A QUESTION OF MARKSMANSHIP.
“Door?” repeated Carl, in reply to his chum’s exclamation. “There’s no
door here!”
“But there is!” insisted Jimmie. “I heard the rattle of iron against
granite only a moment ago!”
As the boy spoke he turned his flashlight back to the narrow passage and
then, catching his chum by the arm, pointed with a hand which was not
altogether steady to an iron grating which had swung or dropped from
some point unknown into a position which effectually barred their return
to the outer air! The bars of the gate, for it was little else, were not
brown and rusty but bright and apparently new.
“That’s a new feature of the establishment,” Jimmie asserted. “That gate
hasn’t been long exposed to this damp air!”
“I don’t care how long it hasn’t been here!” Carl said, rather crossly.
“What I want to know is how long is it going to remain there?”
“I hope it will let us out before dinner time,” suggested Jimmie.
“Away, you and your appetite!” exclaimed Carl. “I suppose you think this
is some sort of a joke. You make me tired!”
“And the fact that we couldn’t get out if we wanted to,” Jimmie grinned,
“makes me hungry!”
“Cut it out!” cried Carl. “The thing for us to do now is to find some
way of getting by that man-made obstruction.”
“Man-made is all right!” agreed Jimmie. “It is perfectly clear, now,
isn’t it, that the supernatural had nothing to do with the
demonstrations we have seen here!”
“I thought you understood that before!” cried Carl, impatiently.
Jimmie, who stood nearest to the gate, now laid a hand upon one of the
upright bars and brought his whole strength to bear. The obstruction
rattled slightly but remained firm.
“Can’t move it!” the boy said. “We may have to tear the wall down!”
“And the man who swung the gate into position?” questioned Carl. “What
do you think he’ll be doing while we’re pulling down that heap of
stones? You’ve got to think of something better than that, my son!”
“Anyway,” Jimmie said, hopefully, “Sam is on the outside, and he’ll soon
find out that we’ve been caught in a trap.”
“I don’t want to pose as a prophet of evil, or anything like that,” Carl
went on, “but it’s just possible that he may have been caught in a trap,
too. Anyway, it’s up to us to go ahead and get out, if we can, without
any reference to assistance from the outside.”
“Go ahead, then!” Jimmie exclaimed. “I’m in with anything you propose!”
The boys now exerted their united strength on the bars of the gate, but
all to no purpose. So far as they could determine, the iron contrivance
had been dropped down from above into grooves in the stone-work on
either side. The bars were an inch or more in thickness, and firmly
enclosed in parallel beams of small size which crossed them at regular
intervals.
Seeing the condition of affairs, Jimmie suggested:
“Perhaps we can push it up!”
“Anything is worth trying!” replied Carl.
But the gate was too firmly in place to be moved, even a fraction of an
inch, by their joint efforts.
“Now, see here,” Jimmie said, after a short and almost painful silence,
“there’s no knowing how long we may be held in this confounded old
dungeon. We’ll need light as long as we’re here, so I suggest that we
use only one flashlight at a time.”
“That will help some!” answered Carl, extinguishing his electric.
Jimmie threw his light along the walls of the chamber and over the
floor. There appeared to be no break of any kind in the white marble
which shut in the apartment, except at one point in a distant corner,
where a slab had been removed.
“Perhaps,” suggested Carl, “the hole in the corner is exactly the thing
we’re looking for.”
“It strikes me,” said Jimmie, “that one of us saw a light in that corner
not long ago. I don’t remember whether you called my attention to it, or
whether I saw it first, but I remember that we talked about a light in
the apartment as we looked in.”
“Perhaps we’d better watch the hole a few minutes before moving over to
it,” suggested Carl. “The place it leads to may hold a group of savages,
or a couple of renegades, sent on here to make trouble for casual
visitors.”
“Casual visitors!” repeated Jimmie. “That doesn’t go with me! You know,
and I know, that this stage was set for our personal benefit! How the
Redfern bunch got the men in here so quickly, or how they got the
information into this topsy-turvy old country, is another question.”
“I presume you are right,” Carl agreed. “In some particulars,” the boy
went on, “this seems to me to be a situation somewhat similar to our
experiences in the California mountains.”
“Right you are!” cried Jimmie.
The circle of light from the electric illuminated the corner where the
break in the wall had been observed only faintly. Determined to discover
everything possible regarding what might be an exit from the apartment,
Jimmie kept his light fixed steadily on that corner.
In a couple of minutes Carl caught the boy by the arm and pointed along
the finger of light.
“Hold it steadier now,” he said. “I saw a movement there just now.”
“What kind of a movement?” asked the other.
“Looked like a ball of fire.”
“It may be the cat!” suggested Jimmie.
“Quit your foolishness!” advised Carl impatiently. “This is a serious
situation, and there’s no time for any grandstanding!”
“A ball of fire!” repeated Jimmie scornfully. “What would a ball of fire
be doing there?”
“What would a blue ball of fire be doing on the roof?” asked Carl,
reprovingly. “Yet we saw one there, didn’t we?”
Although Jimmie was inclined to treat the situation as lightly as
possible, he knew very well that the peril was considerable. Like a good
many other boys in a trying situation, he was usually inclined to keep
his unpleasant mental processes to himself. He now engaged in what
seemed to Carl to be trivial conversation, yet the desperate situation
was no less firmly impressed upon his mind.
The boys waited for some moments before speaking again, listening and
watching for the reappearance of the object which had attracted their
attention.
“There!” Carl cried in a moment. “Move your light a little to the left.
I’m sure I saw a flash of color pass the opening.”
“I saw that too!” Jimmie agreed. “Now what do you think it can be?”
In a moment there was no longer doubt regarding the presence at the
opening which was being watched so closely. The deep vocal vibrations
which had been noticed from the other chamber seemed to shake the very
wall against which the boy stood. As before, it was followed in a moment
by the piercing, lifting cry which on the first occasion had suggested
the appeal of a woman in agony or terror.
The boys stood motionless, grasping each other by the hand, and so each
seeking the sympathy and support of the other, until the weird sound
died out.
“And that,” said Jimmie in a moment, “is no ghost!”
“Ghost?” repeated Carl scornfully. “You may as well talk about a ghost
making that gate and setting it against us!”
“Anyway,” Jimmie replied, “the wail left an odor of sulphur in the air!”
“Yes,” answered Carl, “and the sulphur you speak of is a sulphur which
comes from the dens of wild beasts! Now do you know what we’re up
against?”
“Mountain lions!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“Jaguars!” answered Carl.
“I hope they’re locked in!” suggested Jimmie.
“Can you see anything that looks like a grate before that opening?”
asked Carl. “I’m sure I can’t.”
“Nothing doing in that direction!” was the reply.
At regular intervals, now, a great, lithe, crouching body could be seen
moving back and forth at the opening, and now and then a cat-like head
was pushed into the room! At such times the eyes of the animal, whatever
it was, shone like balls of red fire in the reflection of the electric
light. Although naturally resourceful and courageous, the two boys
actually abandoned hope of ever getting out of the place alive!
“I wonder how many wild animals there are in there?” asked Carl in a
moment. “It seems to me that I have seen two separate figures.”
“There may be a dozen for all we know,” Jimmie returned. “Gee!” he
exclaimed, reverting to his habit of concealing serious thoughts by
lightly spoken words, “Daniel in the lion’s den had nothing on us!”
“How many shots have you in your automatic?” asked Carl, drawing his own
from his pocket. “We’ll have to do some shooting, probably.”
“Why, I have a full clip of cartridges,” Jimmie answered.
“But have you?” insisted Carl.
“Why, surely, I have!” returned Jimmie. “Don’t you remember we filled
our guns night before last and never——”
“I thought so!” exclaimed Carl, ruefully. “We put in fresh clips night
before last, and exploded eight or nine cartridges apiece on the return
trip to Quito. Now, how many bullets do you think you have available?
One or two?”
“I don’t know!” replied Jimmie, and there was almost a sob in his voice
as he spoke. “I presume I have only one.”
“Perhaps the electric light may keep the brutes away,” said Carl
hopefully. “You know wild animals are afraid of fire.”
“Yes, it may,” replied Jimmie, “but it strikes me that our little
torches will soon become insufficient protectors. Those are jaguars out
there, I suppose you know. And they creep up to camp-fires and steal
savage children almost out of their mothers’ arms!”
“Where do you suppose Sam is by this time?” asked Carl, in a moment, as
the cat-like head appeared for the fourth or fifth time at the opening.
“I’m afraid Sam couldn’t get in here in time to do us any good even if
he stood in the corridor outside!” was the reply. “Whatever is done,
we’ve got to do ourselves.”
“And that brings us down to a case of shooting!” Carl declared.
“It’s only a question of time,” Jimmie went on, “when the jaguars will
become hungry enough to attack us. When they get into the opening, full
under the light of the electric, we’ll shoot.”
“I’ll hold the light,” Carl argued, “and you do the shooting. You’re a
better marksman than I am, you know! When your last cartridge is gone,
I’ll hand you my gun and you can empty that. If there’s only two animals
and you are lucky with your aim, we may escape with our lives so far as
this one danger is concerned. How we are to make our escape after that
is another matter.”
“If there are more than two jaguars,” Jimmie answered, “or if I’m
unlucky enough to injure one without inflicting a fatal wound, it will
be good-bye to the good old flying machines.”
“That’s about the size of it!” Carl agreed.
All this conversation had occurred, of course, at intervals, whenever
the boys found the heart to put their hopes and plans into words. It
seemed to them that they had already spent hours in the desperate
situation in which they found themselves. The periods of silence,
however, had been briefer than they thought, and the time between the
departure of Sam and that moment was not much more than half an hour.
“There are two heads now!” Jimmie said, after a time, “and they’re
coming out! Hold your light steady when they reach the center of the
room. I can’t afford to miss my aim.”
“Is your arm steady?” almost whispered Carl.
“Never better!” answered Jimmie.
Four powerful, hungry, jaguars, instead of two, crept out of the
opening! Jimmie tried to cheer his companion with the whispered hope
that there might possibly be bullets enough for them all, and raised his
weapon. Two shots came in quick succession, and two jaguars crumpled
down on the floor. Nothing daunted, the other brutes came on, and Jimmie
seized Carl’s automatic. The only question now was this:
How many bullets did the gun hold?