blunders we had made in our two previousattacks. Now we had reduced the big villain's fighting bodyguard to twopersons, Soma and the dancer, and if he had not impressed the carriers,we outnumbered him. But Leith was on his own ground, and we had alreadydiscovered that the Isle of Tears made an ideal retreat for an outlaw.The nearly impassable jungle, surrounded by the cliffs that weretunnelled with tremendous caverns, made a hiding place in which a fewmen could defy an army.
One Eye moved along the side of the cliff for about five hundred yards,then turned into a small canon hardly thirty feet wide, the bottom ofwhich was about twenty yards above the valley from which we had climbed.
Our intuition told us that we were near the retreat, and we halted thehurrying guide, and in the shelter of a boulder explained to him withmore signs and gestures that we wished to proceed with extreme caution.The end of the gulch that was not more than a stone's throw from theface of the cliff was already dark with the shadows of the hills, and aswe suspected that the opening to Leith's refuge was close, we wished tomake no unnecessary noise in approaching it. Using the scattered rocksas covering, we advanced slowly, but before we reached the end the sunhad disappeared, and the absence of twilight, noticeable in thatlatitude, compelled us to crawl along in a darkness that made itimpossible to discern any object that was more than three feet distant.Holman was on one side of One Eye while Maru guarded him on the otherside, and as the bottom of the gorge made it impossible for more thanthree to move abreast, Kaipi and I crawled in the rear.
We were at One Eye's mercy at that moment, but the idiot appeared to bemuch impressed by the manner in which we had pictured the sure andsudden fate that would fall upon him if we suspected him of treachery.The mystery of the place gripped us as we went forward. High above usthe stars looked as if they were floating sequins in a sea of dark blue.
But the stars were blotted out suddenly, and I drew Holman's attentionto the fact. The youngster got to his feet and groped around in thegloom, while we halted till he made an investigation. It was impossibleto see the face of the half-witted guide to gain any information fromhis gestures.
Holman stooped and whispered his finding to us. "We're in a coveredpassageway," he murmured. "I can just touch the roof by standing ontiptoe. As we're in the place we might as well walk instead of crawling;we'll get to the end quicker."
Maru dragged One Eye to his feet, and we pushed on. The air of the placewas much sweeter than the atmosphere of the Cavern of Skulls. Thefloor, instead of being covered with thick dust as we had found it inthe former place, was one of clean, smooth rock, and the walls wereperfectly dry.
I had gripped One Eye's left arm while Holman was making the examinationof the passage, and we had not proceeded more than twenty yards when heintimated that he wished to turn to the right. We allowed him to do so,and for fully twenty minutes he followed a zigzag course that left uscompletely nonplussed as to the way we had come. We could hardly countthe number of the turnings. First to the right, then to the left, thenback again toward the mouth of the place, he trotted forward withnothing to guide him, yet when we checked him at certain corners to findout if there was an angle in the path, we found that he was right inevery instance.
"He's counting the number of paces he takes between the turnings,"muttered Holman. "No man, unless he had the eyes of a cat, could findhis way along this passage. Keep a grip on him or we'll never seedaylight again."
We guessed that we had walked for over half a mile when the guidestopped abruptly. In the dark we endeavoured to find out what had pulledhim up short, but we tried in vain. A prick from Kaipi's knife bladewould not make him budge an inch, and we clustered together and rackedour brains to find the solution.
"P'raps we're up against something," whispered Holman, "Feel if there'sanything in front, Verslun."
I walked forward a pace and groped in the blackness. My fingers touchedsolid rock. It hemmed us in on all sides. One Eye had walked us to theend of the passage, and we had come up against a blind wall.
I whispered the news to Holman, and he swore softly. Maru's fingerstightened on the collar of the prisoner till his breath came in shortgasps. Kaipi moved around to the side of the prisoner, but I pushed himroughly back. The Fijian's desire to use his knife on all occasions wassomewhat irritating.
"What'll we do?" asked Holman.
"Get back," I answered. "He's either fooled us or he's lost his way."
Holman gripped One Eye by the neck and shook him roughly. Theyoungster's temper was up, and it looked as if we had wasted the hourswe had spent in capturing the idiot alive, and the time lost infollowing behind him through the canon and the crooked passage. And timewas precious when we thought of the agony which Edith and BarbaraHerndon were suffering.
In his temper Holman forgot that the prisoner was deaf, and he shouteda question at him. "What the devil is wrong?" he screamed. "Damn you,will--"
Maru interrupted with a cry of astonishment. The wall at the end of thepassage appeared to slide away, and, standing directly in front of us,his big frame outlined against a fire of brushwood that blazed behindhim, was Leith!
Holman gave a yell of rage and sprang forward, and Leith turned and spedinto the gloom. In his astonishment at finding himself confronted by theenemy when the stone door had rolled aside, Holman had forgotten that hehad a revolver in his possession, and Leith had passed the brushwoodfire before I yelled out to the youngster to shoot.
Holman fired immediately, and Leith staggered. For a moment we thoughtthat he was down, but he picked himself up and ran on. I snatched ablazing pine limb from the fire as I rushed by, and with the lightflickering upon the walls of the place, we sped madly after the flyingfigure that was barely discernible when the blazing branch flung asplinter of light into the gloom.
Holman emptied the revolver, but the pounding of Leith's feet that cameback to us proved that he was still running. Maru and Kaipi werehallooing far behind, but Holman and I ran side by side, our mindsunable to think of anything but the capture of the human tiger in front.
We were gaining on him. We could hear his laboured breathing, and Iremembered with a thrill of satisfaction the wound that he had receivedthe night before. It was only a question of time when we would have ourfingers on his throat. "Keep it up!" gasped Holman. "We've got him,Verslun! We've got him!"
It looked like it. The red glow from the torch enabled us to catch anoccasional glimpse of shoes moving up and down at such a rate that thelimbs to which they were attached always remained outside the area thatwas faintly illuminated. The momentary view of the footgear, togetherwith the maddening _plop plop_ it made upon the rock, raised an insaneidea within my brain that we were chasing a pair of bewitched shoes thatwere enticing us into the very heart of the mountain. The scanty dietand the happenings of the two preceding days had left me light-headed.The race was unreal. I had an idea that the shoes would run on forever,and that every yard they covered took me farther away from EdithHerndon.
The flame of the pine branch went out, and we were left in utterdarkness. But the sound of the flying feet still came back to us. Attimes we were so near that Holman thrust out his hands as he ran, andcursed softly as the sounds seemed to draw away from him.
"I'll have you yet!" he cried. "I'll choke you, you devil!"
A chuckle came out of the darkness and at that instant I made adiscovery. Leith was not alone. Keeping time with the clatter of theshoes was a softer tattoo that told me that a barefooted runner wasracing beside the man we were pursuing.
Holman made the discovery at the same moment. "Soma," he breathed, andhe ran faster. From some place that seemed to be leagues in the rearcame the shouts of Maru and Kaipi, but their yells died away, and wewere convinced that they had given up the chase.
The _plop plop_ of the shoes ceased suddenly, and we slackened speed.Our brains suggested that Leith had stopped abruptly on the chance ofdoubling back before we could pull up, and a sweat of terror broke outupon us. If he doubled successfully he would reach the stone doorthr
ough which we had got the first glimpse of him.
"He's turned!" cried Holman. "We'll get him, Verslun! After the--O God!_Look out_!"
Holman's warning came too late. The rocky floor over which we had beenrunning, dropped away from us. I pitched forward after the youngsterinto a gulf of darkness, landed on my shoulder upon a mass of volcanicash, and clutching vainly at the stuff, I rolled at tremendous speeddown into the bowels of the earth. From far above us came the sounds ofuncontrolled merriment--the high-pitched shrieks of a native risingabove the deep bass laughter of Leith.
CHAPTER XX
THE BLACK KINDERGARTEN
I thought we were a thousand years rolling down that slope of smotheringash. It was a quicksand that melted beneath us. We drove our arms