THE THIRTEEN ROCKS
“He’s coming this way! Use your pistol, quick!”
Crack! Crack! Both of the pistols spoke up, and the lion was hit in the
head and in the left foreleg. Then the two Rover boys fired again, this
time at even closer range, one bullet piercing the beast’s ear and the
other plowing through the skin of his back.
But nothing stopped the rush of the ferocious lion, and it was only by
leaping to the rear of the nearest rock that Jack and Randy escaped the
onslaught.
In the next few minutes so many things happened that it is almost
impossible to describe them. The lion, with another roar and snarling
from pain, came around the rocks just as the boys leaped up. Then,
standing several feet above the beast, they fired once more. The
lion retreated, got wedged in between a tree and a rock, and turned
savagely, probably thinking in his excitement that he had in some way
been attacked from the rear.
“There’s a shelf just above us!” exclaimed Jack, glancing around for
some means of escape. “Let’s get up there!”
Roar after roar came from the lion, the sound so terrifying it was
enough to make anybody tremble. The goat was leaping from rock to rock,
and now disappeared from sight. The shelf the young major mentioned
was a rocky one about three feet above their heads. Over it grew a few
vines, and Randy clutched these only to have them come away in his
hands.
“Here, let me boost you up, Randy!” exclaimed Jack. “Quick! That lion
may take it into his head to leap at us!”
“But what of you?”
“I’ll get up somehow! Hurry! We have no time to waste!”
In a few seconds Randy was boosted to the shelf. Looking around, he saw
a place where he could dig in with his toes, and he promptly lay flat,
extending his hands downward as he did so.
“Come on! I’ll help pull you up!” he gasped. “Hurry up! The lion is
getting ready to jump.”
Thus assisted, the young major managed to scale the wall and reach the
rocky shelf. He had scarcely done so when the lion, crouching low,
made a wild leap upward.
The distance the beast covered was fully fifteen feet, and both the
Rover boys felt that he might have gained the rocky shelf had it not
been for Randy’s quick action. Beside him lay a jagged stone half as
big as his head. This he scooped up and launched at the beast when the
lion was less than a yard away. The stone did little damage to the lion
physically, but the attack was so unexpected that the forward movement
of the king of the jungle was stopped, and he dropped down on the rocks
from which he had come.
“Fire at him, Jack!” called out Randy. “Give him every bullet you’ve
got!” And then both boys emptied their pistols into the beast as he
stood there, evidently trying to make up his mind what next to do.
Some of the shots went wild, but two hit the lion squarely in the side,
and now with roars of pain and fear the beast suddenly retreated and
the next instant disappeared in the undergrowth on the edge of the
jungle.
“He’s gone!”
“Maybe he’ll come back!”
“Let’s reload just as fast as we can.”
The last suggestion was a good one, and they carried it out immediately.
In the meanwhile, they kept their eyes on the jungle, but the lion did
not show himself.
“Maybe he’s mortally wounded,” suggested Randy.
“I hope so,” answered his cousin. “But we can’t take any chances on
such a big beast as that. Gee! when he leaped for this shelf, I was
scared. I thought he was about ready to eat us up.”
“He’d have killed us both, Jack, if he could have gotten at us,”
answered Randy, with a shudder.
The boys realized that they had been in great danger, and if they were
exceedingly nervous, who could blame them? With reloaded pistols, they
waited where they stood, straining their eyes and ears for any other
movement the lion might make.
“And the worst of it is,” said Jack, “if that lion and that goat came
ashore from the _Coryanda_, for all we know, all the other beasts, and
maybe the snakes, came ashore too.”
“They could only do that if the steam yacht was completely wrecked so
that the cages were broken open.”
“Well, those cages didn’t look very secure to me. Don’t forget how
that snake and that tiger got loose.”
“We’ve got to get back to camp somehow and warn the others. But I must
confess I don’t feel much like going through that jungle to where we
left the little raft.”
“Nor do I. I’d rather try to climb over the rocks and get to the bay,
somehow or other, that way.”
The boys made an investigation and presently found a place at the end
of the narrow shelf where two or three rough steps led upward. Neither
of them wished to trust himself in the jungle, and so they kept on for
over half an hour, climbing one rocky height after another in their
endeavor to reach the bay without taking to the heavy growth to the
westward.
“Hurrah! I see the ocean!” cried Randy, presently. “I think if we keep
on in this direction we’ll soon get to a point where we can get down to
the bay. But, of course, we’ll be quite a distance from where we left
that raft.”
“Never mind. Maybe we can swim back to the raft,” answered Jack. He
felt that anything would be better than facing such wild beasts as
might now be roaming the otherwise deserted island.
It was hard work climbing over the rocks, which in many places were
sharp and irregular.
“Look out that you don’t go down into some deep hole,” warned Jack.
“You might get wedged so tight you’d never get out.”
“I suppose that goat got along easily enough. A goat loves to leap the
rocks.”
“Yes, but we’re not goats. Come on! We want to get back before night.”
The boys moved forward, but the going was now more perilous than ever,
and presently, having leaped to a spot that looked fairly easy to
negotiate, they found further progress all but impossible.
“Looks like we were stuck, Randy,” said the young major, scratching his
head.
“Oh, don’t say that, Jack! We don’t want to go back after coming all
this distance!”
“Yes, but if we can’t go ahead we’ll have to go back.”
For ten minutes the two youths searched around, and then managed to
find a split between two of the rocks and beyond this a rocky slope
leading still farther upward.
“We might as well try this,” said Randy. “If it doesn’t lead to
anywhere we can go back.”
The rocky slope ended in something of a plateau. The boys were now
at one of the highest points on the island and could see in almost
all directions, the heavy jungle cutting off only a small part of the
coast line in the southwest. To the north and the east, as well as the
southeast, rolled the mighty Atlantic, flashing in the rays of the
declining sun. To the eastward on the island were innumerable rocks,
some of them fantastic in shape and forming a sort of bowl, the bottom
of which was now shrouded in shadows.
“My gracious! this whole end of the island is nothing but rocks,”
declared Randy.
“Look!” exclaimed Jack, pointing to the coast southward. “Unless I’m
greatly mistaken there is the wreck of the _Coryanda_!”
“It’s the old steam yacht just as sure as you’re born!” answered his
cousin.
“No wonder I didn’t see the wreck from the top of that palm tree,” went
on the young major. “See how she’s wedged in between the rocks.”
“Yes, and it looks to me as if her backbone was broken, Jack. Anyway,
she’s split bow and stern. No wonder the animals got loose. Smashing up
on the rocks that way must have loosened everything.”
“Maybe most of the animals were killed by the shocks.”
“I hope they were.”
The two boys walked to a nearby rock in an endeavor to get a better
view of the wreck, which was all of a quarter of a mile away.
“We’d have a hard job getting down to her, I’m thinking,” remarked
Jack. “I don’t believe we’d ever be able to get over those rocks. We’d
have either to sail around to the eastward, or otherwise make our way
to the south shore and get to her from that point.”
“Well, I’m glad we located her, Jack; aren’t you?”
“To be sure I am, Randy. If we have to stay on this island any great
length of time we’ll probably need everything we can get from the
yacht. We didn’t have any great variety on the raft, remember, and we
need some clothing as well as food.”
“And don’t forget that we want a flag to hoist upside down as a signal
of distress.”
Having inspected the wreck as well as they could from such a distance,
the boys began speculating on how they might get down from the rocks
to the eastern shore of the little bay. They had to go forward with
caution, because at every step the way seemed to become more perilous.
“I don’t believe any human being was ever on these rocks before,” was
Randy’s comment.
“I guess you’re right,” answered Jack. “What would bring a person
up to such an out-of-the-way place, anyhow? There isn’t much to this
island, and I don’t wonder the natives give it the go-by.”
The boys went a few yards farther, and then both leaped to a rock that
seemed to be secure, but which was not. Under their combined weight it
tilted unexpectedly, and they suddenly found themselves sliding they
knew not to where.
“Grab hold!” yelled Jack, and did what he could to stop his progress,
and Randy did likewise.
Down they went over one slippery rock after another, bringing up at
last in a sort of pocket on the side of a cliff. Here they stood
panting for breath and rubbing their shins and their elbows, which had
been sadly scraped in the descent.
“Great Cæsar! I thought we were going down to kingdom come,” gasped
Randy.
“Now we are in a pickle!” returned the young major. “How ever are we
going to get out of this place?”
Jack began to look around, wondering what their next move might be. An
instant later he let out an exclamation of astonishment.
“What is it, Jack?” queried his cousin, as he saw the young major
pointing his finger and counting slowly to himself.
“Look there, Randy! Am I right, or am I only dreaming? Do you see these
sharp-pointed rocks all around us? Well, just count them, will you?”
Catching what was in Jack’s mind, Randy began to count the huge circle
of sharp-pointed rocks.
“Why, there are thirteen of them!” he burst out. “Oh, Jack! do you
think――――”
“That this is the place Ira Small has been talking about? Well, it
certainly looks like it!”