two girls. His confidence in the rascal who was possibly luring him to his death was pitiful to see, and we recognized at that moment that it would be useless to waste any further arguments with him.
"We've got to get out of this scrape by our own efforts," muttered Holman. "The girls won't leave him, worse luck. If they would I'd turn tail this minute and make an attempt to fight our way back to the yacht."
"And I doubt if you will find a haven there," I remarked. "That bilious captain was in a great hurry to send word to Leith that I had got safely by his farewell bombardment. We're in for it, old man, and we might as well realize the fact right now."
"You're not sorry I found you on that pile of pearl shell?"
"Sorry?" I cried. "I'm glad, man—I'm infernally glad."
Holman gripped my hand, and then we crawled through the bushes toward the spot where Soma and Leith had started off on their supposed work of exploration.
"What can we do?" I asked.
"Wait round here and pot him when he is coming back," said the youngster cheerfully. "But we should let the girls know something, shouldn't we? That old fool will tell them a garbled account that will frighten them out of their wits. One of us had better go and try to quiet their fears."
"You go then," I remarked. "I'll wait here till you come back."
Holman crept quietly toward the campfire, and I waited in the undergrowth. The moon was rising in the east and a soft gray light wiped out the intense blackness that had come upon the place after the short twilight. The tops of the cliffs toward which we were journeying were tipped by a brilliant thread of silver as the moon peeped above their ramparts, and I crept deeper into the shadows as the full glory of the glowing orb turned the night into day.
I had waited some thirty minutes for Holman when I noticed a movement beneath a small bush some fifteen paces to my right. I watched the spot without moving, and presently a dark figure crept out of the shelter and moved cautiously toward the camp. Convinced that the visitor was Soma, I pulled out my revolver and waited, wondering as I watched what he intended to do.
The black figure came closer. He paused to listen to the sounds that came from the fire, and as he lifted his head the moonlight fell across his face, and I put the revolver back in my pocket.
"Kaipi," I murmured.
The Fijian crept quietly to the spot where I was hiding.
"I come for you," he muttered.
"Why?"
"Funny things much," he gurgled. "Light on mountain, no see from here. Me watch it, think it something bad. Come, I'll show you."
Holman returned at that moment and I explained what Kaipi had just told me.
"The devil!" muttered the youngster. "The note said that he would meet them at the Long Gallery. See, the light is not visible from our camp, and the brute never thought that one of us would be far enough from the camp to notice it. If it's a signal we might be able to reach the spot and see what is actually going on. If we leave things till to-morrow I'm afraid we'll be too late."
"But the girls?" I cried.
"We'll get back," he replied. "I told them how everything is, Verslun, and they're not afraid. Edith has an automatic pistol that she brought from the yacht, and she'll use it if she is forced to. Come on!"
We followed Kaipi into the shadows, the Fijian picking his way with wonderful instinct through the clumps. At about half a mile from the camp he stopped and pointed to the cliffs.
"Me see light flash way over there," he whispered. "You wait and see."
We crouched down and waited. The minutes passed slowly, but the black barrier away to the east gave no sign of life.
"I think Kaipi must have sighted a star," muttered Holman. "There is nothing—"
He broke off abruptly and gripped my arm. High up in the basalt barrier, at a spot about three quarters of a mile from where we were crouched, a tiny flame suddenly appeared, blazed for an instant, then died away again. Three times it flared up and as quickly died away, but at the third disappearance Holman and I, with the vengeance-seeking Kaipi, were struggling through the network of damp vegetation toward the spot from which the signal had come.
The snaky vines seemed to us to be leagued with Leith as we tried to force our way to the spot where the tiny flash of light had appeared amongst the rocks. The lawyer-vines gripped our ankles and flung us upon our faces scores of times, but we scrambled to our feet and rushed on. Kaipi had made the discovery at an opportune moment. Now that we were certain that Leith contemplated treachery, the wait through the long night would have maddened us. We wanted to meet him quickly, and instinct told us that the appointment place mentioned in the note was identical with the spot to which we were fighting our way.
We were bruised and bleeding when we reached the foot of the black cliffs whose perpendicular walls towered above us. We were almost certain that the light had been flashed from a point immediately above the spot where we came face to face with the barrier, but the scaling of the black barricade was a proposition that seemed incapable of solution as we rushed along the base.
"This is the spot," gasped Holman. "This big tree cluster was just to the right of the place where the light was flashed."
"That's so," I remarked, "but how are we to get up to the point where the signal came from?"
We raced madly up and down the front of the strange black wall, hunting eagerly for a place that offered the slightest foothold by which we could climb to the terraces that we could see far above, but the search was a futile one. The tremendous mountain of ebony rock appeared to have been driven up out of the earth during some volcanic disturbance, and as we stumbled blindly along we thought it would be easier to scale the outside wall of a New York skyscraper than the slippery sides of the obstruction in our path.
It was Holman who found a key to the situation. The big clump of maupei, or Pacific chestnut, that we had taken as a landmark when we were running through the moonlit night, grew close to the barrier, and the limbs of several of the trees scraped the sides of the basalt columns as the faint night breeze moved them backward and forward.
"There's a ledge up there," whispered the youngster. "Look! It's about fifty feet from the ground. If we could climb a tree we might be able to reach it from one of the limbs."
He had hardly outlined the proposition before we were swarming up the trunk, Holman in the lead by right of discovery, and the nimble Kaipi in the rear. Higher and higher the youngster climbed into the thick green foliage. He reached the topmost branches, and selecting one that led toward the rocky wall, he straddled it and worked his way slowly forward.
Kaipi and I clung to the fork of the limb and waited, and as I watched Holman the wisdom of our actions was assailed by a cold doubt. We had left the two girls entirely unprotected, and if Leith reached the camp before we returned, and heard from the chattering Professor the story of the finding of the scrap of paper, it would be reasonable to suppose that he would consider the moment had arrived for the perpetration of any deviltry he had planned.
But Holman's actions interrupted my mental criticism of the wisdom of our plans. The youngster had reached the extreme end of the limb, and he was clawing madly at the rock to obtain a footing. He succeeded after a five minutes' struggle, and he sent a breathless whisper back to our perch.
"There's a ledge here," he murmured. "I think we can climb up from it. Hurry along, and I'll give you a hand."
I needed a hand when I reached the end of that leafy seesaw. I was much heavier than the boy, and the limb could hardly support my weight when I neared the end. Holman reached out his hand at a moment when I thought that a drop through the air would be my reward for attempting aerial exhibitions, and the next moment I was beside him on a little projection that barely gave us a footing.
"It's easy climbing just above us," whispered Holman. "Wait till we get Kaipi."
The Fijian came along the limb with the agility of a trapeze artist, and when he reached the ledge we stared up at the dizzy heights that rose above our little resting place. Small jutting projections, like gargoyles, stuck out from the wall, and we looked at them hungrily.
"If we had only brought the rope!" cried the boy. "Say, Verslun, put your face against the rock and I'll climb on to your shoulders."
I did so, and the youngster climbed up cautiously. For a long time he stood there, peering around in an effort to discover a path by which we could go upward and onward, but at last he stepped off, and I looked up to find him clinging to the wall like a huge beetle. A pack of fat clouds that had harried the moon during the earlier part of the evening now closed in upon her, and we were in complete darkness. The threshing limb of the maupei tree that was within a yard or two of the spot where Kaipi and I stood waiting disappeared in the night, and the scratching of Holman's shoes high above our heads came down to us through the intense silence and proved that he was holding his position with difficulty.
A small piece of shale hit me on the shoulder after a long wait, and I turned my face upward.
"Verslun!" breathed the strained voice of the youngster. "Are you there?"
"Well?" I asked.
"H'sh!" he murmured. "We are right near the spot, Verslun. If Kaipi climbs up on your shoulders to this place I think the two of us could pull you up. Are you willing?"
"Come on, Kaipi," I whispered, and the Fijian climbed nimbly upon me and moved up into the void above.
"Now, Verslun," muttered Holman. "Reach up till we get a grip of your wrists. Are you ready? Well, try hard, man! Think of those two helpless girls and dig your toes in!"
I didn't need any reminder concerning the position of the two sisters as I stood on tiptoe and scratched with my fingers at the crumbling ledge upon which Holman and the Fijian crouched. The predicament of Edith Herndon, and not fears for my own safety, made me scratch madly for a foothold as I swung above the shelf I left. Kaipi and Holman tugged till every muscle in my arms shrieked out against the way they were being handled. But I was going up. I "chinned" the crumbling layer of rock upon which my fingers had a perilous grip, laid my chest across the shelf and wriggled into safety.
"That's good," whispered Holman. "Don't puff so hard, man! We're too close to take any chances."
I got upon my hands and knees and followed him along the narrow pathway. Over a thousand obstructions we crawled like three rock snakes, till finally the boy halted and turned toward me.
"See the streak of light through that split in the rock?" he whispered. "Look in front of you! Well, they're inside."
The split in the rock to which Holman had pointed was a perpendicular crevice about four feet in length, but possessing only a width of six inches. It separated two rock masses that were fully eighteen inches thick, and as we wriggled noiselessly toward it we saw that it gave us a glimpse of the interior of a huge cavern, the part of which that was just inside our point of observation being illuminated by a swinging ship's lamp which hung by a rope that dropped from the vaulted dome.
The lamp swung directly in front of the crevice through which we peered breathlessly, and for a few seconds it was the only object that was visible. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the light, and we found that a pair of brown legs were moving slowly along the floor past our spyhole. A body, gorgeously decorated in mats of green and crimson parrot feathers, followed the legs, and then came a head that was hidden behind a mask of sennet daubed thickly with coral lime and ochre till it appeared a ghastly nightmare.
The horror moved upon its stomach, and, viewing it as we did through the narrow cranny, it appeared as if the film of a biograph was being slowly dragged before our eyes. Another pair of legs followed the masked head, another body, and another mask that was even more fear-inspiring than the first. And the procession continued. Three, four, five, and six—each succeeding one being arrayed in a mask of more ghastly appearance than those which had preceded him. The sixth was followed by the first, who had wriggled clear around the circle of light thrown by the lamp, and in perfect silence the infernal snaky circle moved backward round and round, the faint light shining on bare legs, on bodies from which the parrot mats were thrust aside by the contortions, and upon the masks that were weirdly fantastic and Mephistophelian.
They had circled the floor about ten times when Holman tugged my coat and I wriggled back from the crevice.
"What's up?" My lips were dry as I put the question.
"Kaipi."
"Where is he?"
"Cleared out. Those human serpents scared him. Go softly, man! We must get him before he attempts to go down that cliff or he'll break his thick head."
We caught up to the deserter on the ledge to which Holman and the Fijian had dragged me a short time before, and the youngster abused the frightened native as he endeavoured to turn him back.
"No, no!" shrieked the Fijian. "Me no see dance like that. Me die if I stay."
"Why?" I asked.
"It is 'tivo'—death dance," gasped Kaipi. "Wizard men dance it. Something going happen, damn bad."
"But they can't get you," cried Holman, "Come back and watch them. Soma and Leith will be there directly, and you'll get your revenge."
But Kaipi would have nothing more of the performance in the rocky chamber. The repulsive masks and the backward wriggling of the six upon the floor had upset his fighting stomach for the time being, and we could not induce him to return.
"Well, you wait here," ordered Holman. "We're going back, but we'll return in a few hours and pick you up. Don't move from this ledge."
Kaipi would promise anything if he was not forced to witness the performance, and we left him huddled up in the darkness, and returned to the spyhole in the wall.
The "tivo," as the Fijian called it, was still in progress. Without noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and slower they moved past the crevice, till at last all movement ceased, and, apparently lifeless, they lay face downward upon the floor.
I thought of the two girls at the lonely camp as we sat watching, and I knew well that Holman's thoughts were turned in the same direction. We had seen nothing of Leith, but an intuition that would not be put aside connected Leith with the strange ceremony that was in progress within the cavern, and we were chained to the spot.
I have no idea how long the six figures remained motionless upon the floor. It may have been an hour, it may have been two. The mystery of the performance we were witnessing seemed to drag us into a world where minutes and hours did not exist. We were dumfounded by the confirmation of our suspicions and the peculiarly devilish exhibition, and I shook off the lethargy with an effort as Holman prodded me with his finger and pointed at a spot beyond the body of the dancer who lay immediately in front of the spyhole.
Looking in the direction Holman pointed I saw that another light was approaching through the gloom of the cavern. It bobbed toward us slowly, a tiny pin point that came nearer and nearer as the bearer walked in the direction of the six. The distance it was away from the dancers, which was evident from the time that elapsed from the moment we saw it till it was close up, convinced us that the cavern was of an enormous length, and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew that he believed that the treacherous brute was one of the three that were approaching behind the bobbing lamp.
The bodies of the dancers, or at least the parts that we could see, became tense and rigid. A soft hiss went round the circle, and once again the wriggling movement started. But this time the six went forward instead of backward. They broke out of the circular formation, and in a long glistening line moved up the cavern toward the three approaching. The lamp halted, then it was raised high in the air as the crawling half dozen approached, and Holman gave a curious little gurgle as the light fell upon the three newcomers. Wrapped in parrot feathers and a white mask, the lamp bearer stood revealed as Soma. Immediately behind him was a tall white man in the same outlandish garb, while the last of the three, barearmed and barelegged, and wearing an immense headdress of plumes, was Leith!
The snaky six circled the three at a respectful distance, then, again breaking into a single file formation, they turned toward the end of the cave nearest our spyhole, and behind the length of creeping bodies, Soma, the tall white who had only one eye, and Leith came slowly.
Holman's breath came faster as the procession approached. The exhibition chilled us. There was a devilish suggestiveness in the proceeding. In some indescribable manner it brought up mental pictures that were nauseating, and it required something of an effort to watch the performance. The mystery of the silent night, the thoughts of the danger which threatened the two girls, and the glimpses of the astounding performance within the cavern brought a dazed mental condition that made us doubt our sanity.
I felt Holman's hand reach out across my shoulder as the procession moved down upon us, and instinctively I understood the movement. The cold barrel of a revolver had slipped by my face, and I gripped his wrist and forced the hand downward. The manner in which Soma and the one-eyed man walked in front of the big brute made it impossible to shoot with telling effect, and Leith was the person we desired to kill at that moment. The others seemed to be but creatures of his will, and he stood up in our minds as a devil whose existence was a menace to everything that was pure and clean.
The three newcomers moved to the side of the cavern, so that nothing except their bare feet were visible, and backward and forward in front of those feet moved the human serpents with a regularity that was stupefying. In an unbroken line they would move forward, flatten themselves upon the floor, then, with a unanimity that was remarkable, they would wriggle backward, to repeat the same movement over again.
Holman pulled me away at last, and we retired to a point that made it possible for us to converse in low whispers without being heard.
"What will we do?" he gasped. "I can't stay there any longer! I want to get inside to the devil! I don't want to shoot him; I want to throttle him with my two hands!"
"But the entrance to the cavern is from somewhere on the other side of the hill," I remonstrated, as the young fellow raved about our helplessness.
"We must get there!"
"Don't lose your head about it," I remarked. "Keep cool and we'll win out in the long run."
It was useless to speak of patience to that boy at the moment. He clawed desperately at the slippery wall in an endeavour to find a path that would lead us to the opening on the other side by which Leith had made his entry, but the attempt appeared to be madness. A dozen times the youngster scrambled up rough portions that offered a slight footing, but each time he slipped back bruised and battered. He would listen to no arguments. The desire to get to the mouth of the cavern, and kill Leith before the morning, had produced an insanity, and we crawled and climbed along the face of those basalt cliffs in a manner that chilled my spinal marrow. Holman possessed the courage of a maniac. His imagination was blinded to the dangers that lay alongside the crumbling shelves of rock, and I scrambled behind him wondering dimly what would happen to Edith and her sister if an unkind fate flung us from the ledge into the darkness from which the soft croon of the chestnut clumps came up like a warning against our foolhardiness.
Holman paused at the end of a wearisome climb, and he drew himself upright. At that moment the cloud-harried moon dragged herself from beneath the pack, and the young fellow gave a cry of joy.
"We can do it from here, Verslun," he cried. "I see a path to the top. Come along, man!"
"What about Kaipi?" I gasped. "We'll never find our way back here."
"Let him sit there," he snorted. "Hurry or the moon will be under the clouds before we cross the cliff."
For my own part I found no great liking for the moonlight. Up to that moment I had followed blindly in the tracks of Holman, nerved somewhat by the thought that the trail he passed over would carry me. The dangers were hidden by the darkness, and my imagination was too stunned by the happenings of the night to make any endeavour to torture my nerves by picturing them.
But the reappearance of the moon brought an opportunity to my eyes, and I wondered if we could negotiate the goat track which the youngster was scrambling over. I turned my face to the wall and crawled timorously in the rear. Higher and higher we went with bleeding fingers and knees, but at last Holman reached the top, and I dragged myself up beside him.
"Get up!" he cried savagely. "We must kill the devil before morning."
We got to our feet and started to run toward what we knew to be the direction of the cavern. The ground sloped gradually, and we reasoned that it would continue to fall away till we reached the mouth of the cavern by which Leith had entered from the far side. For once we had a clear run. At that height there was little vegetation, and at a mad gait we sped across a bare stretch where the only obstacles were lumps of rock that were scattered around in great profusion.
"If—if we could find the place and block the devil and all his gang inside," gasped Holman.
"That's too good a thing to entertain," I spluttered.
"We might, Verslun! We might!" he cried. "I've got a feeling that we've been picked to put that devil out of existence. That's why I'm taking a chance in leaving the girls back there at the camp. I believe I'm going to kill him, but whether it is to-night or some other time I don't know."
"The sooner the better," I stammered. "From what Kaipi said about that dance, something out of the way is going to happen, and I've got a hunch that the something will happen to us."
Holman remained silent, and we raced on, moving down the slope at an angle that we judged would bring us somewhere near the entrance. At moments my brain assured me that it was a mad proceeding, but something of the certainty with which the youngster looked upon himself as the Fate-appointed destroyer of Leith came to me as I raced beside him, and I put aside the fears for Edith Herndon's safety that besieged me as I ran. The last doubt about Leith's treachery had been chased away by the dance we had witnessed, and I felt assured that the man was a monster, a vile thing, who, for some purpose that I could not allow myself to ponder over, had brought the foolish old scientist and his daughters into a place of terrors. Treachery had been apparent from the start. It was only the confidence of the old antiquarian that had blinded our eyes to a score of incidents that should have convinced us that the brute had some ulterior motive in view. During that mad race through the night the big sallow-faced giant appeared to us as a devil, a fiend that was connected with some sort of horrible practices that had continued to exist in this remote islet long after all trace of such things had been lost in those islands that were visited by traders and missionaries. Kaipi connected the dance with death, and the same conclusion had come to us before we had heard the words of the frightened Fijian.
Holman slackened speed, and we dodged through a mass of boulders that we judged were in a direct line with the crevice through which we had witnessed the happenings in the cave.
"We should be near the place if there is an entrance to it on this side," he muttered. "This pile of rocks looks from—oh, Gee! here's a path!"
It was a path, sure enough. It wound in and out among the rocks, a narrow beaten trail, singularly white against the black surroundings.
Holman stopped and took up a handful of the dust. "They coat it with coral lime to make it plain in the darkness," he growled. "Come on, Verslun, the wriggly batch must be straight ahead."
I pulled the army Colt from my pocket and ran softly abreast of the youngster. The corrosive terror of the earlier part of the evening had fled then, and my nerves had taken up a sort of dare-devil attitude toward all happenings that the future might hold in store. Besides, the more I thought of Leith, the greater his villainy appeared to be, and to save Edith Herndon from the slightest contact with the ugly ruffian was a task that would give the greatest coward in the world the courage of a warrior.
The white path wound in and out of the boulders, which became thicker as we advanced, and suddenly it dived through a dark passage into the side of the hill. We felt that we were at the mouth of the burrow by which Leith and his dancers had entered, and we moved into the shadow to reconnoitre. Leith had informed the Professor that he would not return to the camp till the following morning, so the chances were that the treacherous scoundrel was still assisting at the ceremonies that we had witnessed.
"Shall we go in?" whispered Holman.
"As you like," I answered.
He moved toward the mouth of the burrow, then stopped and turned toward me. "What time is it?"
"It's ten minutes of midnight," I replied.
"We've got six hours," he whispered. "Come along, we'll chance it."
Very cautiously we moved into the darkness of the passageway, feeling our way along the walls that were cold and damp from the moisture which had soaked through from the crown of the cliff. The place was not more than five feet wide, and as I walked along on one side of the wall, Holman, feeling his way along the other, could touch me whenever he wished to ascertain my position. Our shoes made no sound upon the floor of the corridor. It was covered deep with fine dust, upon which we walked noiselessly.
An occasional bat fluttered past us, but outside the flapping of the wings not a sound disturbed the stillness of the place. The silence of the outside was intensified a hundredfold. In the open, one heard the crooning of the trees as the soft winds from the Pacific played with their heavy foliage, but in the natural passage through which we crawled in search of Leith the air felt as if it had not been disturbed for centuries. It was heavy and thick, possessing a faint odour that seemed to rise from the dust beneath our feet.
We had walked about one hundred yards along the corridor when it widened suddenly. The walls that we were following turned off at right angles, and from the moonlight which filtered through a dozen small fissures high up above our heads we saw that we had entered a cavern of vast proportions. We sensed its vastness. The few streaks of moonlight that stabbed the darkness were like so many guide-posts that enabled us to make a mental calculation of the height and extent of the place.
We stopped and moved together instinctively. Holman put his mouth close to my ear.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
"It might be a cavern leading into the one that runs out to the face of the cliff," I replied.
"But how are we to cross it?"
"I can't tell you. I'm afraid if we leave this opening that we'll get lost."
It was rather plain that we would. The surrounding walls were as black as the opening by which we had entered the place, and we stood with quick-beating hearts staring out across the place through which the bars of moonlight appeared like silver skewers.
One of these skewers fell upon a ledge of stone some few yards in front of the spot where we were standing, and Holman stepped toward it.
"Stay where you are," he said. "If I get lost I'll whistle softly and you can signal back to me."
He moved away and I was left standing in the opening. A bat banged heavily against my face, and the odour from the dusty floor irritated my nostrils so that I had difficulty in restraining myself from sneezing.
It was about twenty minutes before Holman returned. He whistled ever so softly, and when I replied he came toward me hurriedly.
"Just walk out to that spot of moonlight," he whispered. "I'll keep guard on the door. Feel around there and tell me what you think of it."
I did as he directed. I walked forward to the spot and felt around with my hands. My fingers came in contact with round, smooth objects that filled every available inch of a stone table in front of me, and with a feeling of revulsion I hurried back to the mouth of the corridor. Holman gripped my arm and put a question.
"Gave you a shock, eh?"
"Why, they're skulls!" I breathed hoarsely.
"Yes, hundreds of 'em," he said. "The place is chock full of them. This island must have been the burying ground of all the adjoining groups, and it's the atmosphere of the place that keeps the niggers away from it. Leith has been wise to that. The present generation of islanders know nothing of the things that happened here hundreds of years back, but they've got an inborn horror of the place, and they keep away."
"Well, what are we to do?"
"Wait here."
"But if he doesn't come this way?"
"He must," he answered. "It's the only way out, I think. We can't go across this wilderness, so it's safer to await developments here."
We hadn't long to wait. From a point directly opposite our position, and at a distance that we judged to be two hundred yards away, a bobbing light broke into the wall of darkness and moved directly toward us. Holman gripped my arm and pulled me forward to the stone tables upon which the skulls were laid, and side by side we crouched and waited.
It was the ship's lantern that Soma had carried in front of Leith that was now moving upon us. Its yellow light showed the parrot-feather mat and headdress of the big Kanaka, while the hum of voices, which drifted across the vast space of the cavern, informed us that the dancers who had assisted at the ceremony were returning with Leith and the one-eyed white man.
Holman's breath came hot upon my cheek. There was no necessity for speech. I knew that he intended to seize the first opportunity to attack, and that opportunity was at hand. Behind the bobbing lamp that was approaching us by an irregular trail, as if Soma was winding in and out amidst stone supports similar to the one that sheltered us, was the brute who held us in his grip, and after the events we had witnessed it seemed impossible to reconcile his actions with anything that smacked of decency or honesty.
I attempted to drop on my knees at that minute, but the moment was disastrous to the ambush which we had planned. As I moved my hand forward I dislodged a skull that was evidently resting upon a shelf somewhat higher than the one before us. With a noise that appeared terrific in that place, the object crashed down upon the stone, and the bobbing lantern halted about fifteen paces in front of us.
Leith broke the silence that followed. "What was that?" he asked.
"A bat," answered Soma.
"I don't think so," droned Leith. "Lift up the light."
Soma raised the lantern high above his head, and as he did so Holman fired.
The echoes were terrific. High in the vaulted roof of the place echoes answered each other with the sharp reports of Maxims, and the thick air shivered.
Leith's voice roared an order. "Put out the light!"
Soma immediately crashed the lantern upon the ground, and I heard Holman groan.
"I missed him!" he whispered. "Move along a little, Verslun; they've got a line on our position."
We didn't move a minute too soon. Half a dozen shots broke out from the spot where the light of the lantern had been suddenly quenched, and we fired twice and shifted ground the moment we pulled the triggers.
But the opposition guessed the direction of our sidestep. A bullet lifted my hat into the darkness, and, as I scrambled away, a hand touched my thigh and was immediately taken away.
I felt Holman's body on the other side, and then, clubbing the big Colt, I drove it down through the darkness at a point that my imagination suggested would be the most likely place to find the head of the stranger whose hand touched my thigh. The blow missed, and as I made a kangaroo-like jump sideways, a spurt of flame blazed out within a yard of my face.
I fired immediately, and the softplopof a body settling into the dry dust upon the floor convinced me that I had settled one of our enemies.
For about ten minutes after that there was no more firing. My skin, more than my ears, brought to my brain the information that there were others somewhere in the thick darkness, but the little air tremors that came to me were so faint that it was impossible to tell in which direction they were. I had lost all trace of Holman. With extreme caution I crawled toward what I thought to be the spot where I had left him, but my groping fingers found only the fragments of bone that covered the dusty floor of the charnel house.
I sat in the dust and endeavoured to make my addled brains direct me as to the best course to pursue. The silence led me to infer that Leith and his party, who were evidently familiar with the cave, were making for the passage by which we had entered the place, and a cold chill passed over me as my imagination pictured Leith, One Eye, and the oily dancers waiting for Holman and me in the narrow corridor. To escape from the place immediately was our only chance, and with a courage born of terror conjured up by the thoughts of imprisonment in that place of skulls, I started to crawl rapidly into the dark.
I had not proceeded half a dozen yards when my hand touched a bare leg, and I drew back hastily. With madly pounding heart I crouched in the dust, waiting for an attack, but as I waited I convinced myself that the leg had not been drawn back when my fingers encountered it. With my right hand clubbing my revolver, I reached my left out cautiously, and once again my fingers came in contact with the bare limb. The fear left me at that moment. I was back at the spot where I had fired at an unseen foe some fifteen minutes before, and the body near me was the victim of my lucky bullet.
Carefully I felt the dead man. He wore a large feather cloak and a tall headdress, and I concluded that he was one of the wriggling brutes whose performance we had watched in the cave. In the dust, beside the body, my fingers found his revolver, and the fact that he had been armed at the moment his party came unexpectedly upon us was more proof, if proof were needed, that Leith's tactics were anything but straightforward.
Securing the revolver, I started to crawl away, but a sudden inspiration came to me. I stripped the parrot-feather mat and the headdress from the corpse and donned them over my own clothing. In the darkness recognition was made through the fingers, and as there were eight enemies in the cavern and only one friend, I considered that the danger I ran of receiving a bullet from Holman was more than counterbalanced by the protection that the dancer's costume would give me if I ran against the groping hands of Leith or his gang.
After a wearisome crawl I touched the wall of the cavern, and standing upright I debated for a moment whether I should move to the right or the left. I had no definite idea as to the position of the opening through which we had entered the place, and I dreaded the weary circuit of the cavern which I would be compelled to make if I turned in the wrong direction. It was possible that the corridor was within a few yards of me, and if I turned away from it I might get lost in other passages leading to the long gallery where the dance of death had taken place.
I decided to move to the right, and with one hand upon the cold wall I stumbled forward. If Holman was still a prisoner, Edith Herndon and her sister were entirely unprotected, and my tormenting imagination made me throw prudence to the winds. I had to reach the camp before Leith or any of his evil bodyguard arrived, and, becoming reckless of the terrors of the dark, I ran blindly in my desperate desire to find the path into the open air.
I cannoned into a man who was standing with his back to the wall of the cave, and before I could lift my arm his fingers had gripped my throat. For a second we struggled, then he released his grip and murmured some words in a dialect that I did not understand. His hand had touched the parrot-feather mat that I had drawn about my shoulders, and he was convinced that I was one of his own companions.
Still holding my shoulder he pushed me a pace or two forward, and instinctively I knew that I was in the corridor. The faintest tremor disturbed the heavy air, and a wild surge of joy rushed through my being. The place of skulls had brought a terror upon me that swept away my reason, but the knowledge that I was on the way to the open, where I could fill my lungs with God's pure air, acted as a powerful restorative.
As my guide's fingers slipped from my shoulder, I stood still and listened. His heavy breathing was distinctly audible, and with a prayer to Providence to guide my right hand, I brought the butt of the heavy revolver down through the darkness. It must have caught him squarely upon the crown, for he dropped without a groan.
"Holman!" I shrieked. "Where are you, Holman? The passage is here! This way, quick!"
A revolver cracked within two feet of me, and the bullet ripped through the tall headdress. I crouched quickly and ran along the corridor. There was no answering cry from Holman, and although it was possible that he would not disclose his whereabouts by replying to my yell, I decided that I could do little to help him in the impenetrable darkness. Besides, Edith Herndon and her sister were in danger, and the dawn was coming rapidly. Throwing off the parrot-feather mat, which had served me to such good purpose, I raced headlong toward the opening. A few bats, returning early to their sleeping quarters, banged against my face, but the way was otherwise clear, and with a cry of joy I rushed through the mouth of the passage into the calm, clear night.