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Updated: June 25, 2025
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.
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.
Three times it flared up and as quickly died away, but at the third disappearance Holman and I, with the vengeance-seeking Kaipi, were struggling through the network of damp vegetation toward the spot from which the signal had come. The snaky vines seemed to us to be leagued with Leith as we tried to force our way to the spot where the tiny flash of light had appeared amongst the rocks.
We caught up to the deserter on the ledge to which Holman and the Fijian had dragged me a short time before, and the youngster abused the frightened native as he endeavoured to turn him back. "No, no!" shrieked the Fijian. "Me no see dance like that. Me die if I stay." "Why?" I asked. "It is 'tivo' death dance," gasped Kaipi. "Wizard men dance it. Something going happen, damn bad."
The embers of the big fire were still smoking and we stared with sweat-blinded eyes at the place where the girls' tent had been standing when we rushed off with Kaipi to investigate the light in the hills. But there was no trace of the girls or the Professor.
With a wave of his hand he ordered Kaipi to the fire where Soma and the other five islanders were sitting, and nodded his head as an intimation that I could stay. "By the way," he growled, as I fell upon the plate of tinned salmon which Edith Herndon handed to me, "who was doing the shooting this afternoon?" "I was," I replied.
The situation was pitiful to contemplate, and sick with terror at thoughts of the fate of the two girls, I found Holman and pulled him out of the circle of light thrown by the fire which Kaipi was tending. "What is it?" he asked. "I've got proof!" I cried. "Soma dropped a note that Leith sent him off with when we halted. Kaipi found it and brought it to me."
A knife sawed the cords, a pair of hands gripped my heels and flung me forward, and as I fell clear of the groove the stone horror crashed back into its bed with a jolt that shook the huge table! I opened my eyes to see Kaipi looking at the face of the dancer he had stabbed in the back as the brute was muttering his prayer! "Oh hell!" said the Fijian. "Me thought him Soma. Me made mistake!
It seemed to me that she suspected my near presence, and that she was singing to guide me to the spot where the party had camped. Five minutes afterward Kaipi and I stumbled into the circle of light round the fire, and Leith sprang to his feet with a growl of rage. "What's this?" he cried. "Who the devil gave you permission to come here?"
The threshing limb of the maupei tree that was within a yard or two of the spot where Kaipi and I stood waiting disappeared in the night, and the scratching of Holman's shoes high above our heads came down to us through the intense silence and proved that he was holding his position with difficulty. A small piece of shale hit me on the shoulder after a long wait, and I turned my face upward.
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