"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 pa.s.sage by which we had entered the place, and a cold chill pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sages 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 G.o.d'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 b.u.t.t 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage into the calm, clear night.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 d.i.c.kens 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 n.i.g.g.e.r at the outside entrance of the pa.s.sage, 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 G.o.ds! 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 th.o.r.n.y 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.