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?”