BACK TO THE CAMP
The path, with its coating of coral lime, stretched before me, and I
fled along it. The moon had disappeared behind the hills, but the limed
track was quite distinct. My watch had stopped, but I judged that there
was still a good two hours before the dawn, and I ran as I had never run
in my life. I recognized what sort of feeling I possessed for Edith
Herndon as I raced through the lonely night, and I reproached myself
bitterly for leaving the camp. I became convinced that Leith had set out
for the resting place of the Professor and his two daughters after
placing guards at the inner opening of the corridor to see that Holman
and I did not escape from the cavern, and I realized the terror which
the two girls would experience when the big brute reached the camp.
"The devil!" I muttered. "The fiendish brute!"
A chuckle came from a boulder beside the track, and Holman's cheery
voice set my pulses beating.
"You frightened the dickens out of me, Verslun," he cried. "I thought
you were one of the evil legion. Gee! I'm glad to see you."
"How did you get out?" I gasped as we rushed on together. "I thought I
left you in the cavern."
"It was a good job you didn't," he retorted. "There was a husky nigger
at the outside entrance of the passage, and he gave me the fight of my
life. Get off this track; they might be after us at any moment."
"Do you think that Leith has made for the camp?" I asked.
"I suppose he has. We must move as fast as we can, Verslun. If he
reaches there before us we'll deserve any fate that will come to us. We
shouldn't have left them."
The utterance of the conviction that had come to both of us brought a
silence, and we rushed across the boulder-strewn ground that we had
crossed earlier in the night. We felt certain that Leith knew of a surer
and safer path back to the camp, but it was useless for us to hunt for a
new trail at that moment. We would have to find our way down the nearly
perpendicular wall up which we had climbed after leaving the crevice
through which we had viewed the death dance, and, to me at least, the
recollections of that path brought feelings that were by no means
pleasant. But Leith was making toward the camp, and the horrible
thoughts aroused by the spectacle which we had witnessed in the early
night muzzled the thrills which the dangers of the climb sent through
our bodies. The dance had terrified the Fijian by arousing thoughts of
the deeds that would happen in its wake, and Kaipi's terror became a
gauge for us to measure its dread significance.
We reached the cliffs and ran up and down the ledge in a vain search for
the spot where we had clawed our way to the top. Not that we thought the
finding of the place would solve the problem of the descent. It was hard
to conceive of a more difficult way than the one by which we had come,
and as if he had suddenly come to the conclusion that any other path
would be preferable, Holman dropped upon his knees and lowered himself
upon a ledge that was immediately below.
"Come on, Verslun!" he cried, in a choked voice that was altogether
different from his cheery tones. "If there is no path we must roll down.
There's the first flush of the dawn!"
I looked toward the east and groaned. The faint grayish tint unnerved
me. Although it was possible that Leith had already reached the camp,
still we had promised the two girls that we would return by daylight,
and although we had a hazy notion as to what we would do when we did
reach their side, the longing to get there made us oblivious of danger.
I swung down on to the crumbling foothold that supported Holman, and
breathlessly we began to scramble toward the valley.
It was a mad climb. Holman exhibited a temerity that bordered on
insanity. With reckless daring he scrambled down upon dangerous niches
that jutted out upon the face of the cliff, and my repeated warnings
fell upon deaf ears. A task that would have appeared impossible when
viewed in daylight, lost half of its terrors because we only vaguely
apprehended the dangers that threatened us when a layer of shale
crumbled beneath our feet. Our descent became a wild toboggan. Slipping
and sliding, clutching wildly at every little projection that would
decrease the speed at which we were travelling, we rolled with bruised
and bleeding bodies on to a small platform, and lay half stunned for a
moment, as a thousand pieces of rock, dislodged by our bodies, bounced
past us into the valley.
Holman picked himself up and looked around. 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. As we crawled along the
platform we found that we had landed not more than twenty feet from the
crevice through which we had witnessed the blood-curdling "tivo," and we
hurried toward the spot where we had left the Fijian, whose nerves had
been upset by the glimpse he had had of the strange antics of the
dancers.
But Kaipi was not at the spot where we had left him. Whether his fears
had increased to such an extent that they had forced him to leave the
place, or whether he had come to the conclusion that we had returned to
the camp by some other route, we could not determine; so wasting no time
on useless conjecture we hurried toward the big maupei tree up which we
had climbed to reach the ledge.
But Holman's hurry proved disastrous. He had escaped the dangers of the
cliff descent to meet an accident when he had sufficient light to see
what he was about. In reaching for the limb of the tree that threshed
against the cliff, he lost his footing, and before I could grip him he
went crashing through the foliage to the ground, some fifty feet below!
I thought that I was an hour descending that tree, but I could not have
been more than three minutes if my skinned legs could be relied upon as
evidence of speed. I found Holman in a thorny tangle, and as I dragged
him into the open he groaned loudly and endeavoured to get upon his
feet.
"Are you hurt?" I questioned.
"No, no!" he cried. "I'm not hurt, Verslun. Get me on my feet, man.
Quick! For the love of God, quick!"
I gripped his shoulders and he managed to stand upright. The dawn came
with tropic suddenness at that moment, and I saw that he was bleeding
from a nasty wound above the right temple, while he limped painfully as
I helped him across a small cleared patch near the tree.
"I've hurt my leg," he cried, "but I'm going to get to the camp. If I
fall, Verslun, I want you to lend me a hand. Promise to help me, will
you? She--Miss Barbara, you know, old man. She is everything to me. Give
me a hand if I tumble down."
"I promise," I answered, and he wrung my hand as we started off through
the clawing, scratching vines that tripped us up as we tried to fight
our way forward.
If we had thought on the night before that the quarter mile of country
that lay between the camp and the rocky wall was a difficult stretch to
negotiate, we were more than doubly certain of its impenetrable
character now that daylight had come. How we had ever managed to get
through it in the darkness was a mystery that we tried to solve as we
attempted to make our way back. The place was a mad riot of thorny
undergrowth, laced and bound with vines that were as strong as wire
hawsers. The lianas appeared human to us; they lassoed our legs and
flung us sprawling upon our faces whenever we tried to quicken our
speed. Thorns of a strange fishhook variety drove their barbed points
into us, and each yard of the tortuous path that we cut through the
devilish vines was marked by a scrap of our clothing, which the
tormenting thorns seemed to wave aloft as an emblem of victory.
"He'll beat us!" gasped Holman. "I'm all in, Verslun; that fall has
finished me."
"Keep at it!" I said. "We must be near the camp by now."
"We've walked three miles," muttered Holman. "We've lost our way."
"No, we haven't!" I cried. "We've struck a bad patch, but we'll get
there soon."
The youngster clenched his teeth and endeavoured to forget the agony of
his leg, but the effort taxed his courage.
"We'll do it," I said. "Don't let the brute beat us."
"I--I won't!" he stammered. "If it was anything but my leg! Verslun!"
He fell on his face, and I helped him up, but once again he collapsed.
The injured limb made it impossible for him to stand or even crawl.
"You get ahead," he cried hoarsely. "Leave me, Verslun! Leave me here!"
"But I'd never find you again," I protested.
"Yes, you would! I'll crawl out after a few hours' rest. Run to the
camp, and shoot--shoot the devil the moment you put your eyes on him!"
I took a quick glance at the matted walls of the green creepers that
hedged us in on all sides. Holman was in the last stages of exhaustion,
and I reasoned quickly. If I left him in the middle of the thorny tangle
that encompassed us, it would be utterly impossible for me to find him
again, and he would probably perish from thirst. If I rushed away I
would be leaving him to certain death, and although our prospects of
leaving the island alive did not look too bright at that moment, I
considered that I would be making his demise a certainty by leaving him
in the maze.
I stopped, gripped him round the waist, and with a great effort managed
to lift him upon my shoulder. Holman's actions did not help me as I
struggled beneath him. He kicked like a madman when he understood what
I intended to do, but I held him in spite of his protests.
"Leave me here!" he screamed. "Go ahead by yourself, Verslun! What's the
use of taking me?"
"You're coming, so you can stop kicking," I muttered. "Take your fingers
out of my eyes."
But Holman's struggles ceased then, and his head fell backward. The pain
of his leg had made the plucky youngster swoon away, and with a prayer
upon my lips I sprang again at the bulwark of vicious creepers.
I have a very vague recollection of the remainder of that trip. In my
subconscious mind I have memories of an insane struggle with a jungle
that was alive, of a fight with thorny creepers that pursued us. I
became convinced that those vines were alive, because the same thorns
that we had passed hours before rose up again in our path and waved the
scraps of bloody clothing that they had torn from Holman and myself.
At last, half insane with anxiety for the safety of the girls and our
own struggles, we staggered blindly into the patch of cleared land upon
which the camp had been pitched on the previous evening. It was
impossible to mistake the site. 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. Leith had got ahead of us, and the big brute had
rushed the crazy scientist and his two daughters toward the hills that
stood up black and defiant above the sea of green vegetation.
[Illustration]