Maru was decreasing the distance by inches. Slowly, very slowly, with all the serpentlike cunning of the savage, he advanced till he was almost above the spot where the other stood taking a survey of the jungle. But it was a farewell glance for One Eye. If Leith had placed him there to keep watch till he had reached a safe position, the watcher evidently considered that the time was up. He hopped to another ledge with the agility of a goat, and Holman groaned.

Maru noticed the retreat, and quickened his movements. Dropping cautiously from ledge to ledge he crept upon the other with the swiftness of a leopard creeping upon its prey. One Eye's deafness left him at the mercy of the shadow in his rear. Swiftly taking cover whenever the white man's head moved to the right or the left, the native decreased the distance, and we rose to our knees.

Then Maru sprang. His muscular right arm went round the neck of the white, and we were rushing toward the cliff without waiting to see the outcome of the struggle. The Raretongan's strength was immense, and we knew that the other could not break the strangle hold that had been put upon him. We were more afraid that One Eye would be choked into insensibility before we reached the post.

The big native was sitting astride his captive when we gained the ledge, and the prisoner was blinking his one good eye as he stared up at him. We dropped down beside him and took a look at the sun-tanned face. He exhibited no fear, and the weak, watery eye showed no glint of intelligence. It was plain that his brain was slightly deranged.

Holman jerked him into a sitting position, and with signs and gestures we endeavoured to explain what we wanted him to do. Neither of us understood the deaf and dumb alphabet, but the alphabet was hardly necessary. With much pantomimic action we described Leith, the Professor, and the two girls, and Kaipi enjoyed himself immensely by waving his knife in front of One Eye's face to signify the fate that awaited him if he did not immediately guide us to the spot. The Fijian was so proud of the blade that he could hardly be prevented from burying an inch of the steel in the prisoner's body.

One Eye, although obviously half-witted, saw that Kaipi was only looking for an excuse to send him to a more undesirable place than the Isle of Tears, and he made eager signs that he would act as our guide. Holman relieved him of the revolver and cartridges he had in his pockets, strapped his arms behind him, and with Maru's hand clutching the collar of his coat, we signalled to him to step forward and step lively if he wished to delay his journey to the other world till his soul was in a better condition. The sun was close to the high ridges in the west, and we wished to close with Leith before nightfall.

One Eye taxed our climbing powers in the next ten minutes. With the agility of a chamois he scurried along the narrow ledges, and several times Maru was forced to check his speed so that we could keep pace with him. Holman's face showed the joy he felt at receiving another opportunity to retrieve the blunders we had made in our two previous attacks. Now we had reduced the big villain's fighting bodyguard to two persons, 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 already discovered that the Isle of Tears made an ideal retreat for an outlaw. The nearly impassable jungle, surrounded by the cliffs that were tunnelled with tremendous caverns, made a hiding place in which a few men 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 of which 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 the hurrying guide, and in the shelter of a boulder explained to him with more 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 the face of the cliff was already dark with the shadows of the hills, and as we suspected that the opening to Leith's refuge was close, we wished to make no unnecessary noise in approaching it. Using the scattered rocks as covering, we advanced slowly, but before we reached the end the sun had disappeared, and the absence of twilight, noticeable in that latitude, compelled us to crawl along in a darkness that made it impossible 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 other side, and as the bottom of the gorge made it impossible for more than three 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 be much impressed by the manner in which we had pictured the sure and sudden 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 us the 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 attention to the fact. The youngster got to his feet and groped around in the gloom, while we halted till he made an investigation. It was impossible to see the face of the half-witted guide to gain any information from his gestures.

Holman stooped and whispered his finding to us. "We're in a covered passageway," he murmured. "I can just touch the roof by standing on tiptoe. 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 place was much sweeter than the atmosphere of the Cavern of Skulls. The floor, instead of being covered with thick dust as we had found it in the former place, was one of clean, smooth rock, and the walls were perfectly dry.

I had gripped One Eye's left arm while Holman was making the examination of the passage, and we had not proceeded more than twenty yards when he intimated 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 us completely nonplussed as to the way we had come. We could hardly count the number of the turnings. First to the right, then to the left, then back again toward the mouth of the place, he trotted forward with nothing to guide him, yet when we checked him at certain corners to find out if there was an angle in the path, we found that he was right in every 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 find his way along this passage. Keep a grip on him or we'll never see daylight again."

We guessed that we had walked for over half a mile when the guide stopped abruptly. In the dark we endeavoured to find out what had pulled him up short, but we tried in vain. A prick from Kaipi's knife blade would not make him budge an inch, and we clustered together and racked our brains to find the solution.

"P'raps we're up against something," whispered Holman, "Feel if there's anything in front, Verslun."

I walked forward a pace and groped in the blackness. My fingers touched solid rock. It hemmed us in on all sides. One Eye had walked us to the end of the passage, and we had come up against a blind wall.

I whispered the news to Holman, and he swore softly. Maru's fingers tightened on the collar of the prisoner till his breath came in short gasps. Kaipi moved around to the side of the prisoner, but I pushed him roughly back. The Fijian's desire to use his knife on all occasions was somewhat 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. The youngster's temper was up, and it looked as if we had wasted the hours we had spent in capturing the idiot alive, and the time lost in following behind him through the canon and the crooked passage. And time was precious when we thought of the agony which Edith and Barbara Herndon were suffering.

In his temper Holman forgot that the prisoner was deaf, and he shouted a 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 the passage appeared to slide away, and, standing directly in front of us, his big frame outlined against a fire of brushwood that blazed behind him, was Leith!

Holman gave a yell of rage and sprang forward, and Leith turned and sped into the gloom. In his astonishment at finding himself confronted by the enemy when the stone door had rolled aside, Holman had forgotten that he had a revolver in his possession, and Leith had passed the brushwood fire before I yelled out to the youngster to shoot.

Holman fired immediately, and Leith staggered. For a moment we thought that he was down, but he picked himself up and ran on. I snatched a blazing pine limb from the fire as I rushed by, and with the light flickering upon the walls of the place, we sped madly after the flying figure that was barely discernible when the blazing branch flung a splinter of light into the gloom.

Holman emptied the revolver, but the pounding of Leith's feet that came back to us proved that he was still running. Maru and Kaipi were hallooing far behind, but Holman and I ran side by side, our minds unable 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 I remembered with a thrill of satisfaction the wound that he had received the night before. It was only a question of time when we would have our fingers 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 an occasional glimpse of shoes moving up and down at such a rate that the limbs to which they were attached always remained outside the area that was faintly illuminated. The momentary view of the footgear, together with the maddening plop plop it made upon the rock, raised an insane idea within my brain that we were chasing a pair of bewitched shoes that were enticing us into the very heart of the mountain. The scanty diet and 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 Edith Herndon.

The flame of the pine branch went out, and we were left in utter darkness. But the sound of the flying feet still came back to us. At times we were so near that Holman thrust out his hands as he ran, and cursed 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 a discovery. Leith was not alone. Keeping time with the clatter of the shoes was a softer tattoo that told me that a barefooted runner was racing beside the man we were pursuing.

Holman made the discovery at the same moment. "Soma," he breathed, and he ran faster. From some place that seemed to be leagues in the rear came the shouts of Maru and Kaipi, but their yells died away, and we were 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 of doubling back before we could pull up, and a sweat of terror broke out upon us. If he doubled successfully he would reach the stone door through 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 been running, dropped away from us. I pitched forward after the youngster into a gulf of darkness, landed on my shoulder upon a mass of volcanic ash, and clutching vainly at the stuff, I rolled at tremendous speed down into the bowels of the earth. From far above us came the sounds of uncontrolled merriment—the high-pitched shrieks of a native rising above the deep bass laughter of Leith.



CHAPTER XX

THE BLACK KINDERGARTEN

I thought we were a thousand years rolling down that slope of smothering ash. It was a quicksand that melted beneath us. We drove our arms into it, but the stuff slipped away like fine wood ash, and we went on and on. I knew Holman was in front of me. Occasionally a curse directed at Leith managed to slip out when his mouth was not filled with the smothering dust. Once I shouted at him, and he answered the cry with a groan that told me how the happening had affected him. The arch ruffian had checkmated us for the third time inside three days.

We struck the bottom at last, and, like moles, we clawed our way out of the pile of soft, feathery stuff that came streaming down upon us like a river, and for some minutes we were busy wiping the fluffy ash from mouth and eyes and ears. It clung to us like down, and with each breath we drew it into our lungs till we coughed and sneezed from the irritation it produced. Struggling forward, knee-deep in the fine, dry powder, we reached a spot that was practically clear, and for five minutes we were busy endeavouring to relieve our tortured lungs.

"How far did we roll?" asked Holman.

"About half a mile," I replied.

"But straight, Verslun! What do you think?"

"Over a hundred yards; I'm certain of that."

"Well, I'm going to climb back."

"You can't do it!" I gasped. "That stuff is like quicksand."

"All the same I'm going to make a try."

We stumbled back to the gigantic ash pile, and shoulder to shoulder we made a rush at the immense mountain down which we had rolled. We couldn't see it, but we felt it rise around us like a flood as our legs sank deeper. It came up to our waists—to our armpits, choking and smothering us. Coming down we had rolled lightly over its surface, now our legs bored into it like rods, and we struggled vainly to move. The pile was like a high snowdrift into which we sank deeper and deeper the more we struggled, and, worn out with our efforts, we fought our way clear of the smothering ash and made an attempt to review the situation.

"He's beat us," groaned Holman. "He just trotted ahead of us till he had us on the verge of the thing, and then he side-stepped. O God! What asses we have been!"

"We did our best," I said.

"Our best?" repeated Holman. "And the man who tells you that he did his best as an excuse for failure should be shot, Verslun."

"We couldn't tell that this infernal trench was in front," I grumbled.

"Then we shouldn't have chased him like a brace of madmen. I wonder if Maru and Kaipi came near it?"

"We might call out, perhaps they'd hear."

Holman yelled the names of the two natives into the gloom above us, but his yells only started a million echoes rolling through the tremendous fissure in which we were prisoners.

"They turned back," said Holman. "They had sense enough to stay with One Eye; we hadn't."

It was no use arguing with the youngster. He denounced our stupidity till his tongue was too dry to utter the charges his half-crazed brain made against us.

To divert his thoughts I proposed that we make an attempt to explore the place, and without making any choice regarding direction we moved into the inky darkness.

"We'll take it in turns to lead," said Holman gruffly. "Then if one of us topples over a precipice the other has a chance to save himself. I'll take first try at it, and if I find that I have pushed my foot into a hole I'll yell out a warning."

I agreed, and we moved forward slowly. The chances of ever finding our way out of that place seemed small at that moment. Leith had put us in a spot where we would not be likely to trouble him for some time, and with bitterness in our hearts we staggered along in the dark, alternately damning the treachery of the ruffian and our own stupidity. We had tried to exercise caution, but when we reviewed our actions, it seemed, as Holman had remarked, that we had used the judgment of children.

"Why didn't we wait at the door of that place till the brute came out?" he asked.

I had no answer to give to the question, and after an interval of silence he fired others at me.

"Why did you let go of One Eye? Why didn't we examine the cavern near the fire before chasing him? The girls might have been somewhere near the fire! Do you think they were?"

"I don't think so," I answered, trying to soothe him. "I think Leith was the only person at the fire. He picked Soma up just before we reached the gulf."

"But where are they? Where has the devil put them?"

"God alone knows!" I cried. "Here, it's my turn to take the lead."

In silence we went stumbling on into the appalling blackness. We could not see the dim outlines of each other when we stood only a few inches apart. The darkness of the Cavern of Skulls had been relieved by the silver skewers of moonlight, but in the night that rolled around us there was not a single gleam of light.

We had no matches. Everything that was in our pockets had been jolted out during the mad jaunt to the stone table, and now the revolver and cartridges which we had taken from One Eye had been lost by Holman during the slide down the mountain of volcanic ash that brought us to the bottom of the underground prison.

We plodded on for about an hour, then stopped simultaneously. At first I thought that the horror of the situation had affected my brain, but the fact that Holman had stopped abruptly at the same moment as I did choked back the cold fear that had rushed upon me. I was not insane! Holman was listening too! I seemed to feel that the tiny thread of sound which had set my pulses beating madly had also keyed him up to the highest tension.

After a minute of intense silence he put a question.

"Did you hear anything?"

"Did you?" I stammered.

"Are we mad, Verslun?" he asked hoarsely. "I thought—" He stopped and moved close to me. I heard his quick breathing as he groped to find me.

"Verslun, did you hear?" he whispered, gripping my arm. "I heard her speak."

"I thought I did," I breathed. "Perhaps—perhaps it was an echo."

For a few minutes we stood, our ears searching for the sound that had disturbed us. We seemed afraid to call out—afraid to quench the little spark of hope which had suddenly flared up in the despair that filled our breasts. We knew that our ears had lied, and we tried to lengthen the thrill by remaining perfectly silent.

The sound came again, and Holman sent a wild cry into the night that hemmed us in. We were not insane! The spark of hope blazed as we rushed headlong forward. The silvery voice of Barbara Herndon had come to us again through the terrible gloom!



CHAPTER XXI

TOGETHER AGAIN

It is impossible to set down any statement that will enable the reader to form a mental picture of the meeting which took place in that spot of eternal night. Hands groped for hands in the darkness, and sobs and cries and words of comfort went out into the silence. Edith and Barbara Herndon wept, the Professor shrieked out denunciations of Leith, and Holman and I were nearly choked by the lumps that rose in our throats.

Explanations came in broken sentences. The Professor's anger prevented him from giving the story in detail, and the girls were not in a condition to give a lucid account of their sufferings since the night we had left them to investigate the light in the hills. We gathered from the hysterical utterances, however, that Leith had rushed them to the hills on hearing from the escaped dancer that we had dodged the fate he intended for us when he had dispatched us to the table of the centipede. The reduction in his bodyguard caused him to make immediately for the secret retreat, and as he considered it inadvisable to press his argument with the Professor and Edith at that moment, he had lowered his three prisoners into the devil chamber into which we had accidentally fallen.

"This is the place you mentioned to me the night you left the camp," said the Professor.

"We mentioned?" repeated Holman in amazement. "We didn't know the place existed till we rolled into it!"

"But you read it out of the note that Soma dropped," cried the scientist. "Don't you remember where he threatened to put the five babies?"

"The Black Kindergarten!" I stammered.

"The Black Kindergarten," said the old man. "That is what the inhuman brute called the place when he lowered us into it. We are to stay here till I sign papers that will give him possession of my property, and till—till Edith consents to marry him!"

He flung the words out into the stillness, and for a few minutes no one spoke. The horror of the situation had the same effect upon me as a blow from a sandbag. Three days before, we were in possession of Leith's letter to the one-eyed man, in which he had remarked that we would be occupants of the place of eternal night, and yet we had not been able to avert the fate which the brute had in store for us in case the Professor and Edith Herndon refused to consider his villainous proposals. The Professor's money and the girl's hand! The words made me physically sick, and I sat down upon the floor of the place till the dizziness had passed from my brain.

"And food?" Holman put the question, but the words seemed to come to me from a great distance.

"He told us he would lower it to us once a day till we—till we came to our senses," said Edith Herndon quietly. "We received our first supply some hours ago."

She tried to speak bravely, but the little catch in her voice belied the courageous front which she endeavoured to assume under cover of the darkness. Barbara was silent, except for an occasional sob which she was unable to stifle, while the Professor poured forth his story of Leith's deception when he first met him in Sydney, and where the big scoundrel had poured into the ears of the laurel-hungry scientist the tales of skulls and ruins which he would find upon the Isle of Tears. The skulls and ruins were there, but it looked as if we would add our own skeletons to the crumbling bones of the long-dead Polynesians, the peculiarities of whose whitened brain cases were to supply the subject matter of the learned treatise that was to bring fame to the archaeologist. It was an indescribably mournful reunion. We could not see each other, and when silence fell upon us I had a horrible sensation that the choking, depressing darkness of the place was wafting Edith Herndon away from me. I longed to find and clasp the hand that had taken mine the night on board The Waif when I made an offer of my services.

The Professor had explained that the opening through which they had been lowered was immediately above their heads. They had not moved from the spot lest they would not be able to find it again to obtain the food which Leith had promised to send till they saw fit to accede to his proposals, and when Holman suggested moving forward upon a tour of investigation the old man combated the idea vigorously.

"We will lose ourselves, and we will never be able to find our way back here to get the food," he cried.

"But we will never get out by remaining here," said Holman. "If he has made the acceptance of those proposals the only grounds upon which he will grant you your liberty, I don't see that it will serve any good to remain here taking the food he throws down."

"That's true," murmured Edith, and I blessed her mentally for the calm way in which she had uttered the words. The surrounding darkness had no terrors for her in comparison to the fate that awaited her above. The manner in which she spoke of the sallow-faced rogue convinced me that the proposals that had been made since the time that Leith had shone out in his true colours had produced a terror which she endeavoured to hide from her father and sister.

But the dark terrified the Professor. Although he viewed Leith's proposals with the greatest abhorrence, the hole above his head appeared to him to be the only path back to the outer world, and he was afraid to stray.

"There might be another way out of the place," said Holman. "Can Verslun and I make the attempt and leave you three here?"

"No, no!" cried Barbara. "Please stay here with us!"

"I think it will be better if we remain together," said Edith. "If you and Mr. Verslun did discover an opening it would be exceedingly difficult to find your way back here, and if you got out of this place you might not be able to reach the opening through which we were lowered. Perhaps the way to it is known only to Leith."

Edith's argument was sound. Our finding them in that black cavern was purely an accident, and it was hardly probable that Holman and myself would be able to find our way back to the spot if we went off on a tour of investigation. Personally I had no desire to leave the girls. Leith's deviltry had so impressed me that I considered him capable of anything, and if he thought we were out of the way, I had no doubt that he would take immediate steps to break down the courage of the Professor and his daughters by means that were familiar to him. I could well understand that Edith Herndon's love for her father would compel her to sacrifice herself if she saw the aged Professor in front of the great stone centipede, and that might happen at any moment now that Leith considered that he had disposed of all active opposition.

For hours we debated the matter, and finally the Professor was won over. He agreed to move forward on an inspection tour of the vast subterranean place the moment the next supply of food came from above, and we waited anxiously. During the wait Holman and I made short trips into the darkness, but we were careful that we did not get out of the hearing of the two girls, who called at intervals so that we would be able to find our way back. The place was awe-inspiring. Its size could only be guessed at. Stones that were flung in a certain direction where the floor sloped gradually downward could be heard rolling for many minutes after they left our hands.

We guessed that it was early morning when we heard from Leith. A blazing torch illuminated a round hole about seventy feet above our heads, and Holman and I immediately remained quiet so that the big scoundrel would be in ignorance of the reunion. There was no possibility of the torchlight making our presence known. It would take a score of torches to enable him to see us.

Leith thrust his head over the edge of the hole while Soma held the torch, and, with a coarse laugh, the ruffian inquired if his victims had changed their minds.

"No, we have not," replied the Professor, his thin, quavering voice sounding strangely weak after the deep-throated bellow of the bully on top.

"Well, you'll change it soon," cried Leith. "I'll leave you down there for another day or two, and then I'll get you up to do some stunts. Mind you, I mean a proper marriage with Miss Edith, Professor! The Waif will run us up to the German missionary station while you take charge here for your affectionate son-in-law."

I opened my mouth to fling an answer at the taunting scoundrel, but Holman surmised my intention and begged me to hold my tongue.

"They'll get no food if you cry out!" he whispered. "Don't speak to him, man!"

The Professor made no answer to the offensive remark, and after a few minutes' silence Leith drew back, and Soma started to lower a bundle of food into the dark prison.

"That rope might prove useful," whispered Holman. "Feel around and see if you can get hold of it before he pulls it up."

The light of the torch which Leith held only illuminated about six feet of the rope as the native passed it into the prison, so Holman and I, standing directly under the opening, felt around in the darkness as the bundle of food came toward the ground.

"I have it!" murmured Holman. "Wait till he unhooks the bundle."

We let the rope run through our hands till the package of food touched the rock floor. The line had a small hook upon the end, and the moment Soma felt that the parcel had reached the bottom of the place, he dexterously unhooked it with a slight jerk and started to haul in.

"Now!" whispered the youngster. "A big pull! We might bring the nigger through the hole!"

We went very close to performing the feat. The jolt took the native unawares; he fell forward on his knees and barely saved himself from dropping into the opening. The rope came toward us with a run, but as we pulled furiously it stopped with a sudden jerk, and we knew that the other end was tied to some projection on the surface.

Leith laughed derisively, and the laugh maddened Holman. He clutched the rope and started to climb rapidly upward. I couldn't see him, but I felt his shoes as he wriggled away into the darkness above me, and I held my breath, I gripped the rope and kept it taut so that Leith and Soma might not discover the ruse.

But Leith had more cunning than we credited him with. After a futile pull at the rope he thrust the pine torch through the hole, and as it dropped into the cavern it illuminated the figure of Holman, who was then about fifteen feet from the floor. "Cut the rope!" roared the ruffian. "Quick, Soma! Cut the rope and break the —— fool's neck!"

Holman, realizing that it was impossible to reach the top, saved himself a nasty fall by sliding down the rope while the native slashed at it, but he had not touched the floor when the ninety feet of strong manilla came whirling down through the darkness. And the rope was not the only gift we received. Angry at discovering that we had escaped death in our plunge into the place, Leith poured forth a stream of blasphemy that outdid the effort he had made when kicking Holman and me on the afternoon the youngster had wounded him. He cursed us till the shocked Professor dragged his two daughters away out of hearing, and there we found the three when we had gathered up the rope and the food.

"We might as well make a try to explore the place," said Holman. "The scoundrel says that he will not send down any more food till you accept his proposals."

"Then we'll never get any," said Edith Herndon quietly. "I pray that God will show us the way out of this place."



CHAPTER XXII

THE WHITE WATERFALL

We found the rope exceedingly useful now that we had decided to explore the place in search of a way out. It was reasonable to think that the floor of the cavern would contain innumerable fissures into which we might fall, and to guard against this we decided to make a life line out of the thirty yards of manilla we had luckily obtained. Allowing about five yards of rope between each two persons, I tied it in turn around the waist of Holman, Barbara, the Professor, Edith, and myself, and being thus prepared against a precipice in our path, Holman took the lead and we followed in single file as the tightening of the rope informed each one that the immediate leader was a safe distance in front.

"Is there any choice of direction?" asked Holman, pausing after he had taken half a dozen steps.

"I don't think so," I said. "Unless some one has an intuition regarding the path to liberty."

"Please let me pick the route," murmured Edith. "I am stretching out my arm, Mr. Holman; will you come here to me and feel the direction I am pointing in?"

We clustered round the girl, each one feeling her outstretched arm and then turning quickly toward the point indicated. I was glad that no one could see my own face at that moment. It was pathetic to think of any one choosing a route in that abyss of horror, and the trouble which the girl took to make sure that Holman would move off in the direction she pointed brought tears to my eyes.

"I—I might be silly in thinking it," she stammered, "but I believe—oh, please, Mr. Holman, try and walk in the direction I pointed in!"

"I certainly will try," said the youngster. "If I go wrong, you put me right, will you? I believe somehow that we're going to find a way out. I don't know the right path to it, but I've got a premonition we'll find it. Now we're off again."

We moved forward with anxious footsteps. Imagination furrowed the floor of that place with bottomless crevices, and the cold hand of fear gripped our hearts. It required a mental effort to move one foot past the other, and whenever one of the girls stumbled, her little cry of alarm brought untold agony to Holman and myself as we took a grip of the rope and braced ourselves against the happening which our excited minds expected any moment. We were walking hand in hand with dread—a dread that became greater when we thought that a false step of ours might drag to death the two women that we loved.

On, and on, and on, we bored into the horrible night. With blind footsteps we walked fearfully through the Stygian waves that rolled around us. The place seemed to be of enormous size, and in the dead silence that surrounded us our footsteps woke clattering echoes that appeared to mock our efforts to escape.

The air in places had a strange odour that reminded us of camphor. This peculiar smell seemed to be in certain stratas of the atmosphere through which we passed, and whenever our passage through these scented layers was unduly prolonged, we experienced a sensation that I can only liken to the near approach of seasickness. It made the girls sick and faint, but they walked on without complaining.

We struck the wall of the place after we had been walking for a period that we judged to be about three hours, and we decided to rest for a while. We sat close together upon the cold floor and endeavoured to cheer each other's spirits by constantly asserting that the air of the place made it reasonable to suppose that there must be some other entrance besides the hole through which Leith had lowered the three, and the fissure through which Holman and I had rolled down the gigantic ash pile. And the assertions seemed logical. The two entrances that we knew of opened into Leith's retreat, and it was hard to think that the air supply of the enormous cavern in which we were wandering could come through those two openings. We combatted our fears with this argument as we ate a morsel of the food we had received that morning, and feeling that he who has the biggest stock of hope has the biggest grip upon life, we endeavoured to make light of our misfortunes as we stumbled on again after a short rest.

But that impenetrable night produced a depression that we could not shake off. Imagination sprang ahead of the moment and pictured our final struggles. We fought with the nightmares that entered our minds, and conversation languished. We couldn't speak while the mental canvases were being rapidly coloured with scenes depicting our end in the darkness and the silence, where a grim fate would even deny one a last look at a dearly loved face. A silence came upon us that had the same effect as intense cold. Each in his own frozen husk of despair plodded forward with the idea that the others were so engrossed in their own thoughts that they were not inclined to answer when addressed. The darkness so completely isolated each person that after some hours of silence it required a tremendous effort to thoroughly convince the mind that one was walking with living people and not with phantoms.

It was after one of these intervals of silence that Barbara Herndon made a discovery that chilled our blood. She made some commonplace remark to her sister and received no reply. She repeated the observation, but it brought no comment. The happening seemed to drag the rest of us from the strange torpor, and we stopped. We sensed that Barbara Herndon was feeling her way toward her sister, and presently the younger girl gave a shriek of alarm that stirred a million echoes in that place of terror.

"Edith!" she shrieked. "Edith! Edith! Where are you?"

Holman and I clawed fiercely upon the rope, moving toward each other in an effort to find a quick solution for the mystery. We collided violently as we reached the spot where the rope had circled Edith Herndon's waist, and we stood, stunned and speechless, as we fingered the cord. In some manner, probably severed by a knifelike projection of rock, the loop which I had knotted around her body had been cut through, and the rope had fallen unnoticed from the waist of the weary girl!

"Great God!" I cried. "Where did we lose her? What way did we come?"

The questions were ridiculous. The numbing influence of the place had made us walk for an hour or so in complete silence, and it was impossible to say when she had lost her position in the line. And now, as we moved round and round, endeavouring to peer into the blackness, we lost all sense of direction. Each had a different notion about the way we had come. While we were moving forward, our combined efforts to walk straight ahead made it impossible for one to turn and go in an opposite direction, but in the few moments of our excitement as we turned and twisted in clawing for the loop where Edith had been tied, we became bewildered. We didn't know in which direction to turn in searching for the lost one!

"What'll we do?" cried the Professor. "Do something! Quick! Find her! Find her!"

I took a great breath and yelled her name into the darkness. The sound thundered through the place like the noise made by a freight train. Again and again I screamed it, and the million devils in the place shrieked the name in mockery. I exhausted myself in my mad efforts to send my voice to her ears.

Holman gripped my arm when I had worked myself into an insane frenzy, and he begged me to be quiet.

"Barbara thought she heard an answer," he cried. "Listen! There it is again!"

It was Edith! Her voice came to us like a thread of silver, and with no thought of the bottomless crevices that might be in our path, we charged blindly toward the spot from which her cry had come.

It seemed ages before we met her. The sounds puzzled us, but at last we gripped her hands, and the Professor and Barbara, hysterical with joy, sobbed their thanks into the gloom.

"I don't know how the rope became undone," cried Edith. "I didn't find out that I had become separated from the rest of you till I attempted to draw your attention to the waterfall."

"To the what?" I questioned.

"To the waterfall," repeated the girl. "Did you pass it? It is a beautiful little waterfall, and the water flows over a white limestone rock that makes it sparkle like so many fireflies in the dark."

I cannot explain what happened to me at that moment. Some veil within my mind was torn away by the few words that the girl had uttered. I was back upon Levuka wharf, lying under the copra bag where Holman had found me, and for a moment I could not speak as the subconscious mind flung a score of half-forgotten incidents into my conscious area.

"It is the White Waterfall!" I yelled. "It is the White Waterfall that the Maori sang of on the wharf at Levuka! He was warning Toni, and Toni was killed by Soma because he knew! It is the way out! We're saved! We're saved! It is on the road to heaven out of Black Fernando's hell!"



CHAPTER XXIII

THE WIZARDS' SEAT

As we stumbled toward the spot from which came the sounds of running water, the incidents of the preceding ten days seemed to be dropping into their places within my brain like the pieces of a picture puzzle that has suddenly become plain to the eye of the child who is putting it together. I understood! My brain seemed bursting within my skull. It appeared to me that God, in his own way, had made me a blind instrument to do his work. The big Maori on the wharf at Levuka knew of the hell upon the Isle of Tears. The Maori had warned Toni, the little Fijian, but fear of what might happen to any one possessing the knowledge had made Toni deny that he was the companion of the Maori when he was questioned before and after he had reached The Waif. In a burst of confidence he had confessed the truth to me on the afternoon after I had saved him from being washed overboard, but the confession had been made in the presence of Soma, and, as Kaipi asserted, it had cost Toni his life. Leith, alias Black Fernando, had ordered the big Kanaka to put the possessor of such important information out of the way.

I repeated over and over again the words which the Maori had addressed to his woolly headed pupil on that hot day at Levuka. They raced madly round in my mind, as if exultant because I had found the reason why they persisted in storing themselves in the cells of my brain. The soul within me had known that the knowledge would be wanted!

"How many paces?" asked the Professor.

"Sixty!" I roared; and then, seized with temporary insanity, I chanted the song of the Maori at the top of my voice:

"Sixty paces to the left, Sixty paces to the left, That's the way to heaven, That's the way to heaven, That's the way to heaven out Of Black Fernando's hell."

"And here's the waterfall!" cried Holman, "Go easy now! It must be flowing into some hole, and we don't want to fall into an abyss just as Verslun has discovered the way out."

We advanced cautiously toward the spot where, as Edith had said, the water sparkled like fireflies in the darkness. It was an eerie place. We knew that the water was there by the sound it made flowing over the rocks, but, except for the tiny sparks of phosphorescent light that seemed to fly out from it, we could not see it. The spectacle thrilled us. A million sparks of light seemed to rise from the bed of feldspar over which the water leaped, and the peculiar quality of the rock gave to it the weird brilliancy which held us spellbound as we advanced with extreme caution. It wasn't white by any means, but in those inky depths it would not require a great effort of the imagination to call it white. The faint luminous flashes were the only particles of light that we had seen since Leith had thrown the half-extinguished torch into the hole that morning, and we could hardly turn our eyes from the novelty.

The water fell into an opening in the rocky floor, and gurgled away into depths that made us shiver as the distant tinkle came up to us as we crept forward on hands and knees. We were all thirsty at that moment, but we wished to put the directions of the Maori to an immediate test, and we were satisfied to let our longing for a cool drink stay with us till we could prove whether the strangely luminous waterfall before us was the one about which the two natives chanted the strange song.

"They said to the left, didn't they?" asked Holman.

"Yes," I answered. I hardly recognized my own voice as I jerked out the word. I couldn't see the faces of the girls, but I understood what skyscrapers of hope they had built upon the announcement I had made when Edith had told of her discovery. Now, as we moved around the hole in the floor, I understood what a tremendous shock it would be to them if we discovered that there was no connection between the falling water and the chant.

"I suppose the left side will be the one upon our left hand when facing the fall?" said Holman.

"I suppose so," I stammered. "Let us move up close to the side of the water."

We edged along till we could touch the flashing stream that dropped from some point high up in the immense roof of the place, and then we started to step the distance, the Professor chattering along behind us, while the two girls brought up the rear.

Holman chanted the numbers aloud, and a cold sweat broke out upon me as he counted. A fear of my own sanity came upon me. I thought that this connection between the song and the luminous water might have been suggested by a brain that had suddenly lost its balance under the torture of the preceding three days.

"Fifty-six! Fifty-seven! Fifty-eight!——"

It was Holman's voice, but to my reeling brain the sound came from the roof and thundered in my ears like a brazen bell.

"Fifty-nine! Sixty!"

We stopped together, and the suppressed sobs of Barbara Herndon were the only sounds that broke the little stillness that followed. There was no way out! The darkness, so it seemed to us, was thicker than ever!

"Nothing doing," muttered Holman. "I counted right, didn't I?"

"I think so," I answered huskily.

"Sixty paces exactly, and here's the wall alongside us."

My fingers groped along the moist rock. I felt stunned. Now that the test had been made it seemed insanity to connect a chant that I heard at Levuka with a waterfall in a cavern on the Isle of Tears. But why had Toni been killed? Why had Leith exhibited such curiosity about the song when he heard me relating the incident to the two sisters on board the yacht?

My fingers came to a crevice in the wall as the question presented a bold front to the doubt that had gripped me. The fissure was some four feet wide, and my exclamation made Holman put a question.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing," I answered. Wrecked hopes had made me cautious. Still I felt certain that I had remembered those words for some purpose. I recalled how they had puzzled me on that hot day, and how I had questioned Holman concerning "Pilgrim's Progress" when he had roused me from my sleep.

"Well, if there's nothing here I'm going back to get a drink," said Holman.

"Hold on!" I stammered, as I uncoiled the piece of spare rope from my shoulders; "I want you a minute. There's a split in this rock, and I'm going to explore it. Take the end of this rope and hang on."

"Hadn't I better go with you?" he asked.

"Not this trip," I answered. "I've just got a feeling that I'd like to see where it leads to. Hold tight!"

I stepped cautiously into the narrow passage and immediately found that it narrowed to such an extent that I had to turn sideways to squeeze through. The floor sloped upward, and as the rock was damp and slippery, I dropped upon my knees so that I could climb more rapidly. The place seemed a narrow chute. My knees were skinned from the rough bottom, but I scratched desperately to obtain a footing. Hope was still alive. The Maori had said that the road to heaven was sixty paces from the White Waterfall, and if an all-seeing Providence had guided Edith to the waterfall, it was surely decreed that we would make our escape from the clutches of the devil who had us at his mercy.

"We will surely escape," I muttered, as I scratched and clawed in an effort to drag myself up the slippery path. "We will escape! I know it! We will escape! I know—"

The muttered words died upon my lips. The crevice turned and then broadened suddenly, and a blinding flash of light forced me to fling myself face downward upon the rock. For a moment I lay there, wondering stupidly whether something had happened to my eyes or whether I had come suddenly into the light of day. I had seen light—the light of what?

Slowly I lifted my head, and the truth came to me with stunning force. It was God's own sunlight that I had seen! The chute ended within three paces of the spot where I lay, and immediately opposite the opening through which I looked was a patch of vermilion rock that blazed gloriously as the rays of the afternoon sun struck full upon it. I knew that rock! It had thrilled me as I looked at it on the afternoon when Leith had introduced us to the greatest natural wonder of the Pacific. I was at the end of a passage that opened into the Vermilion Pit!

From where I lay I could not see the top of the crater. When the passage had suddenly broadened, the roof came down upon it, so that the opening through which I looked at the opposite side of the great pit was about ten feet wide but not more than two feet in height. An overhanging lip of rock prevented me from looking up, but I understood that I was lower than the slippery Ledge of Death that we had crossed to reach the Valley of Echoes. It seemed years since we had crossed that path, yet it was less than a week.

I thought of the others waiting in the darkness, and I turned and slid down the chute up which I had scrambled. The path to liberty was not yet plain, but there was fresh air and sunlight at the top of the chute, and one could see the faces of those they loved. Bumping and bounding over the jagged rocks I went at a terrific speed to the bottom of the slide, and, scrambling through the opening, I shouted the news to the four who waited there.

"It opens into the Vermilion Pit!" I gasped. "I can't see how we can climb out, but there's hope—there's hope!"

I was foolish in making the last statement, but the sight of the glorious sunbeams, striking down into the abyss, had made me blind to the difficulties that were yet to be faced! And the Maori's chant must surely be true! Now that it had brought us to the light, I could not but believe that it would bring us to liberty.

The slippery chute brought a suggestion from Holman. He advised that the two girls and the Professor remain at the bottom while he and I took one end of the rope to the top so that we could haul them up the wet track that I had scaled with difficulty.

"We won't be five minutes!" I cried. "Stay where you are till we signal."

I didn't think, as Holman and I crawled to the top of that place, what an eventful five minutes that would be. But the big things of life are crammed into minutes, and Time was bringing the most thrilling one of our lives toward us as we scrambled up the chute. Our adventures upon the Isle of Tears were to have a climax that fitted them.

Holman stopped as I had done and thrust his face down upon the rock as his eyes caught a glimpse of the glittering wall of the crater that came suddenly into view. The rays of the sun blazing down upon the stained sides of the mysterious pit made the veins of colour appear like brilliant snakes. The patch that was framed by the walls of the opening through which we gazed was a wild riot of scintillating, blinding colours that dazzled our eyes as we stared at them.

For a minute Holman breathed hungrily of the hot air, then he attempted to discover our exact position in the crater.

"We must be somewhere near the top," he declared. "Don't you remember that the colour of the walls darkened rapidly below the Ledge of Death?"

"I remember," I answered. "We must be nearly on a level with the Ledge."

"If we could look out from under this projecting piece of rock," muttered the youngster.

"It's risky."

"I'll make a try, Verslun. Hold my legs. I'm going to hang out of this burrow and take a peep around to get our bearings."

I gripped his legs, and turning upon his back he pushed himself slowly out over the edge of the passage till he was able to look up in front of the piece of rock that projected like the peak of a cap above the opening.

Clinging to this peak with his two hands, the upper part of his body being out over the abyss, he stared upward, and as I watched his face I noticed the look of joy and amazement that spread across it.

"What is it, Holman?" I cried. "Are we saved? Tell me!"

He slid hurriedly back to safety and pounded the rock above his head with his bare fists.

"Do you know what this is?" he yelled. "Do you know?"

I tried to utter the words that came to my tongue, but I could not. I could see the joy in the youngster's eyes, but I was afraid to speak.

"It is the Ledge of Death!" he shouted. "There is only six inches of rock above us!"

"Then we're saved!" I cried.

"Sure! If you put the rope around me I can crawl up on it, and once there I can haul up the others. Do you know what Soma told the Professor about the bad men falling into this infernal pit?"

I nodded my head. I was unable to speak at that moment.

"Well, the Wizards of the Centipede fixed that! Don't you see? This was their seat! They leaned out of this place as I leaned out just now, and they gripped the ankles of any poor devil they had a grouch against. It was devilish——"

I put my hand across his mouth and he became instantly mute. We held our breath and listened intently. From above us came the faint sound of footsteps and a cold perspiration broke out upon us. Some one was walking slowly along the Ledge of Death!

The sounds ceased when the unknown was immediately above our heads, and a guilty look came upon Holman's face. The man on the Ledge had probably heard the youngster's voice, and he was puzzled to know where the sounds had come from.

We sat without moving a muscle. The silence convinced us that the unknown was listening. We knew that he hadn't climbed from the Ledge to the top of the crater. The scratching of his shoes against the rock would have come to our ears. He was waiting—waiting to discover from what direction the voice had come that caused him to pause and listen.

The minutes passed like slow-dragging years. The man above wore shoes and the two men who wore shoes, outside our own party, were Leith and the one-eyed man. Somehow we felt that Maru and Kaipi had settled with One Eye, so there was only one person on the Isle of Tears who could possibly be listening.

Ten minutes passed, then Holman pointed to his own legs. I understood the sign and gripped his ankles. My head was bursting with the terror inspired by the thought that our escape might be cut off after the miraculous manner in which the way out had been shown to us.

Without noise, yet with incredible swiftness, the youngster turned upon his back and wriggled forward till his head and shoulders were again out over the pit. His body was tense, every muscle showing as he stiffened himself. Into my mind flashed a picture of the bloodthirsty Wizards of the Centipede stretching out in exactly the same manner centuries before a white man sailed into the Pacific!

The silence seemed to sap my strength. I watched Holman with eyes that were half-blinded by the perspiration that rolled down my forehead. There was no movement upon the ledge, and the fingers of the youngster were reaching slowly—slowly upward.

It was a yell of horror that shattered the awful quiet—a yell that went up through the hot air like the shriek of a lost soul. It swirled around and around like a lariat of brass. It was a terrible yell. It wrenched my inmost being till the very spirit seemed to go out of me for an instant, and I returned to consciousness to find myself struggling to hold Holman from being dragged into the depths below.

It was the youngster's voice that seemed to bring me back to a knowledge of the surroundings. In an instant's pause in the torrent of blasphemy his words came to me clear and distinct.

"Hold me tight, Verslun!" he cried. "Hold me tight, man! I have him!"



I shut my eyes to escape the fascination of the depths, and I gripped Holman's ankles till my nails burrowed into his flesh. I felt his body heave with a tremendous effort, then another yell, shorter but more terrifying than the first, told me that the struggle was over.

I dragged Holman back to safety, and, stretched side by side upon the rock, we listened. Down in the pit—miles, leagues away, something was falling!

The youngster pulled himself together after the silence had settled upon the place like a film.

"Let's tie the rope and get the girls up here," he said quietly, "In a while—in a little while—I can crawl on to the ledge and pull them up with a rope."



CHAPTER XXIV

THE WAY TO HEAVEN

With quick-beating pulses we fixed the rope and shouted directions down the slippery passage to the girls and the Professor, and inside of ten minutes they were beside us, looking out with frightened eyes at the coloured wall of the opposite side of the pit. The faces of Edith and Barbara looked pale and careworn, but they smiled bravely when Holman assured them that we were within a yard of the path by which we had crossed to the Valley of Echoes.

"Be brave," he said cheerfully. "You'll be on your way back to the shore before many hours have passed by. There is no—no danger now."

I do not know if the two girls understood the meaning of his words, but they asked no questions. Somehow I think that they knew what had happened. Those two terrible cries must have reached their ears as they waited at the foot of the chute that led to the wizards' seat, but if they had any doubts concerning their origin, they refrained from seeking information. But the Professor knew. A melancholy that had tied his tongue all through the long day in the Black Kindergarten left him as he came to the sunlight, and he became light-hearted and merry. He felt that he had been relieved of his load of nightmares, and the dangers of the climb to the rocky shelf above our heads did not trouble him in the least.

It was Holman who performed the heroic work on the late afternoon of that eventful day. With the rope tied around his waist, he pushed himself out as he had done twice before during the preceding hour, then, gripping the edge of the shelf, dragged himself forward. For a moment, as he swung over the depths, it looked as if he would be unable to drag himself up, and we clung on to the rope and watched him with frightened eyes. But youth and courage won the day. Slowly, inch by inch, he lifted himself, the lips of the two girls moving in dumb prayer; then we lost sight of him as he drew his legs up on to the ledge, and we knew that we were safe!

The youngster secured the rope to a projection on the shelf above, and the Professor, nervous but game, was the next to make the perilous journey. It was blood-curdling to watch the old man swaying over the depths while Holman, lying flat upon his stomach, gripped him beneath the arms and dragged the poor old scientist to safety.

Barbara went next, and when the rope was lowered once more I secured it around Edith's waist. I held her in my arms as I pushed her body forward to Holman's strong hands that waited just below the ledge, and for one brief instant her lips came close to mine, and with a mad, wild love that had been born in danger, where there was no time for words, I stooped and kissed her. And even in that moment of extreme peril a faint smile swept over her face as she looked up into mine, and I knew that she understood.

It was nearly sunset when we moved away from the top of the Vermilion Pit, but we had not gone ten paces when we stopped. A yell came out of the place, then another and another, and Holman and I rushed back to the edge. Down beneath us, on the slippery Ledge of Death, two natives were locked in a death grip, and a single glance told us that they were Maru and Soma. The Raretongan had chased Leith's brown lieutenant on to the path, and now they were struggling like demons in the mad endeavour to thrust each other into the depths.

"Quick!" cried Holman. "The rope!"

He slipped the line around his waist as the pair moved to the edge. Maru was dragging the big savage with a strength that was surprising, but it was a certainty that if Soma went over the edge the Raretongan would keep him company.

Holman slipped down upon the Ledge, but before he could reach them a dusty, bleeding figure stumbled through the entrance to the cavern, a knife flashed in the sunlight, and Maru was drawn back into safety as Soma released his grip. The newcomer was Kaipi!

"He kill Toni!" he cried. "Toni all same brother to me. Toni work with me long time Suva."

Toni, the pupil of the Maori, who had instructed him on Levuka wharf as to the way out of Black Fernando's hell, had been avenged at last.

It was a happy reunion we held upon the edge of the pit. Edith and Barbara bound up the wounds of the two faithful natives, and the muscular Raretongan was so touched with their tender ministrations that he foraged in his tattered sulu, and with tears of gratitude in his big brown eyes he handed back to Barbara the emerald ring with which she had caused him to desert from Leith's service.

"Me want no pay from you!" he cried. "Me work for you all same nothing!"

We learned that the one-eyed white man and the last of the Wizards of the Centipede had been dispatched by Maru and Kaipi, and we also received the news that the four carriers had bolted back to the yacht. The latter piece of information somewhat dampened our spirits. We felt that Leith and Newmarch were friends, and we wondered what the silent, thin-faced captain would do when he heard the story of Black Fernando's discomfiture.

On account of Kaipi's weak state we camped that evening on the same spot that we had occupied on the second night upon the Isle of Tears, and at daybreak next morning we set out for the little bay. We were all happy. The Professor was as pleased as a boy on his vacation, and he had returned again to his task of taking notes. The two girls were radiant; Kaipi was joyful because the murdered Toni had been revenged, and Maru was in the seventh heaven of delight because Barbara had informed him that he could go to San Francisco with the party as a reward for his devotion. As for Holman and myself, we forgot the loneliness of the place in our joy. The same trees peered at us, the same cablelike vines gripped our legs, and the same weird rock masses blocked our paths, but love was in our hearts, and morbid thoughts were chased away.

On the afternoon of the second day from the pit we reached the shore of the little bay, but The Waif was not there. Newmarch had evidently discovered that Leith had not been quite successful in the carrying out of his plans, and fearful of his own share in the business, he had bolted with the yacht. The South Sea breeds piratical thoughts, and from our own knowledge of the captain we guessed that in his particular case those thoughts would be easily generated.

"He thinks he'll save his own skin by clearing out," said Holman, "but I'm satisfied that Dame Justice is an expert with the lariat. If he's not in jail before three months are out, my name is not Will Holman."

It was the missionary schooner Messenger of Light that saw our beacon upon the island on the fourth day after we had reached the spot where we had landed from The Waif. The beautiful white vessel hove to outside the entrance to the little bay, a boat came ashore, and twenty minutes after they had first sighted our signal we were on the way to Wellington, New Zealand.

"And the 'Frisco boats call there," murmured Barbara, "Joy! Joy! Joy!"

The moon was whitening the sleeping Pacific when Edith and I stood looking over the taffrail as the Messenger of Light swept on her course. From nearby came the voice of Professor Herndon relating his experiences to a missionary who was returning from the Marquesas. A soft island melody was wafted from the fo'c'stle, and the night was alive with all the witchery of the tropics.

"Edith," I whispered, as I took her hand, "I am a common sailorman, but if you could love me I—I—"

I stopped in confusion, and as she had done on a former occasion, she came to the rescue of my stammering tongue.

"You are a big, true man," she murmured. "If you had not come with us we should not have returned from that awful place. God let you listen to that song of the White Waterfall so that we might be saved."

Some minutes afterward she released herself from my arms. "Let us find Will and Barbara," she said softly. "We will share each other's happiness."

And as I followed her across the poop, a tremendous surge of joy rose up and filled my heart. The whole world was clean and good, and in my glorious exultation I whispered a prayer for the soul of John Leith, alias Black Fernando.

THE END