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The pink flush had deepened in the east, and nearby objects were discernible. "By all the gods! we are back on the ledge near the crevice!" he cried. "Come along and we'll hunt for Kaipi." It was wonderful how we had pulled up in our slide near the place where we had witnessed the performance that prompted us to make the ascent. But there was no mistake about the spot.
There had been no doubt in our minds concerning Leith's intentions from the time that Kaipi brought us the message which Soma had dropped, but the knowledge that the brute had declared himself to the Professor and the two girls brought us a most horrible feeling. In my own case I had never experienced such a sensation.
They had circled the floor about ten times when Holman tugged my coat and I wriggled back from the crevice. "What's up?" My lips were dry as I put the question. "Kaipi." "Where is he?" "Cleared out. Those human serpents scared him. Go softly, man! We must get him before he attempts to go down that cliff or he'll break his thick head."
Come, I'll show you." Holman returned at that moment and I explained what Kaipi had just told me. "The devil!" muttered the youngster. "The note said that he would meet them at the Long Gallery. See, the light is not visible from our camp, and the brute never thought that one of us would be far enough from the camp to notice it.
Kaipi connected the dance with death, and the same conclusion had come to us before we had heard the words of the frightened Fijian. Holman slackened speed, and we dodged through a mass of boulders that we judged were in a direct line with the crevice through which we had witnessed the happenings in the cave. "We should be near the place if there is an entrance to it on this side," he muttered.
Kaipi, who declared that he was never less inclined for slumber, agreed to take first watch, and Holman and I flung ourselves down upon the grass. We had had no slumber on the previous night, and the incidents in which we had taken part had left us exhausted. It was daybreak before Kaipi awakened us, and the face of the Fijian informed us that something had alarmed him.
Now, we'll strike the trail." Kaipi grinned again, put his sharpened knife into his belt and plunged into the dense undergrowth. The snaky, moist lianas made progress next to impossible. They clung around our legs like live things, and I damned the Professor's idiotic craving for notoriety as we waded through the clammy creepers in search of the trail made by the party.
"The captain sent me," I replied, looking straight at the giant as I fired the lie at him. "The carriers forgot Professor Herndon's camera, and Captain Newmarch sent Kaipi and me after you." Leith's mutterings were drowned by the scientist's cries of joy as he took the camera from my hand, and the big brute had time to recover himself before the Professor had stopped chattering.
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.
A dozen times we shifted ground on a signal from Kaipi, whose head was continually to the earth, and that game of hide and seek drove us frantic. Leith was hurrying toward the hills while we were crawling backward and forward through the undergrowth to escape a few natives who pursued their tactics with a persistency that was maddening.
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