CHAPTER XIX
Lucia, hurrying along beside Frank as he sturdily strode through the gloom, swinging the lantern to and fro to apprise the explorers, waiting in the darkness, of his approach, felt that wings could hardly be swift enough to convey to Lloyd the warning of his peculiar and imminent danger. And, yet, it might be even now too late! She was appalled at the thought of his risks alone in the depths of an unexplored cavern, without a light, without a landmark, without a clue to his station in the subterranean labyrinth, his only companion a strange, half-civilised man, who had once already, at great jeopardy to himself, slyly and treacherously attempted his life. She marvelled at Lloyd's foolhardy temerity, and then—and the thought redoubled her speed—she realised that he had no vague intuition of the secret of his peril, she was sure that he had not for a moment recognised or distrusted his guide.
She hardly felt the chill of the rare air; she cared naught for the rough footing; now and again she stumbled and clutched at Frank for support, but instantly pressed on, unwearied, fevered, alert.
Naught so sinister as the unutterable blackness was ever presented to her imagination. She stared wide-eyed at the palpable-seeming glooms of the vast halls, made visible by the dim glister of the little lantern. Things of evil omen, winged, unseen, whisked by her head; once a bat struck her full in the face. The place seemed alive with these creatures, and, now and again, as she heard their strange, uncanny squeak, she started violently, all her nerves jarring.
"We shall soon be beyond the bat zone, Lucia," said Frank kindly, remembering the universal feminine horror of the genus.
His voice, so hearty and cheery in the outdoor world, seemed strangely hollow, unnatural in this environment, echoing far away, and coming anew in a different key, and startling her with the conviction of terrible, unseen beings, conferring apart in the unimagined distance, speaking her name.
"Oh, not a word—" she whispered, "on your life, not another word," and she clung to him terrified.
He burst out with his boyish, rollicking laughter, and all the cavern was filled with mocking merriment, raucous, horrible, as if the cachinnation of invisible fiends repeated his tones, resounding anew, now here, now there, now far in advance, now close behind them, and, even at last, when all seemed still, again an elfin mimicry.
Frank checked himself; he saw that her terrors were genuine. The feminine ideal had always figured in his unsentimental appraisement as a marplot; he was beginning to be afraid, from Lucia's heavier drag on his arm, the dilation of her eyes, the tremor in her voice, that such courage as she had summoned for the enterprise was already failing her, and that he would shortly be adjured to turn about and retrace their way, and restore her to the glad outer air and the pleasant surface of the earth. He said naught further, and when she had begun to fear that they had missed the trace, although he had told her that for a certain distance there was no break in the right-hand wall, and they could not go amiss as long as they kept in touch with it, she heard a faint halloo in the night, as one might hear in a dream. When Frank responded vociferously, it came anew, and stronger still.
Suddenly she saw, across a vast expanse of utter darkness, like the face of the deep when the earth was without form and void, the outline, as it were, of a promontory growing slowly into being; a faint flicker of light—it seemed star-like in contrast with the deep gloom—revealed two moving creatures poised there, which she presently recognised as human beings. One, she was sure that it was Lloyd, had struck a match, and from it had kindled a bit of wood—it was his forlorn little cigar-case of imitation lacquer, which he extravagantly sacrificed; he expected to have better things after this! While the stolid mountaineer looked on, Lloyd once more called out blithely to his approaching acquaintances, and distinguishing the voice which she had feared would never sound again, she burst into tears.
Frank, all tingling with the ardour of adventure, with the excitements of extreme jeopardy, with the interest of novelty, felt a surge of resentment toward her as an inopportune spoil-sport. The spirit of discipline was strong within him.
"Well, upon my word, Lucia Laniston," he said severely—and a hundred distant voices were repeating, "Lucia Laniston! Lucia Laniston!" while she hung upon his arm, vaguely flinching from the echoes and seeking to stop her ears. "I'll never take you with me anywhere again, as long as I live! There is no danger. What are you crying for—answer me that?"
And the darkness conjured her—"Answer me that?"
"Oh, Frank," she whispered: she could not speak aloud for the echoes—even the sibilance that followed her words made her now and then shrink away and look back. Then she put both hands on one of his shoulders, and stood on tip-toe to bring her lips close to his ear, "We must look out for that mountaineer. We have recognised him at last—both Ruth and I. He is the man whom we noticed in disguise at the concert where that girl sang and danced, and who afterward tried to kill Mr. Lloyd in the Ferris Wheel!"
"The devil he is!" exclaimed Frank, stopping short, disconcerted and dismayed.
"The devil he is—he is—he is—he is the devil!" The echoes reiterated the words with a distracting distinctness, and she put her hand over Frank's lips.
"The next time you speak—whisper," she admonished him. "I expected,—Mr. Jardine expected that he would kill Mr. Lloyd while you were gone."
"It must be that he has got no pistol," Frank surmised decisively. "And that's strange, for these fellows all carry their 'shootin' iron' in the leg of their left boot. That's the only reason, I dare swear. By sheer strength, he couldn't. Lloyd could throw him from here to New Helvetia. He doubtless expected to take Lloyd by surprise, and suddenly push him over into an abyss, and didn't get the opportunity. He saw enough of athletes at the carnival to know he would be outmatched in a fair fight. Treachery or a pistol was his only chance. But why on earth did not Jardine tell me?"
"He tried—he tried—but you wouldn't wait a minute—you wouldn't hear a word."
Even in the dim light Frank's face showed crestfallen, dispirited, mortified.
"I'm sorry you came—but we must make the best of it. See here, Lucia, when we join them, do you get close to Lloyd and very quietly tell him—don't choke him, like you did me; you've pretty near strangled me, clutching me by the collar that way—but whisper the facts to him. Very quietly, mind you. We mustn't excite the suspicions of that miscreant. Our safety may depend on his thinking that we do not recognise him. Let Lloyd know, and walk with him, and I'll keep right along with Mister Mountain-Man. We will only make a feint of seeing the cave—just to avoid precipitating some rascality—and take the first chance to get out of this as soon as possible."
When they reached the waiting explorers, who being without adequate light could not come to meet them, Lucia was no longer walking with her cousin's arm, but following, as he preceded her, swinging the lantern. The way had grown rough and unequal; sudden unexpected descents made the walking difficult amidst the jagged edges of the crag and fragments long ago fallen from the roof; climbing the acclivity, on which they still stood, she was now and again fain to clutch at a projection of rock to assist her steps, and, although she was rarely light and active, and kept up well with Frank's long stride, he carefully handled the lantern to afford her all the light possible. It seemed to Lloyd, however, that she needed more effective assistance, and, as soon as their proximity made it possible, he advanced to meet them, as the crafty Frank had anticipated, and offered her his arm. Frank turned for a moment, surveying this arrangement, as if he had not expected it; then, addressing the mountaineer, but still keeping the lantern in his own hands, he said bluffly, "Come on, old Sport—we'll take the lead. Guide us to that marble palace we were thinking of buying when we turned back."
"It has got marble palaces beat to a frazzle," Lloyd chimed in enthusiastically.
She noted with a pang, half gratulation, half grief, that he asked no questions as to the others. He had no curiosity as to their reasons for declining the excursion. He seemed not even aware of their absence—to him all had come since she was here. She felt the strength of his support, his sure-footed agility, and moved on swiftly and easily on his arm. But she could not, by lagging, find an opportunity for her confidential whisper. When sharp, jagged rocks intervened in the path, and she slackened her pace, the mountaineer seemed to observe it immediately, and accommodated his gait to theirs, although, once or twice, Frank, forging on with the lantern, the way being obvious, a canon-like interval, between great, beetling cliffs, left them so far behind that Lloyd called a halt.
"Remember Miss Laniston," he admonished the youth. "You are not walking for a purse." Then, jocularly, "That lantern is not your personal property—it doesn't look well for you to make off with it like that."
Somehow, on Lloyd's arm, Lucia forgot to be afraid. The terrible glooms had a certain gruesome picturesqueness that no longer appalled her. She could look up into the infinite vaults of the darkness, and her hope, her soul, no longer fainted within her. The lantern, like a tiny star, lucently white, with a rayonnant halo about its focus, showed vast, rugged, crag-shaped forms looming indistinctly in these undreamed-of subterranean realms, and now the path skirted an abyss of unimagined depth, and now toiled up an ascent, mountain-like in its vague immensity, but she had no tremors, no thought of regret for the bland outer air, and the bliss of the candid sunshine. She trusted implicitly to him. She knew that he was ignorant, all untrained mentally, sadly neglected, hardly used by Fate, but she relied on the inherent strength of his judgment, his fine, bright, native intellect, his optimism, his simple valiance in the fight of life. She did not doubt that she would have presently an opportunity to disclose the facts to him, to communicate her warning, and she was sure that he would instantly know the best course to pursue, and that he would have the courage and the dexterity to make it effective. She realised his high moral qualities, so rare in these days that they seemed like a special gift. His unselfishness would take due account of her, of Frank—his magnanimity would even spare the murderous mountaineer, unless, indeed, their safety, their lives were the price of his.
So restored, indeed, were her faculties, that she was the first to note the sudden responsive light, as the far-reaching gleam of the lantern struck out the glitter of calc-spar. "See there!" she cried. "What is that?"
"We are coming again to the palace, I do believe," said Frank, as if surprised.
"Wa-al," observed the surly guide, stopping short, "warn't ye lowin' ez ye wanted ter go the same way? I kin show ye other ways—ef so be ye'd like ter travel 'em; a short cut ter nowhar."
Frank was conscious of having expressed unintentionally, in his surprise, his lurking suspicions, and his answer was not readily forthcoming. But Lloyd discriminated the note of offence in the guide's voice, and sought to re-establish harmonious relations.
"That is all right—just what we want to show the lydy," he said cheerily. "But I don't call it the marble palace," he continued, addressing himself directly to Lucia; "it is the 'Hall of Heroes'—you will see why directly,—and, oh, what a stage-setting it would make."
Even now the darkness began to shimmer with vague transient white gleams suggestive of apparitions, of gigantic human forms. At a word from the guide, Frank strode ahead down a steep declivity, and, pausing at last, stood in the centre of an oval-shaped apartment, glimmering white, with here and there a sudden crystalline sparkle. The lofty ceiling rose above like the interior of a dome.
The mountaineer waited with the other two, as if he felt that since Frank had usurped the lantern he might also assume the functions of a cicerone and exhibit the wonders of the cave. Lucia began to realise with a sinking heart that the mountaineer having decoyed Lloyd here for the purpose of wreaking now his frustrated vengeance, would not for one moment permit himself to be separated from his prospective victim. She once more grew anxious lest it would be impossible to speak to Lloyd apart, and began to scheme, to devise, rather than await, an opportunity to warn him.
Young Laniston, placed at a disadvantage which he had not anticipated, although he did not regret his manœuvre to keep possession of the precious light on which all their lives depended, hesitated for a moment—then he addressed himself to the methods by which the mountaineer had earlier displayed to the explorers the beauties of the sequestered place.
He took up from the ground a long pole with a short prong or fork at its end. He lifted the lantern high on this, and like a miracle the splendours of the underground scene burst forth. The walls were white and sparkled with calc-spar. The wondrous forces of nature, tirelessly building through the ages these unseen, unimagined, weird splendours, were still at work, and though great stalactites hung down from the lofty roof like a hundred chandeliers, the continual drip from these ponderous pendants, of the waters charged with lime, had not yet built up from the floor the stalagmites to form the columns in which they would one day meet. These stalagmites, now in process of development, had taken on strange, fantastic shapes. At the distance it was like a hall of glittering statuary. Lloyd pointed out, with all the zest of discovery, the similitudes which his keen imagination had discerned in the rugged rock. Now he discriminated a statesman-like figure, erect upon a column, gigantic, majestic, a scroll in his hand; here a great, rugged pedestal, where the waters had been received in a wide depression, supported an equestrian soldier mounted upon a rearing charger; his fancy descried an aboriginal group, a warrior—he was insistent on the distinctness of his plumed crest—with his tomahawk uplifted, his victim a-crouch at his feet; he pointed out Neptune, on the rocks, his trident in his hand, a dolphin sporting at his feet.
Somehow, all the vanished wonders of the world were lurking here, awaiting the magic touch of imagination to give them form and grace and bid them live anew. The mountaineer, impervious to these impressions, walled up in his limitations, seemed to listen stolidly, uncomprehendingly, as Lloyd, discoursing all unsuspicious, all undismayed, gaily discerned poems in the stones, and music in the dropping of the water, for they could discriminate the sound of the ripple of a rill, somewhere in the darkness, from the staccato fall of the drops from the stalactites, building ceaselessly the majestic architecture of the cavern.
"Listen, listen," said Lloyd smilingly, one hand uplifted, "was there ever anything more harmonious than that tinkling interlude with its appoggiatura of drops that comes alwaysa piacereafter the solemn, hesitating tones of thetema?"
The foreign phrases suggested a chance to her despair.
"Do you speak Italian or French?" she asked.
"No—nor English, either, I'm afraid. Wish I did," Lloyd replied, looking down at her, his face illumined in some stray shifting gleam of the lantern. "The only consolation is that I have not much to say anyhow. A few words will express my thoughts."
"Say," exclaimed Frank, from the centre of the floor of the Hall of Heroes—"it is as cold as Greenland down here, and as damp as a marsh."
"And it goes through you, this damp cold," responded Lloyd. "It isn't like the dry cold at the entrance of the cave." Then to Lucia, "Did you notice how dusty it was there?"
"Well, say," exclaimed Frank, "have you seen enough of this?"
Lloyd submitted the question to Lucia, who assented with feverish eagerness. Then he shouted to Frank, "Suppose we get a move on us. I'm about fed up with this place."
As Frank retraced his way to rejoin the others, the precious lantern once more dangling from his arm, he pondered anxiously as to his next step. He knew, partly from the position of the group, and he thought that he could divine from the intonation of Lloyd's voice, that Lucia had not been able to exchange a word with him out of the hearing of the mountaineer. Hence, he was sure that Lloyd was still all unconscious of his danger, and thus cut off from his advice and co-operation, young Laniston felt peculiarly helpless, yet laden with responsibility. While in certain traits of his adolescence he represented a type of the callow undergraduate, he had an appreciation of his own inexperience and limitations that indeed did much to annul them, and rendered him almost as cautious as a man versed in the mutations of human affairs. He hardly knew what to do, and hence he was slow to act. He thought at one moment that he would call Lloyd aside and disclose the facts, thus bringing the matter to a crisis. But this, he reflected, might precipitate the lurking treachery, whatever deed it was that the man had in contemplation. At length he determined that, with the shifting of the personnel of the conference, he would call the mountaineer aside, thus giving Lucia one moment for her whispered confidence to Lloyd.
"Come here, my friend," Frank said, stopping short and looking straight at the guide and then down at the light, "Come and see what is the matter with this lantern."
His face, all thrown into high relief by the light shining upward upon it, placid, and smooth, and roseate, gave no intimation of the unrest in his mind, and even a suspicious man might easily have been caught by the lure.
But the saturnine mountaineer resisted stanchly. "Nuthin' the matter with it," he retorted. "But I tell you now, ef ye fool with that thar lantern an' git it out'n fix, you will be in hell fire a good spell 'fore yer time comes—that's whut!"
"Look out, man—bridle your words in the presence of this lydy—or I'll cut your tongue out," Lloyd spoke abruptly, with such sudden fierceness that the mountaineer started aside.
The stalwart Frank, knowing what he knew, could have fainted at this provocation to the lurking menace. With desperate eagerness he sought to re-establish such poor pretence of anentente cordialeas had heretofore existed. "Have patience with the speech of the country, Mr. Lloyd. The thoughts of a plain man are plainly expressed, hey, my friend?" he said jovially, clapping the guide on the shoulder.
It was but a momentary diversion, but in that restricted interval Lucia whispered to Lloyd, "He is the man who attacked you in the Ferris Wheel."
Lloyd looked surprised for a moment—startled. Then he responded, laughing a trifle, "You must be mistaken. The doctor thought the hurt was from the fall—not a blow. He had no motive. I never saw him till to-day. I haven't an enemy in the world."
"He was in disguise," Lucia whispered.
"Oh, that, indeed." Lloyd looked down at her with a doubting but lenient smile. "If ever I have to go on the road again, I'll get you to write me a play!—you are a prodigy at plots—I can see that!"
Lucia was on the verge of collapse—fit to fall. For the sake of this moment she had controlled her fears, and tried to the limit her powers of endurance, and followed into this abyss the guidance of a known traitor. She had risked her life in this cavern of darkness and despair whence she might never issue, that she might tell Lloyd that his own life was in danger—and for naught! She could not appeal to his fears—for to fear he seemed impervious.
And so he thought she had come, simply because she wanted to see the cave—the folly of it! And he would never know that she loved him and his safety better than her life—and indeed why should he know this, when she would have none of him, and his bizarre past, and his humdrum future with his "bit of money" and his little dingy home of a six-room frame house on a small plantation! He had already offered her these values—which she had rejected, though she loved him, as she had already told him—why should he know how much—how much!
She hung heavily on his arm, so had the elasticity of her gait failed her, and almost at once he noticed the change.
"This is too much for you," he said considerately. "You are tired. Look here, guide," he called out peremptorily. "Get us out of here now—the shortest way."
The mountaineer, after his sullen manner, made no comment, but set out at once at a fair pace, preceding Frank, whom he still permitted without protest to carry the lantern. Young Laniston, crestfallen and very considerably dismayed, sought to lessen the distance between them, some twenty feet, by spurting in a fast walk, whereupon the guide broke into a jog trot, keeping the interval exactly the same.
"Hold on for the light," exclaimed Frank, realising that Lucia must needs be distressed to keep this pace or fall hopelessly to the rear. He relapsed into his former gait and at once the guide relaxed his speed in exact proportion. "You had better wait a bit," said Frank, ignoring that aught of unpleasantness had happened; "you will fall into a crevice if you don't mind."
He sent a shaft of light flickering on ahead, but sullen and sinister the man made no response, still steadily preceding them into the dense glooms, his figure barely glimpsed by the lantern's fluctuating light as they followed.
Frank's alarms were now very definitely excited. He could not understand the change in the man's policy in leaving the post which he had so steadfastly maintained in Lloyd's immediate proximity. He had either relinquished his scheme or he was now proceeding to put it into execution. Frank was mindful too of the malignity with which the mountaineer pointed the fact how his caution had overshot the mark by retaining the custody of the lantern. Much good would it do them if the guide, evidently curiously familiar with the place, should contrive to distance them altogether, or dodge behind one of the buttresses of the cliffs of this underground world, and so hiding leave them to find their way out of this labyrinth without a clue, or perchance, wandering in eccentric circles, perish finally of cold or starvation. It was impossible for them to recognise any landmark of the dread Plutonian scene—black night on every side, save dusky outlines of crags and chasms, the tiny white focus of the lantern with its fibrous halo failing in deep glooms, and beyond, the dim shadow of a man, trotting steadily—how well he knew his footing!—to lose sight of whom were certain death in this world of Erebus.
"If I only had a pistol, even without a cartridge in it, I'd stop that light-heeled fellow," Frank said indignantly, but in a low voice, over his shoulder to the two who followed close upon his steps.
"Don't be frightened, Miss Laniston," Lloyd reassured Lucia. "We shan't lose sight of our precious guide. I could run him down in two seconds. And if necessary I will just snatch you up in my arms and overhaul him forthwith. I'd do it now, but it is best to give him line, and see what his intentions really can be."
The next moment a chilly sound rang through the silent cave and all the unfortunate explorers started with a nervous shock. In another instant they recognised its character. It was the hooting of a screech-owl.
"That settles it," exclaimed Lloyd with a joyous sense of relief. "That shows we can't be very far from the outside. The owls hide about near the entrance of a cave in the daytime—then they fly out at night like the bats."
Lucia tried to share his hopefulness; she looked about with eager expectancy. "But I don't see or hear any bats," she said.
"They will no doubt put in an appearance before long," Lloyd answered. "There is the owl again."
She shivered at the blood-curdling, ill-omened cry, despite its fortunate augury to them.
The shrill, uncanny notes of the screech-owl again trembled repetitiously on the thin, rare air, then the low, sinister chuckling of the bird ensued, so true to life, so perfectly imitated that the cry had been several times repeated, after considerable intervals, before they perceived that they had heard no owl—that the mountaineer now and again paused as he hurried on in advance and standing still mimicked the creature's ill-omened cry with a perfection of similitude that might have deceived the senses of more practical woodsmen than they professed to be. The stoppage gave the explorers time to gain on their strange guide and as the shrilling rang out once more the source whence it emanated became obvious.
Frank, looking over his shoulder at the others, showed a startled, dismayed face and Lloyd with a strange, unaccustomed thrill about his heart, felt that a crisis impended. Their thought was the same—they were following a madman, or he was signalling to confederates ambushed in the hope of booty, or he was masking the noise of their approach by this, a familiar sound.
Lucia suddenly spoke, a joyous break in her voice that was nevertheless like a sob. "I see a faint light in the distance—we are truly nearing the exit." She looked up at Lloyd through tears in her eyes. He felt her hand grow light on his arm, her step quicken at his side—so does hope control the nerves, the muscles.
But it was his turn to doubt. He had what is called "a head for localities." The entrance which he remembered had for a distance longer than the light of day could be glimpsed a straight blank wall on one side, without an aperture or a break, which fact had made it possible for Frank Laniston to go and return without a guide. Whereas here there were vast spaces of void darkness on either side, the path was damp and slippery in places, and he could smell the breath of running water, and hear the vague susurrus that echoed the murmur of its flow. There it had been as still as death, but for the whisking of the almost noiseless wings of the disturbed bats and now and then their weird mouse-like cry, and dust, dust, dust, was over all the dry precincts of the way. He suddenly spoke his conviction. "That is undoubtedly light," he said, "but this is not the way by which we came into the cave."
The guide caught the words and paused abruptly. He showed a change anew. He seemed suddenly metamorphosed from the malignant, tricky gnome, fleeing from them as they approached, or the madman aping the bird's cry of evil presage as he threaded the endless labyrinth of this subterranean realm. He was now the simple prosaic yokel whom, of their own free will outside, they had hired as a guide to explore a cave as a bit of pastime in a pastoral day.
"Waal," he remonstrated, doggedly sullen as at first, "didn't you uns say ez ye wanted the shortes' way out; this is the shortes' way."
"But I expected of course to go out at the same place—I wanted the shortest way to that exit," said Lloyd sternly. "You know that our horses are not here."
"But only a leetle piece off," the fellow remonstrated. A real owl began to rive the dark still air with his keen shrilling, and anon his low tremulous chatter. The guide paused to listen to the sound and then went on. "I thought she mought rest outside whilst I went to lead down her horse-critter." Once more he paused to listen to the scream of the owl. The whole place echoed and re-echoed its sinister chuckle. "But now I kem ter study 'bout 'n it I misdoubts it be too steep fur she. Jes' step for'd, stranger, an' see. It be jes' round the turn."
Before Frank could warn Lloyd, before Lucia could utter a word of remonstrance, before Lloyd himself took an instant's thought, he dropped Lucia's hand from his arm and stepped around the great buttress of the cliff, the mountaineer at his side.
Lloyd's figure was suddenly defined in a great glare of artificial light and what he saw the others only knew afterward. Descent was obviously impracticable. Sheer down, but only some twenty-five feet, lay a vast replica of the white cavernous hall they had quitted, with stalactites and stalagmites all a-glitter; but here was habitation, movement; strange, troglodytic figures, with skulking black shadows, shifted about amongst the columns; prosaic suggestions environed the great vats and tubs, barrels and sacks of grain, the metallic glimmer of a large copper still, and the open door of a furnace, the fire flaring to a white heat. So silent had been the approach under the normal cavernous sound of the owl's shrilling that not one of the moonshiners looked up as Lloyd looked down. Only when the guide, impatient for the catastrophe, uttered a sharp, short call did they raise their eyes. Lloyd, dumbfounded, instinctively stepped backward, and at this moment Frank, eager with curiosity, flung the lantern forward as he moved, and thus the shadow of the guide was projected from the darkness on the floor below.
It was the boast of Shadrach Pinnott that he had not missed his aim for thirty years. It did not fail him now. He saw the form of a man standing at gaze in a niche in the wall which vanished suddenly from view; then a shadow fell from the niche across the floor below. With a nice calculation of the station of the figure that threw the shadow he fired and the rocks reverberated with the sharp crack of the rifle like the musketry of a battle, and intermingled with it all were the repetitious echoes of the death-cry of the victim.
The body of the guide, as, mortally wounded, he fell forward, slid downward into the moonshiners' lair. The next moment the door of the furnace clashed and all was darkness and silence. Lloyd and Frank, realising that the height on which they stood and the doubt of their numbers and personality precluded pursuit for a time from the distillers on a lower level, made the best of their way with the lantern, carrying the half-fainting Lucia with them, toward the direction in which they had entered, so far as their recollection might serve. How they would have fared in their dazed and exhausted condition, what disastrous fate might have befallen them they often speculated afterward. But it was not long before they heard the resonant halloos of the searching party summoned by Jardine to their rescue, and only the detail of the extraordinary treachery and fate of their guide saved them from very trenchant ridicule, in that land of sylvan prowess, for involving themselves in a trap whence they must needs be extricated by raising the countryside.