The native turned his head; but before he could spring to his feet, or even utter a cry, the musket crashed upon his shaven pate, and he rolled over on his side without a sound.
Don did not stop to ascertain the extent of his injuries. Neither did he summon the blacks. Again the clanking of chains rang in his ears, and at a bound he crossed the threshold of the larger chamber, An unkempt human figure started up in the far corner.
“Jack!”
“And is it really you, old fellow?” cried Jack joyfully. “Give us your hand; and how did you find your way here, I want to know?”
“You have Bosin to thank for that,” replied Don, returning his chum's' grip with interest. “When I saw your handkerchief——”
“Ah, the monkey stole it, then! I missed it, don't you know, but never imagined that Bosin took it, though he paid me a visit early this morning. Well, he did me a good turn that time, anyhow.”
“And a better one when he led us back here. But,” continued Don in hurried, suppressed tones, “don't let us waste time palavering, Jack. There's not a moment to lose. I've done for old conchy yonder—knocked him on the head—but the rest may swoop down on us any minute. Say, how are you tethered?”
“Leg,” said Jack laconically, rattling a chain which secured him to the wall. “Stop!”—as Don unslung his cutlass with the intention of hacking at the links—“I'll show you a trick worth two of that. You see that ring-bolt the chain's fastened to? Well, it's set in lead—not very securely as it happens—and I've managed to work it so loose that I fancy a good hard tug ought to bring it away. Meant to make off on my own account, you see, if you hadn't turned up, old fellow. But lay hold and let's have a pull for it, anyhow.”
“Quick, then!” said Don. “I thought I heard footsteps.”
Throwing their combined weight upon the chain, they pulled for dear life. The ring-bolt yielded little by little, and presently came away from its setting bodily, like an ancient tooth, and Jack was free. The chain, it is true, was still attached to his leg; but as it encircled only one ankle, this did not so much matter.
“Don't let it rattle,” said Don breathlessly, “I'm positive I heard footsteps. And here, take this,” thrusting the cutlass into Jack's disengaged hand. “Now, come on!”
Barely had he uttered the words when a hollow, prolonged blast, like that of a gigantic trumpet with a cold in its throat, filled the chamber with deafening clamour. And as the echoes leapt from wall to wall, and buffeted each other into silence, another sound succeeded them, faint and far away, but swelling momentarily into ominous loudness and nearness.
Don clutched his companion's arm.
“The fellow I knocked on the head—he's come to!” he said thickly. “That was the blast of his conch; and this”—pausing with uplifted hand and bated breath until that other sound broke clearly on their ears—“this is the tread of heaven only knows how many native feet. Jack, we're discovered!”
Four galleries centred on the rock-chamber, and the confused, tumultuous rush of feet which followed the blast of the conch-shell like an ominous echo, proceeded from that particular gallery opposite the vestibule.
“Seems to be a rare lot of them; but we needn't stop to reckon 'em up,” said Jack, with a constrained laugh. “Lead the way, old fellow.”
Into the smaller chamber they dashed, to find the exit blocked by the sentinel with sword drawn. Rapidly reversing his musket, Don bore down upon him—he, to do him justice, standing his ground bravely,—and with the butt-end of the weapon dealt the nigger a blow in the stomach that doubled him up like a broken bulrush.
“Where are the others?” cried Jack, as they rounded the shoulder of rock separating the antechamber from the passage. “You never came alone!”
“No; I left them just here—told them to wait,” said Don, peering about in search of the blacks. “They must have gone back; thought they'd save their skins while they could, I suppose, the chicken-hearted beggars! Ha, here's Bosin, at any rate.”
Swinging the monkey upon his shoulder, he set off at a run down the passage, Jack following as close as the weight of the chain would allow him, to do. They had proceeded only a short distance when a faint, sepulchral shout brought them to a stand. The sound seemed to proceed from a gallery on their immediate right. The way out did not lie in that direction.
“That's Pug's wheeze,” said Don. “They've taken the wrong turning;” and he drew a deep breath to answer the call.
Jack interposed quickly. “Stop! The natives will be down on us soon enough without, that. Off with you, old fellow, and fetch' pur party back. I'll wait here.”
Already Don was racing down the side passage. Presently Jack heard him jitter a cautious “hullo.” A short silence followed then the echoes told him that the fugitives were hastily retracing their steps. At the same moment a confused uproar burst on his ears from the direction of the chamber in his rear. The pursuing mob had turned the angle of the passage and were actually in sight. The chain attached to Jack's leg clanked impatiently. He fairly danced with excitement. That ill-advised move on the part of the blacks had almost proved fatal to their sole chance of escape.
But not quite; for now Don and the blacks came up, Jack joined them, and, with the oncoming thunder of many feet loud in their ears, away they sped, running as they alone can run who know that death is at their heels.
Two circumstances favoured them so long as the race was confined to the cramped limits of the corridors: the smallness of their own number, and the multitude of their pursuers. Where four could run with ease, forty wasted their breath in fighting each other for running room.
“We must put the pit between us and-these howling demons while they're tumbling over each other in the passage here,” cried Don.
It was their only hope. Racing on by Jack's side, close on-the heels of the blacks, he rapidly explained to his chum—who knew nothing of the pit, having been brought into the rock by a more circuitous route—the nature of the contemplated manoeuvre; and gave Spottie and Puggles their instructions how to act, backed up by a wholesome threat of summary abandonment to the enemy should they shirk when it came to the crucial point, the plank. The blacks were to cross first, Jack next; while he, Don, would cover their retreat as best he could. To this arrangement Jack could raise no demur. He was too seriously handicapped by the chain.
A final spurt, and they cleared the tunnel and reached the pit. The plank lay where they had left it. Across it ran their only road to safety. At a significant signal from Don Spottie led off, and, when he had reached the further side in safety, Puggles followed in his tracks. Doffs threat, coupled with the ominous uproar belched forth by the mouth of the tunnel, eclipsed all fear of the crocodiles.
“Now, Jack,” cried Don, ere the plank had ceased to vibrate under Puggles's tread, “after you.”
Jack crossed, and Don was in the act of stepping on the unstable bridge, when the foremost of the native gang burst from the gallery. One swift backward glance—a glance that stowed him how alarmingly narrow was the margin between escape and capture—and with outstretched arms he balanced himself on the handbreadth of plank—it was scarcely more—and began the perilous passage. Swift as was this backward glance, it sufficed to show him, too, that the leader of the pursuit was none other than the escaped lascar; and ere he had traversed half the plank's length, he felt it yield and rebound beneath the quick tread of the fellows feet. At the same instant Jack raised a warning shout.
There are moments when the strongest nerve quails, the steadiest head swings a little off its balance, the surest foot slips. Such a moment did this prove for Don. The disconcerting vibration of the plank, the knowledge that the lascar was at his very back, Jack's sudden shout—these for an instant conspired against and overcame his natural cool-headedness. He made a hurried step or two, staggered, and, his foot catching in the rope where it encircled the plank a short distance from the end, he stumbled and fell.
Fell! but in falling dislodged the end of the plank which lay behind him, and on which the lascar stood, from its hold upon the further brink of the pit. The lascar, throwing up his arms with a despairing shriek, plunged headlong into the pool, where he was instantly seized upon by the ravenous crocodiles and torn limb from limb.
And now, if ever, did the “Providence that sits up aloft” watch over Don. Almost miraculously, as it seemed, instead of plunging into the horrible death-trap below, he fell astride the plank, the hither end of which still retained its hold upon the rock at an angle of perhaps sixty-five degrees; and up this steep incline—whither Bosin had already preceded him—with Jack's assistance he managed to scramble. Then they laid hold upon the plank and dragged it from the pit, amid the furious howling of the baffled rabble debouching from the tunnel opposite.
“Safe over, at any rate,” panted Don. “But—good heavens! what's become of the lascar?” For, suspended as he had been between life and death, he had neither heard the lascar's shriek nor witnessed the horrible manner in which he had received his quietus at the jaws of the crocodiles.
Jack pointed out a bright crimson blotch on the surface of the pool. “We've seen the last of him, poor devil,” said he with a shudder. “Say, did I tell you—no, of course I didn't—that this fellows not my lascar?”
“What, not the lascar who's been hounding us all this time?”
“The lascar who's been hounding us on the island here—yes; but not the one who tried to brain me on board the cutter and got the knife for his pains. That chap kicked the bucket shortly after he got ashore; this fellow's his brother. They're as like as two peas.”
Don vented his astonishment in a shrill whistle. “Then that accounts for it,” said he; “for there being no scar on his shoulder, I mean.”
“Precisely; and it came jolly near accounting for yours truly as well,” said Jack, with a queer little laugh and a significant shrug of the shoulders. “This fellow, you see—the one who was just now eaten by the crocodiles—raised a sort of vendetta against us when his brother died, and of course he wanted to try his hand on me first, since it was I who gave his brother his death-blow. He'd have done it, too, if it hadn't been for old Salambo. But the old man put his foot down—I overheard their talk last night, and that's how I know—and said he wouldn't allow any violence, lucky for me. He was hoping for overtures from you, I suppose. But I say, what's this about the scar? How do you know there was none on the fellow's shoulder?”
“How do I know? Why, you see, it was this way. I was swimming the creek yesterday morning—you shall hear how that came about later on, by the way—when the lascar,” indicating the crimson blotch on the pool, “tried to throttle me. I had to knock him on the head to quiet him. Then I towed him ashore, and the captain and I——”
“The captain!” cried Jack with a start. “By Jove, we've left him behind!”
The wild hurry-scurry and excitement of the last half-hour had afforded Don scant opportunity for speaking of the captain's sad end—had, indeed, driven all thought of the old sailor from his mind, as it also had from Jack's. Now that the captain was mentioned, however, Jack, naturally enough, jumped to the conclusion that he had formed one of the rescue party, and had been overlooked in their recent precipitate flight. The time was now come when he must be undeceived; but when Don attempted to disclose the sad truth emotion choked his utterance, and he could not. But Jack, gazing into his convulsed face, instinctively read there what his lips refused to utter.
“When did it happen?” he asked in a hushed, awed whisper. “And how?”
Controlling his voice with an effort, “Only last night,” faltered Don; “the lascar did it.”
Jack turned away and buried his face in his hands.
“He was strangled,” Don presently resumed, “strangled with that cord you see tied to the rope there. Afterwards, when the lascar gave me the slip, as he did in the night, he took the cord with him; but Bosin somehow recovered it and fetched it back. I little guessed how it would serve the lascar out when I used it to bridge the pit!”
“Retribution!” cried Jack, flinging his hands impulsively away from his face. “He's rightly served, the villain. Only”—regretfully—“I wish it had been me instead of the cord, that's all. But it's done, anyhow, so let's get out of this.”
And it was time; for during this conversation the natives had not been idle. At this very moment, indeed, a number of them rushed shouting from the tunnel, bearing other planks with which to bridge the chasm. Don and his chum did not wait to see this done. Without further loss of time they set out for the creek, in which direction the blacks had already preceded them.
Hardly had they entered the tunnel, however, when they encountered the blacks, running back full pelt; and before Don could inquire the cause of their precipitate return, a shout, reverberating up the vaulted corridor from the semi-darkness ahead, made inquiry unnecessary. While he and Jack had dallied in fancied security, the natives, skirting the pit by another route, had cut off their retreat.
And, as if to increase the consternation caused by this discovery, at the same instant a chorus of yells in their rear announced that the party in pursuit had succeeded in bridging the pit anew.
Hemmed in!” cried Don, as the desperate character of the situation flashed upon him. “Shall we try to cut our way through the gang ahead, or fall back on the pit?”
“Back!” was Jack's prompt rejoinder. “Once prevent the niggers in our rear from crossing the pit, and we're all right. We'll have more fighting room there, anyhow.”
Back they ran, hustling the blacks before them. At the pit matters were even worse than they had feared. Half-a-dozen planks already spanned the chasm, each of them black with natives, who jostled each other in their eagerness to cross, supremely indifferent to the reptilian horrors that awaited them should they lose their balance.
“Hurrah!” shouted Jack, pouncing upon the 'bobbing end of the nearest plank. “Tumble 'em in! To the crocodiles with the beggars!”
Though the occupants of the plank could understand not a syllable of Jack's speech, they readily understood his intention; and crowding back upon each other with warning cries, by their combined weight they hastened the very catastrophe they desired to avert. The plank bent like a bow, snapped in twain, and launched its shrieking burden into the abyss. In their frantic efforts to escape, a number of the doomed wretches clutched at a second plank that happened to lie within reach. Already heavily overloaded, this also gave way, and added its quota to the horrible commotion of the pool. Two planks were thus accounted for.
Meanwhile Don and the blacks had not been slow to second Jack's efforts. By their united strength a third plank was dislodged, and they were in the act of attacking the fourth when their energies were diverted into another channel.
For at this juncture the detachment of natives who had cut off the retreat to the creek suddenly appeared upon the scene. The remaining planks, too, now began to pour the enemy upon the hither side of the pit in steady streams.
The rocky shelf' that here flanked the chasm had, perhaps, a width of three yards, and that portion of it to the left of the creek-tunnel's mouth, where the unmolested planks lay, was speedily packed with natives, armed with formidable pikes and knives, who bore down upon the little group with furious outcries and all the weight of superior numbers. Jack was the first to perceive the danger.
“To the right! It's all up with us if we're surrounded.”
Suiting the action to the words, he darted to the right, closely followed by Don and the blacks. Here they stationed themselves side by side, the timid blacks in the rear, and prepared to meet their assailants.
“Couldn't be better!” was Jack's cheerful comment, as he took a hasty survey of their surroundings. “Wall on our right; pit on left; enemy in front; and elbow-room behind. Say, we'll buckle to with the muskets first, and reserve the cutlasses till it comes to close quarters. Look out; they're coming!”
On came the howling, disorderly mob, maddened by the terrible fate of their comrades, and thirsting for vengeance.
“Ready!”
Together the muskets rose to the level.
“Don't fire too high. Now, let 'em have it hot!”
The walls of the narrow enclosure rocked with the thunderous report. The mob quailed, fell back: “they had no stomach for cold lead.
“That's all right,” said Jack coolly as they rapidly reloaded; “but I wish we had breechloaders! A ball, quick!”
The human wave in front, silent except for a sullen murmur that only waited for the rush to be renewed ere it swelled into fury, was again raising its ugly, threatening crest.
“I doubt if we check it this time,” said Don, watching it with anxious eyes; “they've seen us reload, and know where they have the advantage. Better get your cutlass——”
“Ready!” cried his companion.
The wave, broke. A hoarse roar, a tumultuous rusk such as it seemed no human power could withstand, and it was upon them. Again the walls leapt to the thunder of the muskets; again the serried ranks quailed. But before the smoke had left the muzzles of the muskets, the wave swept on again with redoubled fury, poured itself upon and around the brave lads, swept them off their feet For a moment it seemed as if the death-balance must kick the beam.
But the “final tussle” was not to be just yet. Spottie and Puggles, terrified into momentary daring by the imminence of their own danger, now threw themselves into the fray with an energy-which, if it did little execution, at least served to divert many a blow from their masters. No mean help that—to take the blows meant for another.
Nor were the masters themselves slow to recognise and profit by this fact. Right and left they slashed, dealing terrific swinging blows when, they could get them in, lunging desperately at the sinewy, half-naked forms about them when they could not, until British pluck and British muscle told, as they ever must in a righteous struggle for life and liberty, and One-to-twenty found itself clear of the mêlée, with a ghastly ridge of wounded at its feet, and fighting room behind.
Well they had it! For the space of one deep breath the disconcerted rabble suspended hostilities, as if unable to believe that Twenty-to-one had got the worst of it. Then their ranks closed up into a solid mass of dusky, perspiring, blood-stained forms, and the onslaught was renewed—not hurriedly now, but with a watchful determination, a guarded, fierceness, that forced One-to-twenty back foot by foot until but little room was left for fighting, and none, in sooth, for quarter when it should come, as soon it must, to the sheer wall and the bitter end.
Once more the blacks had slunk to the rear—had, in fact, already reached the wall, where, since they could get no farther, they cowered in miserable anticipation of speedy death. The “final tussle” was not far off now. Don and Jack had barely room to swing their cutlasses in. So much of the rocky ledge as might be measured by a single backward stride—only that separated them from the wall and the last scene of all. Inch by inch, their teeth hard set, their breath coming and going in quick, laboured gasps, they contested this narrow selvage of life. So the balance hung, when there came a second momentary lull in the deadly game of give and take. The dusky foe could now afford to breathe, being confident of the issue.
Keeping a wary eye upon their movements, Don seized his chum by the hand. “I never thought it would come to—to this, old fellow,” he said huskily; “God knows I didn't!”
Jack swallowed hard several times before he could trust himself to reply. “No more did I. But were not going to funk now, old fellow; and—and I'm glad it's to be together, anyhow!”
One mute, agonised look into each other's eyes; one last pressure of the hand, and again, shoulder to shoulder, they faced the foe and the inevitable end.
At this instant, when it seemed that not a ghost of a chance remained, there arose on their immediate right a shrill chattering sound—a sound that, somehow, had in it a ring of joyousness so strangely out of keeping with the situation that Don turned with a start and a sudden thrill of hope towards the quarter whence it came. As he did so, his eyes fell upon Bosin, forgotten in the heat of the fray, and now perched—good God! upon what?
Don clutched his companion's arm and pointed with unsteady finger.
“Look!”
A glance—more he did not dare bestow whilst confronted by that treacherous throng—showed Jack what he and Don had hitherto entirely failed (and no wonder!) to observe. In the extreme corner of the ledge on which they stood, a deep, narrow gash divided the towering side wall, and up this, clear to the summit of the rock, there ran a flight of steps. On these Bosin had perched himself. At their foot crouched the blacks, blind to everything except their own danger. .
“Wake those niggers up, and start them on ahead up the steps!” said Jack quickly. “Look sharp! they're going to rush us again.”
Falling on Spottie and Puggles, by dint of vigorous cuffing and shoving Don succeeded in getting them on the stairs. Rapidly as this was done, it produced an instantaneous effect upon the native rabble. They too had overlooked the existence of the stairway until Don's action recalled it to mind. A moment later the opening was besieged by a clamouring, infuriated throng.
“Up with you, old fellow!” cried Jack, turning on the natives with drawn cutlass after he had ascended some half-dozen steps, and thus covering his friend's retreat. “You had your innings at the pit; now it's my turn.”
Stationed on the steps as he was, Jack would have possessed no mean advantage over the natives but for one circumstance. The chain attached to his leg dangled down the steps, and the natives, discovering this, promptly seized it. In a twinkling Jack was dragged back into the midst of the furious rabble.
Don was half-way up the steps when the uproar caused by this mishap reached his ears. He turned just in time to see his companion disappear.
Down the steps he bounded, clearing half-a-dozen at a leap, until barely that number lay between him and the bottom, where, owing to Jack's desperate resistance, the natives had their hands too full to notice his approach. Gauging the distance with his eye, he took a flying leap from this height into the very midst of them, scattering them in all directions. As he intended, he overleapt his friend, who now quickly regained his feet. Before the natives had time to recover from the shock of Don's precipitate arrival in their midst, he and Jack were well up the steps again. One or two of the gang made as if to follow them, but turned tail when menaced with the cutlasses.
“Nick and go that time!” cried Don, as he gained the top and threw himself exhausted upon the rock. “Just for a minute I thought it was all U.P.”
“Me too,” said Jack, with more gravity than grammar; “and, between ourselves, the sensation wasn't half pleasant, either. But, I say, are you hurt?”
“No; nothing worse than a scratch or two. And you?”
“Oh, I'm all right. Though it's little short of a miracle that we weren't spitted on those beastly pikes. Say, do you think they'll try to rush us here?”
“Hardly, after the lesson we've taught them; unless, indeed, there is a wider approach to the summit here than those steps. We ought to look about us at once so as to make sure.”
“Right you are,” assented Jack. “Let's load the muskets and leave the niggers in charge here while we take our bearin's like, as the captain used to say, poor old chap!”
But when it came to charging the muskets—old-fashioned muzzle-loaders, it will be remembered—they made an unpleasant discovery. Don had lost his powder-flask in the fight.
To make matters worse, Spottie, when called upon to produce his, confessed that he had left it on board the cutter in the hurry of the start. Only Pug's flask remained; but this, unfortunately, was nearly empty. There was barely enough powder left for three charges.
This was but one of a series of disconcerting revelations which quickly followed the loading of the muskets.
In the first place, the most careful search failed to disclose any other means of egress from the Rock. In all the length and breadth of its summit they could find no opening except the one by which they had ascended, while on every hand its sides fell away in declivities so steep and smooth that not even Bosin could have found a foothold upon them—-or in perpendicular precipices that made the head swim as one looked down from their dizzy height upon the town, or sands, or jungle, far below.
With the bright sky above, and the free air of heaven all around them, they were as effectually hemmed in as when that bristling array of pikes forced them back to the blank wall. The jaws of the trap were a little wider; the effects of its deadly grip a little delayed—that was all.
To add to the horrors of their position, absolute starvation stared them in the face in the event of a prolonged siege. Since early morning they had eaten nothing, and the day was now far advanced; they had brought no food with them, and none was procurable here. A small temple crowned the Rock; but when they penetrated it in the hope of finding fruit or other edible offerings, its dustladen shrine spoke only too plainly of long disuse. Even the thin clusters of dates upon the few palms that eked out a stunted existence in a shallow depression of the Rock were acrid, shrivelled, and wholly unfit for food. The pit, it is true, contained water; but this, even had it been drinkable, lay hopelessly beyond their reach.
“No powder, no grub, no drink; it's a pretty, pickle to be in, anyhow,” said Jack, ruefully summing up these calamitous discoveries as they rejoined the blacks at the head of the stairs. “And, by Jove!” pointing down the steps, “they've gone and doubled the guard.”
“The waters the worst,” he presently resumed, scanning the arid expanse of rock thirstily. “We could hold out for days, if we only had a supply of that. As it is, I don't dare think what this place will be like under a midday sun—ugh!”
“All the more reason we should leave it, then,” said Don.
“How?”
Don was silent. The question did not seem to admit of an answer.
“Now, see here, old' fellow,” said Jack; “I admit, of course, that U.P. is written large all over the face of things just now; but at the same time it strikes me there's more than one way of getting off our white elephant's back.”
“There's only the tunnel to the creek,” said Don, “and that's not going to help us much while it's chock-full of natives, and we have no powder.”
“Then why not go over the cliff?” demanded Jack.
This daring and seemingly absurd proposal Don greeted with a stare of utter incredulity. “That would be facing death with a vengeance,” was his far from encouraging comment. “How high do you estimate the cliff to be, anyway?”
“A couple of hundred feet or so.”
Don laughed. “You may as well say thousands, so far as our chances of reaching the base in safety are concerned.. The thing's a sheer impossibility, I tell you; Bosin himself couldn't do it. You're downright mad to think of it, Jack.”
“Am I? I admit the difficulty, but not the impossibility. What Bosin can't do, we can.”
“How, I should like to know?”
“By making a rope. See here, did you notice those palm-trees we passed while making the round of the Rock?”
“I did; but 'pon my word I don't see what they've got to do with your proposal. Ropes don't grow on palm-trees.”
“Oh, but they do, though. Do you mean to say that you never saw the natives make a rope out of the branches of a palm?”
“Of course I have. And what's more, I know how it's done. But say,” his tone suddenly changing to one of anxiety, “suppose the palm-leaves don't give, us enough material?”
“I'm not sure they will,” said Jack doubtfully, “unless we spin it, out pretty fine; and that, of course, increases the danger of breakage. Well, if we run short, we can make shift with the blacks' clothes and turbans. But it's going to take a jolly long time to make—though we ought to finish it easily by to-morrow night. Then, ho for the cliff! And now, old fellow, just lie down, will you, and take a snooze: you're completely done up. When the moon rises I'll call you, and we'll have a whack at the trees, while Pug and Spottie do sentry-go.”
The blacks, poor fellows, were already sound asleep, with Bosin snuggled up between them; and Don was not long in following them into that realm of dreams, where waking cares, if they intrude at all, more often than not lie low and shadowy on the horizon. So Jack was left alone in the darkness and solitude of the Rock.
Kicking off his shoes, and tucking the end of the chain beneath his belt to secure perfect noiselessness of movement, he shouldered a musket, and fell to pacing back and forth past the black orifice that marked the point where the stairway cleft the rocky floor. Monotonous work it was, and weird. The steely glint of the stars, the mournful sobbing of the surf upon the sands, sent an involuntary shiver through his frame. He crept softly to the extreme brink of the chasm and peered into its depths. Below all was pitchy blackness; he could distinguish nothing, save, far down, at an infinite depth as it seemed, the faint, fantastic reflection of a star on the surface of the pool. Occasionally a sound of lazy splashing floated up to where he stood, and he thought with creeping flesh of the horrible, ghoulish surfeit the crocodiles had had that day.
To and fro beneath the steely stars—tramp, tramp, tramp, to the solemn dirge of the sea. Would the laggard moon never rise and put an end to his weird vigil?
Hark! what was that? He paused and listened with suspended breath, his back towards the dim outline of the stairway; listened, but heard only the moaning of the surf and the regular, sonorous breathing of his sleeping companions.
“One of those gorged crocodile beasts got a nightmare,” he muttered, with a smile at the comic aspect of his own fancy. “Ha,” catching sight of a faint, silvery glow in the east, “there's the moon at last. Time to call our fellows; I've had enough of this death's watch, anyhow.”
While uttering these words he made a step forward with the intention of calling Don and the blacks, when something whizzed swiftly through the air, he felt a sharp twinge, an intense burning sensation in his left arm, a deathly faintness stealing over him, and realised that he was wounded—wounded by a dexterously-thrown knife, which, had it not been for that timely forward stride, must have buried itself deep in his back. Luckily, in spite of the pain and giddiness, he retained his presence of mind. Quick as a flash he, wheeled, brought the hammer of the musket to full cock, and the musket itself to his shoulder. Above the yawning staircase the outline of a human figure showed indistinctly.
“One for you,” muttered Jack, and fired.
The figure threw up its arms and fell backwards.
The report of the musket brought Don to his feet. “What's the row?” he asked, running to his companion's side in alarm.
The appearance of other figures in lieu of the first supplied a more pertinent answer to this question than Jack could have given. He snatched up one of the remaining muskets, Jack possessing himself of the other. By this time Spottie and Puggles were also up, but, like the dutiful servants they were, they kept well in the rear of their masters.
The enemy were now literally swarming up the steps and sides of the stairway.
Jack gave the word—“Blaze away!” and a double report went hurtling wildly out over the sea.
Clubbing their muskets, they then fell upon and began clubbing the escaladers with an energy that speedily choked the contracted avenue of approach to the summit of the Rock with a heaving, scrambling, trampling mass of natives, whose desperate struggles to regain their lost foothold upon the steps only served to facilitate their descent to the bottom. In five minutes' time the repulse was complete; the foe retreated into the dark security of the chasm, leaving some six or eight of their number lying upon the scene of the affray. Jack threw aside his musket and sprang: down the steps to where they lay.
“What are you after now?” cried Don, leaping down after him.
“Cloths,” was Jack's laconic rejoinder, as he unceremoniously began to divest the natives of the long strips of country cotton that encircled their waists. “We want these for our rope.”
On hearing this Don also set to work, and in a short time they had secured some half-dozen cloths, together with an equal number of turbans, which lay scattered all up and down the steps like enormous mushrooms. With this booty they returned in triumph to the summit of the rock.
“They'll average twelve feet at least,” said Jack, eyeing the tumbled heap critically. “Let's see—twelve twelves make a hundred and forty-four; and by tearing them in two down the middle we'll get double length. Total, two hundred and eighty-eight feet. Hurrah, we've got our rope!”
“And a far safer one,” observed Don, “than if we had patched it up out of those palm-leaves. Well, it's an ill wind that—-”
He got no further, for Jack suddenly dropped at his feet as though he had been shot. He had fainted from loss of blood, as Don, to his horror, quickly discovered. As a matter of fact, the knife that had penetrated Jack's arm was still in the wound, and its projecting hilt was the first intimation Don received of his chum's hairbreadth escape. By the time he had removed the knife, ripped open the coat-sleeve, and bandaged the wound with a fragment torn from one of the cloths, Jack opened his eyes.
“Why didn't you tell me about this?” exclaimed Don reproachfully. “How did it happen?”
“How? Oh, one of those treacherous niggers shot his knife at me—the old trick,” said Jack, scrambling to his feet and shaking himself with nonchalant air, “I'd have told you, only I forgot it in the scuffle, Nothing but a scratch, anyway; I'm all right.”
Don's look was rather dubious, for, in spite of his companion's assumption of sang-froid, he could not but foresee the possible effect of a badly-wounded arm upon their proposed descent of the cliff.
The moon was now well above the horizon; so, setting the blacks to watch the stairs, they went to work on the rope at once—an easy task compared to what it must have been had they attempted to utilise the tough, fibrous palm-branches, as at first proposed.
“You haven't told me yet,” Jack presently observed, pausing in his task of knotting together the long strips of cloth as Don tore them off ready to his hand; “you haven't told me how you came to lay the lascar by the heels—in the creek, I think you said? Let's have the story now, old fellow.”
“Oh, there's a whole cable's-length of events leading up to that,” said Don. “I'd better begin at the beginning—with your disappearance, I mean.”
So there, beneath the stars, while the rope which was to ensure escape from the Rock grew under, their busy fingers, he recounted link by link the chain of events which the days and nights of Jack's absence had forged.
Far into the night did the story spin itself out, for Jack had many questions to ask, many comments to make; until at last it came to that terrible moment when Don had sought to rouse the captain, and found him to be sleeping the sleep that knows no waking. His voice grew choked and husky then Jack bent low over his work, and tears glistened in the ghostly moonlight.
“And in his jacket pocket I found this,” concluded Don, producing the well-thumbed Prayer Book. “On the fly-leaf—no, you can't make it out now, the light is so faint—but on the fly-leaf the dear old chap had written that whatever happened, he was to be buried at sea. So this morning, just before daybreak, we put off in the cutter, and gave him what he wished for—a seaman's burial.”
Jack knew the whole sad story now, and for a time they fell into one of those silences which, somehow, are apt to follow the mention of the dead who have endeared themselves to us in life—silences eloquent, in their very stillness, of regret and grief.
“There, it's done,” said Jack at last, as he tied and tested the final knot. “And now, hurrah for the cliff!”
Don had begun to coil the rope, when he suddenly paused in his task and exclaimed:
“Say, how are we going to fasten the end?”
“Fasten the end? Why, to——” Jack came to an abrupt stop, adding blankly after a moment: “Blest if I know what we can fasten it to!”
“Nor I,” Don acknowledged, as much taken aback as his companion by the appalling nature of this discovery. “There are the palms, of course, and the temple; but they're too far from the cliff to be of any use. The rope will hardly reach as it is, I'm afraid.”
“Oh, there must be some way of securing it,” replied Jack incredulously, “Surely there's a crack or something we can wedge one of the cutlasses into. Let's look, anyhow!”
Look they did, but not with the result Jack had so confidently anticipated. From side to side, from end to end of the Rock, they searched and searched again, even going down on their hands and knees that they might perchance feel what had escaped the eye, But without avail. So far as the moonlight enabled them to discern—and it made the place nearly as light as day—neither crack nor projection marred the smooth surface of the stone. They gave it up at length, utterly disheartened. Even Jack felt this to be the last straw, and abandoned himself to despair.
“It's a bad job altogether,” was the despondent comment with which he threw himself down beside the apparently useless coil of rope. “God help us, we haven't a ghost of a chance left!”
“Oh, things aren't quite so bad as that!” replied his companion, with an assumption of hopefulness he was far from feeling. “Who can say what may turn up? The darkest hour is just before the dawn, you know.”
“But,” said Jack, “suppose there isn't any dawn, what then?”