THE BLACK KINDERGARTEN
I thought we were a thousand years rolling down that slope of smothering
ash. It was a quicksand that melted beneath us. We drove our arms into
it, but the stuff slipped away like fine wood ash, and we went on and
on. I knew Holman was in front of me. Occasionally a curse directed at
Leith managed to slip out when his mouth was not filled with the
smothering dust. Once I shouted at him, and he answered the cry with a
groan that told me how the happening had affected him. The arch ruffian
had checkmated us for the third time inside three days.
We struck the bottom at last, and, like moles, we clawed our way out of
the pile of soft, feathery stuff that came streaming down upon us like a
river, and for some minutes we were busy wiping the fluffy ash from
mouth and eyes and ears. It clung to us like down, and with each breath
we drew it into our lungs till we coughed and sneezed from the
irritation it produced. Struggling forward, knee-deep in the fine, dry
powder, we reached a spot that was practically clear, and for five
minutes we were busy endeavouring to relieve our tortured lungs.
"How far did we roll?" asked Holman.
"About half a mile," I replied.
"But straight, Verslun! What do you think?"
"Over a hundred yards; I'm certain of that."
"Well, I'm going to climb back."
"You can't do it!" I gasped. "That stuff is like quicksand."
"All the same I'm going to make a try."
We stumbled back to the gigantic ash pile, and shoulder to shoulder we
made a rush at the immense mountain down which we had rolled. We
couldn't see it, but we felt it rise around us like a flood as our legs
sank deeper. It came up to our waists--to our armpits, choking and
smothering us. Coming down we had rolled lightly over its surface, now
our legs bored into it like rods, and we struggled vainly to move. The
pile was like a high snowdrift into which we sank deeper and deeper the
more we struggled, and, worn out with our efforts, we fought our way
clear of the smothering ash and made an attempt to review the situation.
"He's beat us," groaned Holman. "He just trotted ahead of us till he
had us on the verge of the thing, and then he side-stepped. O God! What
asses we have been!"
"We did our best," I said.
"Our best?" repeated Holman. "And the man who tells you that he did his
best as an excuse for failure should be shot, Verslun."
"We couldn't tell that this infernal trench was in front," I grumbled.
"Then we shouldn't have chased him like a brace of madmen. I wonder if
Maru and Kaipi came near it?"
"We might call out, perhaps they'd hear."
Holman yelled the names of the two natives into the gloom above us, but
his yells only started a million echoes rolling through the tremendous
fissure in which we were prisoners.
"They turned back," said Holman. "They had sense enough to stay with One
Eye; we hadn't."
It was no use arguing with the youngster. He denounced our stupidity
till his tongue was too dry to utter the charges his half-crazed brain
made against us.
To divert his thoughts I proposed that we make an attempt to explore the
place, and without making any choice regarding direction we moved into
the inky darkness.
"We'll take it in turns to lead," said Holman gruffly. "Then if one of
us topples over a precipice the other has a chance to save himself. I'll
take first try at it, and if I find that I have pushed my foot into a
hole I'll yell out a warning."
I agreed, and we moved forward slowly. The chances of ever finding our
way out of that place seemed small at that moment. Leith had put us in a
spot where we would not be likely to trouble him for some time, and with
bitterness in our hearts we staggered along in the dark, alternately
damning the treachery of the ruffian and our own stupidity. We had tried
to exercise caution, but when we reviewed our actions, it seemed, as
Holman had remarked, that we had used the judgment of children.
"Why didn't we wait at the door of that place till the brute came out?"
he asked.
I had no answer to give to the question, and after an interval of
silence he fired others at me.
"Why did you let go of One Eye? Why didn't we examine the cavern near
the fire before chasing him? The girls might have been somewhere near
the fire! Do you think they were?"
"I don't think so," I answered, trying to soothe him. "I think Leith was
the only person at the fire. He picked Soma up just before we reached
the gulf."
"But where are they? Where has the devil put them?"
"God alone knows!" I cried. "Here, it's my turn to take the lead."
In silence we went stumbling on into the appalling blackness. We could
not see the dim outlines of each other when we stood only a few inches
apart. The darkness of the Cavern of Skulls had been relieved by the
silver skewers of moonlight, but in the night that rolled around us
there was not a single gleam of light.
We had no matches. Everything that was in our pockets had been jolted
out during the mad jaunt to the stone table, and now the revolver and
cartridges which we had taken from One Eye had been lost by Holman
during the slide down the mountain of volcanic ash that brought us to
the bottom of the underground prison.
We plodded on for about an hour, then stopped simultaneously. At first I
thought that the horror of the situation had affected my brain, but the
fact that Holman had stopped abruptly at the same moment as I did choked
back the cold fear that had rushed upon me. I was not insane! Holman was
listening too! I seemed to feel that the tiny thread of sound which had
set my pulses beating madly had also keyed him up to the highest
tension.
After a minute of intense silence he put a question.
"Did you hear anything?"
"Did you?" I stammered.
"Are we mad, Verslun?" he asked hoarsely. "I thought--" He stopped and
moved close to me. I heard his quick breathing as he groped to find me.
"Verslun, did you hear?" he whispered, gripping my arm. "I heard her
speak."
"I thought I did," I breathed. "Perhaps--perhaps it was an echo."
For a few minutes we stood, our ears searching for the sound that had
disturbed us. We seemed afraid to call out--afraid to quench the little
spark of hope which had suddenly flared up in the despair that filled
our breasts. We knew that our ears had lied, and we tried to lengthen
the thrill by remaining perfectly silent.
The sound came again, and Holman sent a wild cry into the night that
hemmed us in. We were not insane! The spark of hope blazed as we rushed
headlong forward. The silvery voice of Barbara Herndon had come to us
again through the terrible gloom!
[Illustration]