"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 soft plop of 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.



CHAPTER XIV

BACK TO THE CAMP

The path, with its coating of coral lime, stretched before me, and I fled along it. The moon had disappeared behind the hills, but the limed track was quite distinct. My watch had stopped, but I judged that there was still a good two hours before the dawn, and I ran as I had never run in my life. I recognized what sort of feeling I possessed for Edith Herndon as I raced through the lonely night, and I reproached myself bitterly for leaving the camp. I became convinced that Leith had set out for the resting place of the Professor and his two daughters after placing guards at the inner opening of the corridor to see that Holman and I did not escape from the cavern, and I realized the terror which the two girls would experience when the big brute reached the camp.

"The devil!" I muttered. "The fiendish brute!"

A chuckle came from a boulder beside the track, and Holman's cheery voice set my pulses beating.

"You frightened the dickens out of me, Verslun," he cried. "I thought you were one of the evil legion. Gee! I'm glad to see you."

"How did you get out?" I gasped as we rushed on together. "I thought I left you in the cavern."

"It was a good job you didn't," he retorted. "There was a husky nigger at the outside entrance of the passage, and he gave me the fight of my life. Get off this track; they might be after us at any moment."

"Do you think that Leith has made for the camp?" I asked.

"I suppose he has. We must move as fast as we can, Verslun. If he reaches there before us we'll deserve any fate that will come to us. We shouldn't have left them."

The utterance of the conviction that had come to both of us brought a silence, and we rushed across the boulder-strewn ground that we had crossed earlier in the night. We felt certain that Leith knew of a surer and safer path back to the camp, but it was useless for us to hunt for a new trail at that moment. We would have to find our way down the nearly perpendicular wall up which we had climbed after leaving the crevice through which we had viewed the death dance, and, to me at least, the recollections of that path brought feelings that were by no means pleasant. But Leith was making toward the camp, and the horrible thoughts aroused by the spectacle which we had witnessed in the early night muzzled the thrills which the dangers of the climb sent through our bodies. The dance had terrified the Fijian by arousing thoughts of the deeds that would happen in its wake, and Kaipi's terror became a gauge for us to measure its dread significance.

We reached the cliffs and ran up and down the ledge in a vain search for the spot where we had clawed our way to the top. Not that we thought the finding of the place would solve the problem of the descent. It was hard to conceive of a more difficult way than the one by which we had come, and as if he had suddenly come to the conclusion that any other path would be preferable, Holman dropped upon his knees and lowered himself upon a ledge that was immediately below.

"Come on, Verslun!" he cried, in a choked voice that was altogether different from his cheery tones. "If there is no path we must roll down. There's the first flush of the dawn!"

I looked toward the east and groaned. The faint grayish tint unnerved me. Although it was possible that Leith had already reached the camp, still we had promised the two girls that we would return by daylight, and although we had a hazy notion as to what we would do when we did reach their side, the longing to get there made us oblivious of danger. I swung down on to the crumbling foothold that supported Holman, and breathlessly we began to scramble toward the valley.

It was a mad climb. Holman exhibited a temerity that bordered on insanity. With reckless daring he scrambled down upon dangerous niches that jutted out upon the face of the cliff, and my repeated warnings fell upon deaf ears. A task that would have appeared impossible when viewed in daylight, lost half of its terrors because we only vaguely apprehended the dangers that threatened us when a layer of shale crumbled beneath our feet. Our descent became a wild toboggan. Slipping and sliding, clutching wildly at every little projection that would decrease the speed at which we were travelling, we rolled with bruised and bleeding bodies on to a small platform, and lay half stunned for a moment, as a thousand pieces of rock, dislodged by our bodies, bounced past us into the valley.

Holman picked himself up and looked around. The pink flush had deepened in the east, and nearby objects were discernible.

"By all the gods! we are back on the ledge near the crevice!" he cried. "Come along and we'll hunt for Kaipi."

It was wonderful how we had pulled up in our slide near the place where we had witnessed the performance that prompted us to make the ascent. But there was no mistake about the spot. As we crawled along the platform we found that we had landed not more than twenty feet from the crevice through which we had witnessed the blood-curdling "tivo," and we hurried toward the spot where we had left the Fijian, whose nerves had been upset by the glimpse he had had of the strange antics of the dancers.

But Kaipi was not at the spot where we had left him. Whether his fears had increased to such an extent that they had forced him to leave the place, or whether he had come to the conclusion that we had returned to the camp by some other route, we could not determine; so wasting no time on useless conjecture we hurried toward the big maupei tree up which we had climbed to reach the ledge.

But Holman's hurry proved disastrous. He had escaped the dangers of the cliff descent to meet an accident when he had sufficient light to see what he was about. In reaching for the limb of the tree that threshed against the cliff, he lost his footing, and before I could grip him he went crashing through the foliage to the ground, some fifty feet below!

I thought that I was an hour descending that tree, but I could not have been more than three minutes if my skinned legs could be relied upon as evidence of speed. I found Holman in a thorny tangle, and as I dragged him into the open he groaned loudly and endeavoured to get upon his feet.

"Are you hurt?" I questioned.

"No, no!" he cried. "I'm not hurt, Verslun. Get me on my feet, man. Quick! For the love of God, quick!"

I gripped his shoulders and he managed to stand upright. The dawn came with tropic suddenness at that moment, and I saw that he was bleeding from a nasty wound above the right temple, while he limped painfully as I helped him across a small cleared patch near the tree.

"I've hurt my leg," he cried, "but I'm going to get to the camp. If I fall, Verslun, I want you to lend me a hand. Promise to help me, will you? She—Miss Barbara, you know, old man. She is everything to me. Give me a hand if I tumble down."

"I promise," I answered, and he wrung my hand as we started off through the clawing, scratching vines that tripped us up as we tried to fight our way forward.

If we had thought on the night before that the quarter mile of country that lay between the camp and the rocky wall was a difficult stretch to negotiate, we were more than doubly certain of its impenetrable character now that daylight had come. How we had ever managed to get through it in the darkness was a mystery that we tried to solve as we attempted to make our way back. The place was a mad riot of thorny undergrowth, laced and bound with vines that were as strong as wire hawsers. The lianas appeared human to us; they lassoed our legs and flung us sprawling upon our faces whenever we tried to quicken our speed. Thorns of a strange fishhook variety drove their barbed points into us, and each yard of the tortuous path that we cut through the devilish vines was marked by a scrap of our clothing, which the tormenting thorns seemed to wave aloft as an emblem of victory.

"He'll beat us!" gasped Holman. "I'm all in, Verslun; that fall has finished me."

"Keep at it!" I said. "We must be near the camp by now."

"We've walked three miles," muttered Holman. "We've lost our way."

"No, we haven't!" I cried. "We've struck a bad patch, but we'll get there soon."

The youngster clenched his teeth and endeavoured to forget the agony of his leg, but the effort taxed his courage.

"We'll do it," I said. "Don't let the brute beat us."

"I—I won't!" he stammered. "If it was anything but my leg! Verslun!"

He fell on his face, and I helped him up, but once again he collapsed. The injured limb made it impossible for him to stand or even crawl.

"You get ahead," he cried hoarsely. "Leave me, Verslun! Leave me here!"

"But I'd never find you again," I protested.

"Yes, you would! I'll crawl out after a few hours' rest. Run to the camp, and shoot—shoot the devil the moment you put your eyes on him!"

I took a quick glance at the matted walls of the green creepers that hedged us in on all sides. Holman was in the last stages of exhaustion, and I reasoned quickly. If I left him in the middle of the thorny tangle that encompassed us, it would be utterly impossible for me to find him again, and he would probably perish from thirst. If I rushed away I would be leaving him to certain death, and although our prospects of leaving the island alive did not look too bright at that moment, I considered that I would be making his demise a certainty by leaving him in the maze.

I stopped, gripped him round the waist, and with a great effort managed to lift him upon my shoulder. Holman's actions did not help me as I struggled beneath him. He kicked like a madman when he understood what I intended to do, but I held him in spite of his protests.

"Leave me here!" he screamed. "Go ahead by yourself, Verslun! What's the use of taking me?"

"You're coming, so you can stop kicking," I muttered. "Take your fingers out of my eyes."

But Holman's struggles ceased then, and his head fell backward. The pain of his leg had made the plucky youngster swoon away, and with a prayer upon my lips I sprang again at the bulwark of vicious creepers.

I have a very vague recollection of the remainder of that trip. In my subconscious mind I have memories of an insane struggle with a jungle that was alive, of a fight with thorny creepers that pursued us. I became convinced that those vines were alive, because the same thorns that we had passed hours before rose up again in our path and waved the scraps of bloody clothing that they had torn from Holman and myself.

At last, half insane with anxiety for the safety of the girls and our own struggles, we staggered blindly into the patch of cleared land upon which the camp had been pitched on the previous evening. It was impossible to mistake the site. The embers of the big fire were still smoking and we stared with sweat-blinded eyes at the place where the girls' tent had been standing when we rushed off with Kaipi to investigate the light in the hills. But there was no trace of the girls or the Professor. Leith had got ahead of us, and the big brute had rushed the crazy scientist and his two daughters toward the hills that stood up black and defiant above the sea of green vegetation.



CHAPTER XV

A DAY OF SKIRMISHING

We lay for a few moments upon the soft grass, then Holman crawled on hand and knees to the little spring of cold water and bathed the wound upon his temple and his injured leg. The water revived him, and after a brief rest he got to his feet and stared at the festooned trees that surrounded the spot.

"I'm ready, Verslun," he muttered. "Which way did they go?"

I pointed to the marks made in the soft ground by the shoes of the two girls, and Holman limped forward.

"But we can't follow this fashion," I protested.

"Why not?"

"We'll be shot down before we get within half a mile of them. Leith cannot know that we have escaped from the cavern or he would have left some one here to interview us."

"Well, we can't do any high-class tracking in this country," said the youngster grimly. "If we stray six feet from the trail we are lost. We had better trust to fortune and go ahead."

It was impossible to do anything else. The route by which the carriers had marched from the camping ground was perfectly clear while we followed their footsteps, but if we diverged ever so slightly the thick veils of verdure hid the path from our eyes. To follow the party we would have to hold to the trail and take the chances of an ambush which Leith would certainly prepare for us the moment he knew we had escaped from the Cavern of Skulls. It would be easy for him to set his one-eyed white partner to shoot us down as we staggered along the trail which Soma or one of the carriers had blazed with an axe.

"They cannot have more than three hours' start of us," cried Holman. "Give me your arm, Verslun. Now let us move as fast as we can."

"But this is puerile," I protested. "We'll be running our heads into the noose."

"I don't care if we do. I want to get near Leith."

"But we'll never get near by running after him in this fashion. If we could find some way to get in front of him and wait."

"But what will happen to the girls?"

"Will our death prevent it?" I snapped. "If we rush after him in the open we'll throw our chances away."

I am a sailor, absolutely ignorant of jungle knowledge, but I had sense enough to know that Leith would not leave his rear exposed for a moment after he had received word from the cave. I tried to recall stories of extraordinary trailing feats as we stumbled forward, but I became convinced that all the marvellous performances I had ever read of had been accomplished under conditions that were altogether different from those that confronted us upon the Isle of Tears. An open piece of country would have been a sight of joy to our eyes that were weary of the everlasting mesh of green which encompassed us like the tentacles of a malignant fate. The green, sweaty leaves, the fat, bloated pods, and the lengths of pythonesque runners produced a mental nausea. The vegetation appeared to us to be vicious. Its very luxuriance produced that fear of the wild which grips one in tropical countries but which is never felt in lands situated in the temperate zones.

We had not covered a hundred yards of the path when Holman pounced upon a strip of white bark that waved to us from the thorn of a lawyer-vine crossing the track. A few pencilled words covered the smooth side of the strip, and we absorbed them in a single glance.

"'We're prisoners now,' muttered Holman, reading the few words in a whisper. 'The brute has declared himself. Barbara.'"

The boy turned to me, his face all blood-smeared and haggard, and for a moment we stared at the strip of bark. There had been no doubt in our minds concerning Leith's intentions from the time that Kaipi brought us the message which Soma had dropped, but the knowledge that the brute had declared himself to the Professor and the two girls brought us a most horrible feeling. In my own case I had never experienced such a sensation. The strange rites connected with the "tivo" in the long cave had laid a foundation upon which my imagination piled skyscrapers of horror. If I could have fixed my mind upon a definite fate that would be theirs if they were not rescued from the big brute's clutches, I would have found relief, but my inability to do that left me a victim to thoughts that were enough to deprive one of his reason. We looked upon the island as the ceremonial place for rites that were stamped out in the groups where the missionary had pushed himself, and the message from Barbara Herndon became a mental piledriver to ram home a thousand doubts that had obtained a footing in our minds.

"Come on!" cried Holman. "If we don't catch up with him I'll go mad!"

He turned to hurry along the narrow path, but out of the silence behind us came a shout that caused us to dive promptly into the bushes. The whoop came from the direction of the camping ground, and we had hardly crouched in the undergrowth when a nude native crashed through the vines and raced past our hiding place. He was followed by two more, the three running at top speed, heads forward, and their chests heaving in a manner that suggested they had come some distance.

In the glimpse we caught of them as they dashed past we came to the conclusion that they were three of the "tivo" dancers, and as we watched their bare brown backs disappear in the creepers we observed something which our position on the previous evening had prevented us from seeing. The backs of the three were tattooed, not with the common line tattooing, but with short scars that ran down the spine, making a ridged representation of a centipede, and as they passed I remembered that the Professor, when taking a photograph of the stone table on the previous morning, had commented on the same peculiar pattern which he had discovered upon one of the huge supporting pillars.

"They've come to tell Leith that we have escaped," whispered Holman.

"And they'll be on our trail the moment they give him the news."

"All right, we'll be ready for them. How much ammunition have you?

"Three cartridges," I replied.

"And I have four. We must make those seven—look out! There's another beggar coming!"

We dropped quickly out of sight and peered through the leaves. Holman was right. Some one else was coming along the path, but the newcomer was exercising much more prudence than the three dancers. Judging by the little intervals of silence that followed the slight noises made by the breaking of twigs, he was investigating each yard of the way.

A woolly head at last appeared through the network, and our nerves relaxed at the big brown eyes that rolled fearfully. The timorous stranger was Kaipi!

The Fijian was shaking with fear when we dragged him into the bushes. In halting words he told the story of his experiences of the night, and Holman and I listened. Kaipi had waited upon the ledge till a few hours before the dawn, and then he had made for the camp. With much better luck than we had struck, he reached there before daylight, but fearful of the happenings which would follow in the wake of the devil dance, he had taken up a post of observation in a neighbouring tree and awaited events.

Leith, according to the Fijian, had arrived at dawn, accompanied by Soma and the one-eyed white man, and the big brute had immediately interviewed the Professor. Kaipi's actions, as he mimicked the elderly scientist, convinced us that the interview was not pleasant to the archaeologist, and it was evident that it was at that moment Leith had declared himself as Barbara Herndon stated in her note.

"He kick up plentee big row," explained Kaipi. "He kick porter men an' make damn big noise outside missee tent. They come out speakee him, he slap big missee in face, drive 'em off."

Holman was crashing through the bushes before Kaipi had finished his recital, and I followed him, with the excited Fijian bringing up the rear. Leith was rushing the Professor and his daughters toward the black hills and we had to do something immediately.

For over an hour we stumbled along the track, making no effort to keep under cover in case Leith should have prepared an ambush. It was useless to argue with Holman, and my own feelings were such that I preferred to take the risks of the route which Soma's axe had cut, to the delays which the task of forcing our own passage through the labyrinth would bring upon us. Prudence was thrust into the background by the intense hate we entertained for the devil who had entrapped us.

It was near midday when our pursuit met with an interruption. A revolver cracked in a clump of wild ginger directly in front, and we took cover immediately. The bullet had whizzed close to Holman's head, and as we lay panting in the ribbon-grass we congratulated ourselves on the fact that we had been met with a single shot instead of a volley. We had taken a big chance and had come off lucky. It was impossible for Leith's party to be very far ahead, and as we watched the ginger clump we wondered how we could circumvent the sharpshooter.

After about five minutes of absolute quiet Kaipi turned his head and pointed to the rear, and Holman and I listened intently. The Fijian's sharper ears had detected slight sounds behind us, and as we strained the silence we came to the conclusion that the enemy had stealthily worked their way around us, and were now creeping like snakes through the maze with the hope that they would take us unawares.

We started to worm our way to the right, and our hatred of the infernal island, where we were reduced to the condition of burrowing moles, increased. Our eyes were practically useless. We had to depend upon hearing alone, and when a white man pits his ears against those of a native he finds that he has been suffering from partial deafness without being aware of the fact. A dozen times we shifted ground on a signal from Kaipi, whose head was continually to the earth, and that game of hide and seek drove us frantic. Leith was hurrying toward the hills while we were crawling backward and forward through the undergrowth to escape a few natives who pursued their tactics with a persistency that was maddening. The fact that the pursuers had the advantage put a raw edge upon our tempers, and after an hour spent upon hands and knees Holman resolutely refused to shift his ground in response to Kaipi's signals. I was just as tired of the wormlike attitude that we were compelled to adopt, and I waited beside Holman while the Fijian slipped away through the creepers after warning us by many eloquent signals that one of the search party was creeping toward us.

Holman had a "let-'em-all-come" expression upon his face that would have been amusing at any other time, and kneeling with our backs to each other we endeavoured to peer through the leafage to get a glimpse of the foe.

We remained like that for about ten minutes; then our attention was attracted to a point about eighteen inches to the right. The dry leaves were pushed quietly aside, but instead of a head appearing, as we expected, a bare brown leg was thrust through the creepers and remained stationary.

The leg fascinated us. Kaipi had moved in the opposite direction, and we were certain that the limb belonged to one of our enemies. The naked savage was worming his way upon his stomach, and the position immediately brought to our minds a picture of the scene in the long gallery. When it came to a game of this sort we would be hopelessly outclassed by a batch that, through assiduous training, slipped along with the ease of serpents.

Holman held his revolver in readiness and watched the leg. It was difficult to judge the position of the native's body, and the scarcity of ammunition made us hesitate before firing a shot. The leg was pushed farther out of the leafy tangle, and as it came toward him a change passed over Holman's face. He handed his revolver to me, crouched on his thighs and sprang!

There was something primitive about the action, something which caused my heart to throb as I watched him take the pantherlike spring. On the previous evening the youngster had expressed a desire to throttle Leith, and the same desire had gripped him when he watched the leg come through the vines. The devilishness of the batch made shooting a tame way of obtaining revenge, and I possessed the same itchiness of the fingers which had prompted Holman to take the wild leap. There was a joy in throttling such a brute, and I delighted in the grit of the boy.

The affair was dramatic in its swift and silent ending. The native, taken entirely unawares, had no chance against the angry antagonist who had landed upon his back. A faint gurgle proved to me that Holman's fingers had found the neck of the other, and in an incredible short time the struggle was over.

We parted the bushes and examined the body. It was one of the three nude natives that had rushed by us on the trail a few hours before, and he clasped in his right hand a long knife of New Zealand greenstone that had been inlaid with gold in an intricate design. We had never seen such a weapon. The crude knives that I had seen throughout the islands were not to be compared to the wonderfully polished blade that had been intended to free either Holman or myself from all earthly cares, while the metalwork showed a craftmanship that made one wonder how many centuries had elapsed since the Polynesian artist who had fashioned the weapon had been laid in the Cavern of Skulls. The sinnet work and the parquetry of split bamboo, which comprise the highest handicraft of the present-day islander, could hardly be classed with the exceedingly beautiful work upon the blade.

Holman turned up the end of the haft, pointed to a delicate design of a centipede, and then looked down at the back of the savage upon the ground. The similarity of the two designs was immediately apparent, but while the one on the greenstone had been executed by an artist, the figure upon the back of the dancer was a crude example of scar-tattooing that required some imagination to puzzle out what object it was supposed to represent. As we glanced at each other the significance of the serpentlike dance, the marks upon the bodies of the dancers and on the knife and stone table, was plainly evident. The island was sacred to the centipede, and in some way Leith had made himself a chief wizard amongst the few savages who still performed the rites which had once made the Isle of Tears a place of particular importance to the surrounding groups.

Holman took the long greenstone knife, and we crept quietly away in the direction taken by Kaipi. We had one enemy less upon the island. Not counting the carriers, we reckoned that the active opposition comprised Leith, Soma, the one-eyed white man, and either two or three of the "tivo" dancers, and these made a formidable batch. The dancers were huge natives, possessing all the characteristics of the Tongans, while Leith, Soma, and the one-eyed white man possessed more than ordinary strength.

"We must try to find the path," whispered Holman. "This delay will give Leith a chance to get to the hills."

But the finding of the path was no easy matter. So that we would be well out of the sphere of the companions of the man who carried the greenstone blade, we worked our way for about one hundred yards through the leafy maze before attempting to search for it, and that search proved a long and tiresome one. It is impossible to describe the network of wanton vegetation through which we struggled during the hot afternoon. Every kind of shrub and tree was woven into an ungodly tangle by the crawling, leaping vines that shut out the sky and made it impossible to see a person standing only a few feet away.

We stayed our appetites with wild guavas and yams, and moved slowly forward in the direction that we surmised that Leith was moving in. Our inability to find the path left us the only alternative of pushing on toward the hills in the hope that we would intercept the party before it reached the caverns which made the basalt cliffs a secure hiding place. Once the arch villain reached the caves it would be a difficult matter to locate him, and we damned the crazy brain of the Professor as we thought of the lonely position of the Isle of Tears. If the captain of The Waif was in league with Leith it would be absolutely impossible to obtain help to rescue the girls and their father, and we would be marooned upon the island for an indefinite period.

It was within a few minutes of sunset when our despondency was suddenly swept away. The silence of the jungle was disturbed by a shrill voice that protested loudly against something which the owner was called upon to do, and our hearts punched our ribs with mighty blows as we crawled forward. The voice belonged to Professor Clinton Herndon of California.



CHAPTER XVI

THE STONE TABLE

Our feelings can hardly be described as we crept closer to the spot from which the scientist's angry protest had gone up through the silence like a thin wire. The loneliness of that day had been appalling. I know that Edith Herndon's quiet face was continually before my mental vision, while Holman's actions convinced me that he was suffering acutely. If we were certain that Leith intended to do no wrong to the party, the fact that he was within speaking distance of the two girls was particularly distressing after the knowledge we had gained in the night. With extreme caution we wormed our way forward, the Professor's piping voice acting as a verbal signpost in helping us to locate the spot where he was engaged in holding the argument. We were close enough to hear his words, and our nerves were on the highest tension as he shrieked a defiance against some person near. We had only one thought as to who that person could be. The Professor was piling charges of treachery upon the head of a listener, and there was only one head on the Isle of Tears that contained enough villainy to make the charges possible!

"I will not sign the papers!" cried the scientist. "I want my liberty, sir! You are a scoundrel! Where are my daughters?"

Holman, creeping a few inches in front, had drawn his revolver. The blood pounded madly; through my brain. We were within a few yards of Leith, and even as we moved snakily forward, the heavy bass voice of the scoundrel came to our ears.

"You stupid old fool!" he growled. "You can demand all day and all night if it does you any good. Do you know who I am?"

"I know you are a ruffian!" snapped the Professor. "I know you are a rogue who has no respect for his word and honour. I know you are a coward who insults women!"

"Go on," mocked Leith.

"I've been a fool!" cried the old man. "I was blinded to everything through my love of science. Now I know that you lied. I know you brought me here to rob me and insult my daughters."

The sun had set, and the twilight made it difficult for us to locate the two men. But we were close. When Leith spoke again, his voice sounded so near that I started involuntarily, while Holman, resting upon one hand, parted the branches with the barrel of the revolver which he gripped in the other.

"But you will admit when all is over that I have shown you some wonderful things," sneered Leith.

The Professor was silent a moment, as if endeavouring to fathom the meaning of the words, and we moved a few inches closer in the little interval.

"How?" asked the scientist.

Holman's hand that gripped the revolver remained motionless. Through a rift in the leafy curtain I caught a glimpse of a bulk that was within a yard of our hiding place, and I knew that the youngster was waiting for the brute to speak to make certain that he was covering the right man. The silence was nerve-destroying.

"Why," said Leith, speaking slowly and distinctly, "you are in the hands of the Wizards of the Centipede. I am their head, and if you are not extremely lucky you will make a sacrifice to—"

Something fell upon my head with tremendous force at that moment, but as the blow descended Holman fired, and even as I fought to escape the grip of the strong fingers that twined themselves around my neck, I realized with a great wave of happiness that the bulk in front of me had pitched forward when the shot had shattered the silence.

In a wild bedlam of oaths and shouts we fought and struggled. The "tivo" dancers had followed upon our track through the long afternoon, and the time that we had lost in locating Leith had given them an opportunity to come up with us. In the gloom we threshed backward and forward, but our efforts to escape were vain. The one-eyed white man appeared mysteriously out of the shadows to help the huge natives, and in three minutes Holman and I were tied hand and foot and stretched out near the unfortunate Professor, who, with bound limbs, was sitting up in the centre of the grassy clearing where Leith and he had been exchanging personalities. There were no signs of the girls, and I wondered, as my brain recovered from the effects of the blow, what had happened to them.

Holman's voice put a question that roused me from my half stupor.

"Did I kill him?" cried the young fellow. "Tell me!"

The question was answered by a stream of blasphemy that came from Leith himself. The big ruffian had fallen into a bunch of ribbon-grass, but now, with the assistance of One Eye, he got to his feet and staggered toward us. From the actions of his white partner, I surmised that Holman's bullet had struck him in the left shoulder, and the surmise proved true. The attack of the dancers had jerked the youngster's arm, and the wound was twelve inches above the point that Holman had aimed at.

With One Eye and the three dancers holding him upon his feet, and the blood dripping from the wound, he kicked us furiously, howling unspeakable imprecations as he drove his heavy boots against our ribs. We had met the real Leith at last. The devilishness that we had sensed behind the lustreless eyes blazed forth in full fury, and to me, familiar as I was with all the weird and wonderful curse phraseology used by the skippers and mates of the island boats, his anathemas impressed me as being the most blood curdling oaths that had ever come to my ears. The man was a devil at that minute. His tremendous strength made the restraining efforts of the other four useless, and we were in danger of being kicked to death if a merciful interruption had not stopped him. The horrified Professor, who was sitting upright during the exhibition of brutality, lifted up his voice in protest, and his shrill denunciations brought a cry out of the surrounding gloom.

"Father! father! Where are you, father?"

It was Edith Herndon's voice, and the note of agony in the words maddened me. I drove my teeth into Leith's left leg as he stood quiet for a second near my head, and the brute used the sole of his right boot to loosen my grip. There were no gentle ways about the devil. As Edith's cry was repeated, he had administered a farewell kick to Holman and me, and shouted an order in the same strange dialect which the dancer had used in addressing me in the Cavern of the Skulls when the robe of parrot feathers had saved my life. The three natives immediately gripped us by the heels and we were dragged off into the bushes.

It seemed to me that Edith Herndon's cry was repeated again and again as the natives dragged me at a jog trot through the undergrowth. There was untold anguish in the cry. It was plain that Leith had taken the unfortunate old Professor some distance from his daughters so that they could not listen to the conversation, and the scientist's high-pitched protests against our maltreatment had caused the terror-stricken girls to think that Leith was ill-using their father. I imagined that the big ruffian had rushed us away from the spot lest the two women would escape from Soma and run to the assistance of their father, but I know that we were thankful that the interruption put an end to the football tactics in which the infuriated devil was indulging.

But we had escaped from the frying pan to find ourselves in the flames. The three dancers felt that the Fates had given them a chance to avenge their friend, and they took full advantage of the opportunity. So that each would have a proper share in the burden, they placed us side by side, strapped our ankles together, and then, passing a rope through the straps, the three laid hold of it and set off through the night, towing us behind with an absolute disregard for our feelings. They entered into the fun of the thing. No Norwegian peasant ever towed home a Yule log with a greater exhibition of joy than those savages displayed as they hauled us through the thickets. They had a contempt for open places. They chose the most intricate paths they could find, and if a tough liana gripped Holman or me around the throat, the fiends found great fun in straining upon the rope till the wire-like creepers gave way.

We suffered unbearable torture. Hour after hour we were jerked over the ground. Our clothes were stripped from our backs, our faces were torn and bloody from the thorns, and our tormented flesh protested through every nerve against the treatment. Once Holman put a question in a hoarse whisper.

"Where are they taking us?" he asked.

"God knows," I gasped.

"It's my fault, Verslun."

"Why?" I groaned.

"I missed him! I missed him! I——"

His voice died away in a choking sob, and I imagine he swooned away. As we were being towed by the legs, I guessed that Holman was suffering excruciating pain from the limb that he had injured by the fall from the maupei tree, and the lapse into unconsciousness came as a blessed relief. To me the rush through the jungle seemed a superlative nightmare. My mind played tricks with me. I thought that the three black forms, leaping along in front, were a trinity of devils who were ordered to torture me for my stupidity in allowing Edith Herndon and her sister to leave the yacht. Every creeper became a whip wielded by a mocking phantom, and I am forced to confess that I have a vivid recollection of crying to heaven for pardon for my criminal negligence. Every horror that the happenings of the previous forty-eight hours had germinated within my brain sprang into lusty being as my mind trembled upon the abyss of insanity, and Edith Herndon was the person that the legion of horrors threatened.

I came to my proper senses to find that our towing trinity had called a halt. Holman was repeating a question over and over again, and I endeavoured to moisten my dry throat so that I could answer.

"Where are we?" he groaned. "Where are we? Are you dead, Verslun? Open your eyes and take a look around; my peepers are bunged up."

I managed to open my eyes, but I could see nothing but the encompassing jungle. For a few minutes I thought that we were alone. Then I made out the three figures crouched in front of us upon the grass. Their heads were turned away from us, and they were facing the east, where the faint luminous glow of the rising moon was just beginning to appear in the sky.

The three were motionless. They were squatting upon their hams, and their attitude seemed uncanny when I compared it with the mad film of action which my mental machinery had recorded during the preceding hours. They had stopped for some purpose, but that purpose I could not determine.

"Are they there?" asked Holman.

"Yes," I murmured.

"What are they doing?"

"Sitting in a line staring at the hills."

The youngster gave a grunt, turned his head till he managed to wipe the mud and blood from his eyes upon my shoulder, then he peered at the silent three. Their motionless forms fascinated him. It was hard to connect them with the three bounding devils who had brought us on a gallop that was more painful than the bareback ride which the Polish nobleman gave to the intriguing Mazeppa.

"What do you make of it?" he whispered.

"They're resting perhaps."

"Not them! They look as if they're hatching some new villainy."

Minute after minute crept by, but the three remained inactive. They took no notice of our whispered conversation. No Hindu Yogis ever sat meditating with the absolute immovability of the three, and as our wounds stiffened under the cold night air, we became foolishly angry at the wait. If we had to meet death, it would please us to get it over as soon as possible.

"If I could have one more fling at them." groaned Holman. "By all that's holy, Verslun, I feel that I could fight a million if these ropes were off me."

He endeavoured to get his face down to the bandages on my wrists, but we had been strapped in such a manner that it was impossible to reach any of the ropes with our teeth, so we lay quiet and reviewed the legion of tormenting thoughts that marched through our minds. The jungle, like the three natives, seemed to be waiting for a happening. The silence was more horrible than the thunder of an earthquake. It seemed to well out from the silent three, till we longed with a great longing for some terrific and prolonged noise to shiver it and send battalions of echoes to chase it into the hills.

The moon peered above the black cliffs, and the surroundings became more distinct. We were on the edge of a clearing, and there was something vaguely familiar about the trees that our cramped position allowed us to see. We felt certain that we had passed this place on our journey from the yacht, and each minute that passed strengthened the conviction.

"Seems to me that I've seen that tree before," muttered Holman.

"I hold the same impression," I said.

"And those rocks," remarked the youngster. "Why, we're going back to The Waif!"

The three natives rose together at that moment and gripped the rope. We gave a joint groan of agony as our stiffened limbs were jerked forward, and as we were pulled from the fringe of reed-like grass our exact whereabouts were made known to us. Standing up against the moon, the rim of the orb showing just above the massive top, was the great stone table that Holman and I had climbed two nights before!



CHAPTER XVII

BENEATH THE CENTIPEDE

The natives moved at a slow walk across the clearing, and for this little indulgence we were exceedingly thankful. There was no grass covering upon the bed of coral rock in the middle of which the singular structure stood, and our bleeding bodies could have hardly stood a swift gallop across the prickly surface. As it was we were immensely glad when the trinity halted in front of the edifice.

"Say," murmured Holman, "do you remember what the Professor said about this place the other night when he was speaking about sacrificial altars?"

I groaned as an intimation that the subject was not a pleasant one, but Holman wanted to make public admission that he had exhibited gross ignorance in ridiculing the Professor's assertions.

"I thought he was handing it out too strong, Verslun," he murmured, "but it strikes me now that he had the right dope about this infernal thing. I believe they're going to settle us."

I groaned again. Holman's airy manner of discussing our predicament annoyed me. I hated the Professor for making the remarks about sacrificial stones when he drew comparisons between the table and Aztec altars, because I now thought that the very fear planted within my brain would carry a thought suggestion to the three devils who had us prisoners. Under ordinary circumstances I am not deficient in physical courage, but our position in front of the strange monument on the Isle of Tears left me with the valour of a jack-rabbit. The terror generated by the surroundings bit into my system like an acid.

"What I'm wondering at," continued Holman, "is about that guy that we saw on the top of the place. How he got away was a mystery."

"It was," I replied. I didn't feel disposed to trust myself to make a longer comment at that moment.

"Well, they're going to start operations," said the youngster. "We're going to the top, Verslun."

It was plain that we were. Two of the natives had shinned up one of the pillars by means of small notches in one corner, and now the other cut the bands that tied us together, promptly attached Holman's feet to the rope his comrades lowered, and signalled that all was ready by clapping his hands. The youngster was quickly jerked upward, and in a few minutes I was beside him on the moss-grown sloping surface of the immense stone.

The three dancers were evidently impressed with the importance of the work they had in hand. Their movements on the stone became more dignified and solemn. They moved around us in a manner that would have provoked laughter at any other time, and we watched eagerly for developments.

With much care they placed us side by side on the upper part of the stone, but Holman's feet were turned to my head, and as we were placed crosswise upon the inclined surface, my body was a few inches lower than his. That we were to be sacrificed appeared to be a certainty at that moment, but the method by which we were to be sent into eternity puzzled us. Not one of the three had a weapon. The surface of the stone was as bare as it was upon the night that we had investigated it, and we began to think that death by starvation and thirst would probably be our fate.

But thoughts of such an ending were soon put aside. Two of the savages slipped from the stone while the other dropped upon his stomach and hid his face. That something was going to happen we felt certain, but we could not discover the slightest clue that would guide our puzzled wits to a solution. We expected death, but we could not guess in what manner the job was to be performed.

"Looks as if something is coming, Verslun," cried Holman. "I was a fool to miss him, old man, but I guess—oh, Gee!"

The final exclamation was caused by a happening immediately beside us. A section of the moss-grown stone, about eight feet long and eighteen inches in width, started to rise slowly, and when our astonished eyes fell upon it we knew that we had the solution of the strange appearance of the figure upon the table on the night we camped in its shadow. Holman had seen this movable slab rise above the top of the table, but it had returned to its groove before we had climbed the tree, and it had fitted so closely into its moss-grown bed that we had been unable to detect a crevice in the moonlight. We had been on the verge of a discovery, but as we recalled the incident, lying there helpless, we were doubtful if it would have saved us from the fate we expected. The note which Soma had dropped gave full confirmation to all our suspicions concerning Leith, yet we had been unable to hold our own against him.

One end of the slab remained stationary after it had risen a few inches from its bed, but the other end, which was nearest us, went up and up, pushed by some screwjack arrangement that lifted it with slow, jerky movements till it was nearly upright. The moonlight fell upon the under surface that was turned toward us, and we understood the manner in which Leith's friends had arranged for us to make our exit from this world. The bottom of the stone slab had been carved into a perfect representation of a centipede, and as the slab remained stationary just before it reached the perpendicular, I began to dive into my mental reticule for the scraps of prayers that had been caught and held through a rather checkered career in places where the efficacy of prayer was looked upon with a cold eye.

The prostrate savage rose slowly when the movements of the slab had ceased, and very tenderly he rolled Holman and me over the bed from which the stone had been lifted. He pushed our bodies against the wooden post that, fitting into a sliding groove on the body of the stone centipede, had lifted the thing upright, and to make certain that we would be in the exact centre of the depression when the stone came back to its proper resting place, he strapped us carefully to the support with pieces of ramie fibre, so that we could not move an inch. With faces turned upward we stared at the carved figure above us, and the insecure tenure we had upon life at that moment was impressed upon our minds by the extreme caution which the officiating wizard exercised in keeping his own body clear of the slab lest his brethren, who were evidently operating the clumsy mechanism from some place nearby, should let the stone centipede return to his home without giving him proper warning.

At last he finished the business to his satisfaction and stepped backward. My imagination made the thing above me tremble as I looked at it with eyes of fear. The part of my body that spanned the depression became numb, and I breathed with difficulty.

Holman broke the silence. "Good-bye, Verslun," he said cheerfully. "It's mighty tough to go out like this, but it's the fortune of war."

I endeavoured to answer him, but the words, as if afraid of the horror that loomed above me, refused to come out of my throat. The fiendish manner in which we were to be killed unmanned me. The slab paralyzed thought, and it seemed to me that only the inmost kernel of my being, a very pin-point of the refined essence of life, was throbbing within my body.

The officiating wizard stepped around us for a final survey. He glanced keenly at the position of our bodies, and, evidently satisfied that the centipede had every opportunity to make a good job, he flung himself down upon his face and started to murmur softly in the strange dialect which Leith had spoken when addressing the three earlier in the night, and which the dancer had used in the Cavern of Skulls. I remember that I tried during those few minutes to catch a word or two of the queer tongue, and curiously enough, in that moment of extreme peril, I endeavoured to connect it with some of the dialects I had heard during my long stay in the islands. The soft muttering seemed to be a thread connecting us with life itself, and I dreaded the moment it would cease.

I do not know how long the chant continued. It rose and fell, a soft rhythmic murmur, and I prayed that it would never end. My ears sucked it in as if it was a life line to which my soul was clinging, and I dimly understood my eagerness to catch the sounds. My ability to do so seemed to be wanted as proof to convince my half-paralyzed body that I was still alive.

The low chant ended with a little throaty cry, and I shut my eyes tight to save myself the final moment of agony which the falling of the stone would bring. For an instant there was absolute silence, then some one gripped me by the legs and pulled madly. The ramie fibre held my body to the supporting post of the centipede, and I heard Holman give a muttered order. A knife sawed the cords, a pair of hands gripped my heels and flung me forward, and as I fell clear of the groove the stone horror crashed back into its bed with a jolt that shook the huge table! I opened my eyes to see Kaipi looking at the face of the dancer he had stabbed in the back as the brute was muttering his prayer!

"Oh hell!" said the Fijian. "Me thought him Soma. Me made mistake! Me going kill Soma, he kill Toni, Toni all same my brother, work long time with me at Suva!"

"Hurry up and cut these ropes," cried Holman. "There are two more of those devils and they'll be back before we get the cramp out of our muscles."

Kaipi sprang to obey, but when our bonds were cut away, we found that we could not get to our feet. Legs and arms were completely numbed, and the many abrasions that we had come by during the towing process to which we had been subjected made Kaipi's efforts to restore circulation by rubbing a species of torture that would surely have earned the commendation of Torquemada if it had been brought under his notice.

"Narrow squeak, Verslun," remarked Holman, as he endeavoured to get to his knees. "I wonder where those two other devils went to work the machinery."

"They must be close," I whispered. "Drag us over to the edge, Kaipi. They'll surely come up to see how the job was done or to see what is delaying their pal."

Kaipi helped us over to the edge of the table, and while he was doing so he related briefly how he came to be on hand at the opportune moment. Our little expedition to the stone table had passed the Fijian soon after the trinity had taken us in tow, and Kaipi's eyes had mistaken the biggest of the three natives for Soma. Revenge for Toni's death being the one motive that inspired him, he had followed the procession, watched from the bushes till the other two dancers had left Soma's double with us on the top of the table, and had then climbed quietly up and knifed the officiating wizard while that person was exhorting the stone centipede to make a good job of Holman and me. The matter of our rescue had been an afterthought. Strictly speaking, he deserved no great amount of praise for dragging us out of danger, as he frankly admitted that he was waiting for a good chance to attack the person who resembled Soma, without having any particular worry whether the stone slab would descend before the opportunity arrived.

"Never mind, Kaipi," said Holman, peering cautiously over the edge of the table, "I'm satisfied that you were handy at the moment without considering whether you came to help us or for some other purpose."

"Toni all the same brother to me," muttered the Fijian, dimly understanding the meaning of the remark; "me kill Soma pretty damn soon."

"Quite so," murmured Holman. "We'll give our consent to that operation, but keep quiet for the present till our two friends come back to see how neatly the old centipede fixed us."

We remained silent, but not inactive. As we waited for the missing pair we rubbed our limbs carefully, and at the end of ten minutes we began to feel alive. Our revolvers had been lost from our pockets during the mad rush through the night—Leith had been too intent on kicking us to order his guard to search us for arms—and now we had nothing but our bare hands with which to do combat with a pair of dancers. But we thought we could do a lot with bare hands when we glanced at the spot where the stone centipede had crashed back to its bed, A vision of that devilish carving standing above one in the moonlight was enough to stimulate a person to herculean tasks when he understood that failure would bring him again under its ghastly shadow.

For about twenty minutes we waited patiently. Kaipi had asserted that the two savages had slipped into the jungle growth after they had left the table, and it was evident that they had gone to some underground passage that connected with one of the pillars of the altar, through which the crude mechanism for lifting the stone slab had been operated. With one eye always to the dramatic, the wizards of the long ago had built the altar so that the common worshippers surrounding the place on days when the centipede was called upon to mash some unfortunate victim could not see how the slab was lifted, and would thus put the uplifting of the thing down to supernatural agency. It was the tribal Houdin who laid the foundation of many a strange belief amongst savage races.

"Must be waiting for him to come to them," said Holman. "We'll give them a few minutes longer."

It was Kaipi's sharp eyes that made the discovery. The pair came cautiously out of the bushes immediately underneath the tree which Holman and I had climbed to obtain a view of the surface of the table two nights before, and they crossed the clearing with hesitating steps. They evidently expected the officiating wizard to announce in sporting phraseology that the centipede had won the engagement with one swift blow to the body, and when no news was forthcoming they were puzzled.

They confabbed in the centre of the clearing, and then hailed the table in the strange tongue. Receiving no answer, they again debated with much vigour, and, finally taking their courage in their hands, they came forward with quickened steps.

We crept close to the edge, careful not to peer over while the pair were climbing up. As far as I was aware we had no plans made for their reception. Holman and I had no weapons, neither had the two dancers; Kaipi had the ugly short-bladed knife with which he had dispatched Soma's double.

The puffing of the climbing pair came to us. They came near and nearer. A black arm came up over the edge of the table and clawed at the moss-grown stone, but while Holman and I reached forward with the intention of gripping the climber by the throat, Kaipi upset our plans by driving the blade of the knife into the back of the huge paw that was endeavouring to get a grip!

A tremendous howl of pain came from the owner of the hand, the pinioned member was torn from beneath the blade, and as we pushed our heads over the edge, the top climber fell backward, swept his companion from the pillar, and the pair struck the coral rock beneath the table with a thud that was suggestive of broken bones. The native with the skewered hand picked himself up and dashed toward the trees, but the other remained at the foot of the pillar, and his position led us to believe that his neck had been broken by the fall.

"My knife!" cried Kaipi. "He knocked my knife down!"

The Fijian swung himself over the edge, and with monkey-like agility slipped down the pillar. He shouted up to us that he thought that the man on the ground was dead, but having found his precious knife, he proceeded to set all doubts upon the matter at rest.

"Soma better dodge that little fire eater," muttered Holman. "I thought him a coward last night, but it looks as if he's a fighter when once he gets started."

As we were unable to slip down the stone pillar in the same manner as the natives, we found the piece of rope by which the three dancers had hauled us up to the top, and making it secure upon a stone projection we lowered ourselves to the ground.

"Now," said Holman, "we must make a new start, and if we get beat in this round we deserve all that the big fiend who has brought all this trouble about can do to us. Kaipi, you're a friend of mine for all time. Shake hands."

The grinning Fijian shook hands with both of us, and we moved toward the trees, heading in the direction of the spot where Leith had kicked us so vigorously a few hours before.



CHAPTER XVIII

BARBARA'S MESSENGER

We had a healthy respect for the deviltry of Leith and his friends as we turned our backs upon the lonely throne of the centipede, but the cry of "Father" which Edith Herndon had uttered was still ringing in our ears, and we were anxious to get within hitting distance of the big, treacherous ruffian. A mental review of the engagements made us feel rather light-hearted as we pushed through the tangle. If there were only six native dancers upon the island at the opening of the conflict in the Cavern of Skulls, we had reduced that number to one, while the bullet in Leith's shoulder would depreciate his fighting ability for some time. Outside the carriers, who, as far as we knew, were neutral in the matter, we had as opponents, Leith, One Eye, Soma, and the dancer whose hand had been punctured by Kaipi, and the knowledge that we were more evenly matched brought us some consolation.

But the fact that Edith and Barbara Herndon were in the power of the scoundrel brought thoughts that cast a damper upon the little scrap of joy we derived from reckoning up the casualties of the enemy. The passion which Leith displayed after receiving Holman's bullet made us run forward like madmen each time we recalled the diabolical frenzy that he exhibited. We could not think of a good plan to circumvent the brute. The jungle hampered and maddened us, and although we knew that we had gone about our work in a blundering fashion, the circumstances were such that we could not improve our strategy in the future.

We plunged on till nearly midnight, then Holman called a halt.

"We must sleep," he said. "One can watch while the other two get some rest."

Kaipi, who declared that he was never less inclined for slumber, agreed to take first watch, and Holman and I flung ourselves down upon the grass. We had had no slumber on the previous night, and the incidents in which we had taken part had left us exhausted.

It was daybreak before Kaipi awakened us, and the face of the Fijian informed us that something had alarmed him. He was stretched full length on the ground, listening as only a native can listen, and we waited for his report. We had much respect for Kaipi's hearing after checking the signals he made concerning the approaching "tivo" dancer on the previous afternoon.

"What is it?" asked Holman.

"Some one go by, much hurry," murmured the Fijian.

We crouched in the bushes and listened. It was hardly likely that Leith had changed his route, and the only person that we knew to be in our neighbourhood was the dancer.

"If we could get hold of him we might use the third degree on him to guide us to the spot that Leith is making for," said Holman. "We'll be outgeneralled completely if he gets into those caverns on the hills. If he has provisions he can snap his fingers at a regiment."

I agreed with him on that point. The valley inside the basalt cliffs, and which, as far as we could judge, could only be entered by the slippery pathway in the Vermilion Pit, was about the finest natural hiding place in the world. Without taking the caves into consideration, the luxurious vegetation in the cup between the hills made the finding of a person a matter of extreme luck. It was a marvellous maze that Nature seemed to have constructed especially for the diabolical work in which Leith was engaged.

Kaipi's ear was still to the ground, and the anxious look upon his face convinced us that some one was close.

"Coming back again," breathed the Islander. "One man, walk slow."

Our own ears acquainted us of the approach at that moment. The sound of crackling twigs was quite close, and we waited breathlessly, eying the green curtain through which we expected the unknown to thrust himself.

A black head bobbed through the leaves, and Holman planted a fist between the newcomer's eyes before the head could be withdrawn. The morning visitor dropped to the ground, and the three of us promptly fell upon him, the bloodthirsty Kaipi having to be restrained by main force from giving another exhibition of neat knifework.

"Who is it?" asked Holman. "Get back, Kaipi, and let me see."

We dragged the panting prisoner into the light, but instead of the escaped dancer, we found that we had trapped one of the five carriers, a big Raretongan named Maru, who was possessed of enormous strength.

Holman's punch had been no light one, and it was a few seconds before the mists had cleared from the Raretongan's brain; then his big brown eyes lit up with a smile of gladness, and he nodded to Holman.

"Me want you," he said.

"Quite so," muttered Holman, "but I got you first."

Maru smiled the smile of the man who has a card up his sleeve, and he fumbled in the folds of his sulu till he found what he wanted. With a dramatic flourish he drew from the cloth a small emerald ring that belonged to Barbara Herndon, and he smiled childishly as he saw the look of astonishment upon Holman's face as he snatched the trinket.

"Why—who—how the devil did you get this?" he asked.

"Little missee give me," replied Maru, still convulsed with the humour which his childish mind found in the situation. "She tell me come alonga you."

Holman poured out a torrent of questions which the smiling messenger endeavoured to answer to the best of his ability. In pigeon English he informed us that he had deserted Leith's camp about midnight; that the big ruffian had turned abruptly from the direction he was moving in at the time we caught up with him, and that Holman's bullet had caused him serious inconvenience. The two girls and the Professor were in charge of Soma and the one-eyed white man, who, we now learned, was deaf and dumb. It was while One Eye was on guard that Barbara Herndon had been able to bribe the Raretongan to throw the strength of his muscles upon our side of the argument.

Holman, with lover-like longing for anything owned by the lady of his choice, attempted to put the emerald ring in his pocket, but Maru objected strongly. The smile fled from his face, and his broken English nearly strangled him in his efforts to pour out enough of it to acquaint Holman of the nature of the agreement which he had entered into with Barbara Herndon.

"Me only show you ring, that's all!" he cried. "You look, know little missee send me, ring mine all time. You give back."

"You had better give it back to him," I cautioned. "He has got the idea into his head, and it will take a lot of arguing to convince him that Miss Barbara didn't give it to him to keep."

"But she didn't!" cried Holman. "Why would she give him a ring? She just gave him a loan of it to let him see that she had sent him to us."

"My ring all time," protested Maru. "That my pay fight mighty good for you."

"Give it up to him," I advised. "He's only an overgrown child, and he has set his mind on it."

"But, Verslun, I know she wouldn't do that!" protested the lover. "Barbara sent me this as——"

"Oh, I know," I cried, "but we want fighters now, and Maru is a pretty athletic person."

"Me damn good fighter!" cried the Raretongan. "Me plentee good fighter if me get ring."

Holman gave up the trinket with a snort of disgust, and a few minutes afterward, when we were tramping along, I made it my business to drop back beside Maru and advise him to keep the ring out of the youngster's sight till we had rescued Miss Barbara. If the native had displayed his reward it was highly probable that the lovesick Holman, with nerves on the raw edge from want of sleep and worry, would have pounced upon the mighty Maru and endeavoured to obtain possession of what he fondly thought was a token of affection from his beloved.

But the arrival of the messenger was worth more than the emerald ring to us at that moment. He had more woodcraft than Kaipi, who had spent most of his time upon the ocean, and his information regarding the direction in which Leith was now heading saved us many weary hours of marching.

Yams and guavas, with wild passion fruit, made a breakfast and dinner as we clawed our way in pursuit. At midday we judged that we were hot upon the trail, unless Leith had changed his course, but the black cliffs were close to us at that moment, and the recollections of the gloomy caverns made us silent as we pushed through the matted jungle. We could see no trace of the path which Leith would be compelled to cut to enable the two girls to get through, and we heard no sounds. A lone parrakeet startled us with its harsh cry as it rose from a maupei tree, and the bird even seemed to recognize that it had committed a breach in sending its unmusical cry out upon the awful quiet of the place.

Kaipi climbed a tall tree in the vain hope of catching sight of Leith's party as it crossed the small cleared spaces in the middle of the impenetrable growth, but nothing except the green plain of bushy tops and parasitical creepers was visible. As we waited beneath the tree the "ticking" of a wood bug sounded like hammer blows in the tremendous quietude, while the bursting of a pod reminded one of the beginning of a Fourth of July celebration. We had lost all trace of Leith, and now, immediately in front, rose the cliffs, and we saw a menace on their dark, forbidding front.

The base of the hills presented the same nearly perpendicular formation that we had met when endeavouring to reach the long gallery, and we held a council to decide on what would be the best course to pursue. Maru was confident that Leith was heading for this particular point at the moment that Barbara's bribe caused the Raretongan to desert, and it was reasonable to think that the ruffian had retired to some hiding place to nurse his wound and decide upon the fate of the Professor and his two daughters. From the scraps of conversation which we had overheard before Holman interrupted the argument between Leith and the scientist, we thought it probable that the old man would visit the centipede upon the big table if he did not sign the papers that Leith required, while we shuddered at the probable fate of the two girls unless Providence directed us as to the manner in which we could effect a rescue.

"We must divide," said Holman. "I'll take Kaipi and go north, you take Maru and go in the opposite direction. If you find the trail, camp near it and send Maru on the run back to us. I'll do the same if I strike the spoor of the big devil."

It was about two o'clock, as nearly as we could judge, when we separated. We agreed to keep as close as possible to the rocky wall so that a messenger from one would have less difficulty in locating the other, and Maru and I found, before we had gone a hundred yards, that the nearer we could get to the cliff the quicker we could get along. The lianas found it difficult to get a grip upon the rocks, and we could worm our way without much trouble.

We had travelled about three quarters of a mile when the native dropped upon his knees and I immediately followed his example. The ordinary Polynesian is not to be compared with the Australian black fellow or the American Indian in his knowledge of the forest, but Maru was an exception. His sight and hearing were abnormally keen, and he examined the grass carefully.

"One man go by here pretty short time ago," he whispered.

"Native?" I asked.

"No, him wear shoes."

The Raretongan crawled forward on his knees, his face close to the grass. The tracks upon the soft grass showed that the person was moving in the direction we were going, and for about twenty yards we followed cautiously. Leith, the one-eyed white man, and the Professor were the only three men on the Isle of Tears, outside Holman and myself, who would be wearing shoes. It was hard to think that the Professor or Leith would be alone at that moment, so I concluded, as we crawled along in the shadow of the cliff, that the tracks were made by One Eye.

Maru suddenly sprang to his feet and stood listening. I listened too. Into the awful silence came a tremendous rumbling that increased each second till I pictured it as a cancer of noise growing with appalling rapidity within the encompassing stillness.

"What is it?" I gasped. "Why it's——"

I understood at that moment, and I sprang toward the jungle, but the big hand of the Raretongan gripped my shoulder and dragged me close to the cliff beneath an overhanging ledge.

"Stay here!" he yelled, raising his voice above the tumult that seemed to be coming out of the heavens. "Keep close much!"

The noise was deafening. The black cliff seemed to rock behind us, and as Maru pulled me down on my knees five hundred tons of rock shot from the heights and flattened ten square yards of the packed shrubs immediately in front of us!

"Now!" screamed Maru, as the dust swept in under the ledge and nearly choked us; "we get away quick, plenty dust, they can't see!"

The dirt and small rocks had rolled back upon us till we stood ankle deep, but the native's advice was good. Hugging the wall of the cliff, we ran back on our tracks till we had passed the area devastated by the landslide; then we sprang into the bushes and peered up at the cliff. High above the cloud of dust that was still rising from the ground, and leaning forward so that he could view the extent of the avalanche, was the one-eyed white man!

"Maru," I whispered, "go back and get Holman. I'll wait here till you come."



CHAPTER XIX

LEITH SCORES

The one-eyed man stood for a long time contemplating his handiwork. From his point of observation he watched the pile of rocks and the surrounding bushes, and the absence of movement convinced him that the job had been well done. He commenced to make facial contortions as an outlet for the mirth he was generating inside, and at intervals he managed to produce a peculiar noise that reminded one of the bubbling of a camel. I began to think that One Eye, besides being deaf and dumb, was suffering from a shortage of gray matter inside his ugly-shaped head. He strutted up and down, and narrowly escaped toppling over the ledge through attempting a cake dance as a grand finale to the insane actions prompted by the successful manner in which he had engineered the landslide.

The afternoon had lengthened out before Maru returned with Holman and Kaipi, and we hurriedly considered the best course to pursue. One Eye had been with Leith when Maru deserted, so it was obvious that we were not far from the ruffian's hiding place.

"If we could catch this lunatic on the cliff?" muttered Holman. "Gee! we could tickle him with Kaipi's old knife blade till he ran us right into the haunt."

"He's deaf," I said; "there's a good chance of roping him in if we could scale the cliff."

"Me climb!" said Maru. "Him not hear. Me climb all alonga track, drop down, breakem him neck."

"No, don't break his neck!" growled Holman. "We want him as a guide. Do you understand? He knows where Leith is hiding, and if we could get hold of him it would be clear sailing."

Maru borrowed Kaipi's knife, nodded confidently as we adjured him to use caution, and then slipped back along the track so that he could climb to the level of the one-eyed person's perch before attempting to creep upon him. We sat down to await developments. The witless one was evidently a lookout, and it was advisable to wait and see the success of Maru's expedition before we attempted to move.

It was a long wait. Maru didn't intend to take any chances by closing in hurriedly, and it was nearly two hours after his departure before we saw his head rise above a boulder high up over the spot where One Eye was keeping his vigil. It was evidently not the first time that the native had stalked a human being, and his fine tactics, which should have called forth praise, severely tried the small amount of patience that we possessed. Holman cursed softly beneath his breath as Maru sat for ten minutes at a time studying the route before attempting to move from a sheltering rock, and my own nails burrowed into the palms of my hands as I watched. The Raretongan was a genius in his own particular line, and I think he took more than ordinary precautions so that his success would prove to Holman that Barbara Herndon had not overpaid him when she presented him with the emerald ring as a reward for his desertion from Leith. Maru had no idea of the sentimental view of the matter which the youngster took; and he thought that Holman's objections against the bargain were caused by the thought that no services could be rendered that would be half as valuable as the trinket. The unsentimental savage could not imagine that the unstrung lover wanted the ring as a keepsake of the girl who had won his heart on board The Waif.

"Caesar's Ghost! Why doesn't he hurry?" cried Holman. "That madman looks as if he's going to change his camping ground!"

It looked as if the witless one was really going to move, and Maru had still some fifty yards to cover before he would be directly above the other's head. Our nerves were in such a state that we felt inclined to scream out to the patient stalker. If we could grab the scout we could probably induce him by gentle persuasion to act as guide, but if he escaped us, we pictured ourselves stumbling over precipices and through dark caverns with the same lack of results as had marked our trip to the place of skulls.