Lucia, hurrying along beside Frank as he sturdily strode through the
gloom, swinging the lantern to and fro to apprise the explorers,
waiting in the darkness, of his approach, felt that wings could
hardly be swift enough to convey to Lloyd the warning of his peculiar
and imminent danger. And, yet, it might be even now too late! She
was appalled at the thought of his risks alone in the depths of an
unexplored cavern, without a light, without a landmark, without a clue
to his station in the subterranean labyrinth, his only companion a
strange, half-civilised man, who had once already, at great jeopardy
to himself, slyly and treacherously attempted his life. She marvelled
at Lloyd's foolhardy temerity, and then--and the thought redoubled
her speed--she realised that he had no vague intuition of the secret
of his peril, she was sure that he had not for a moment recognised or
distrusted his guide.
She hardly felt the chill of the rare air; she cared naught for the
rough footing; now and again she stumbled and clutched at Frank for
support, but instantly pressed on, unwearied, fevered, alert.
Naught so sinister as the unutterable blackness was ever presented to
her imagination. She stared wide-eyed at the palpable-seeming glooms
of the vast halls, made visible by the dim glister of the little
lantern. Things of evil omen, winged, unseen, whisked by her head; once
a bat struck her full in the face. The place seemed alive with these
creatures, and, now and again, as she heard their strange, uncanny
squeak, she started violently, all her nerves jarring.
"We shall soon be beyond the bat zone, Lucia," said Frank kindly,
remembering the universal feminine horror of the genus.
His voice, so hearty and cheery in the outdoor world, seemed strangely
hollow, unnatural in this environment, echoing far away, and coming
anew in a different key, and startling her with the conviction of
terrible, unseen beings, conferring apart in the unimagined distance,
speaking her name.
"Oh, not a word--" she whispered, "on your life, not another word," and
she clung to him terrified.
He burst out with his boyish, rollicking laughter, and all the cavern
was filled with mocking merriment, raucous, horrible, as if the
cachinnation of invisible fiends repeated his tones, resounding anew,
now here, now there, now far in advance, now close behind them, and,
even at last, when all seemed still, again an elfin mimicry.
Frank checked himself; he saw that her terrors were genuine. The
feminine ideal had always figured in his unsentimental appraisement as
a marplot; he was beginning to be afraid, from Lucia's heavier drag on
his arm, the dilation of her eyes, the tremor in her voice, that such
courage as she had summoned for the enterprise was already failing
her, and that he would shortly be adjured to turn about and retrace
their way, and restore her to the glad outer air and the pleasant
surface of the earth. He said naught further, and when she had begun to
fear that they had missed the trace, although he had told her that for
a certain distance there was no break in the right-hand wall, and they
could not go amiss as long as they kept in touch with it, she heard a
faint halloo in the night, as one might hear in a dream. When Frank
responded vociferously, it came anew, and stronger still.
Suddenly she saw, across a vast expanse of utter darkness, like the
face of the deep when the earth was without form and void, the outline,
as it were, of a promontory growing slowly into being; a faint flicker
of light--it seemed star-like in contrast with the deep gloom--revealed
two moving creatures poised there, which she presently recognised as
human beings. One, she was sure that it was Lloyd, had struck a match,
and from it had kindled a bit of wood--it was his forlorn little
cigar-case of imitation lacquer, which he extravagantly sacrificed; he
expected to have better things after this! While the stolid mountaineer
looked on, Lloyd once more called out blithely to his approaching
acquaintances, and distinguishing the voice which she had feared would
never sound again, she burst into tears.
Frank, all tingling with the ardour of adventure, with the excitements
of extreme jeopardy, with the interest of novelty, felt a surge of
resentment toward her as an inopportune spoil-sport. The spirit of
discipline was strong within him.
"Well, upon my word, Lucia Laniston," he said severely--and a hundred
distant voices were repeating, "Lucia Laniston! Lucia Laniston!" while
she hung upon his arm, vaguely flinching from the echoes and seeking to
stop her ears. "I'll never take you with me anywhere again, as long as
I live! There is no danger. What are you crying for--answer me that?"
And the darkness conjured her--"Answer me that?"
"Oh, Frank," she whispered: she could not speak aloud for the
echoes--even the sibilance that followed her words made her now and
then shrink away and look back. Then she put both hands on one of his
shoulders, and stood on tip-toe to bring her lips close to his ear,
"We must look out for that mountaineer. We have recognised him at
last--both Ruth and I. He is the man whom we noticed in disguise at the
concert where that girl sang and danced, and who afterward tried to
kill Mr. Lloyd in the Ferris Wheel!"
"The devil he is!" exclaimed Frank, stopping short, disconcerted and
dismayed.
"The devil he is--he is--he is--he is the devil!" The echoes reiterated
the words with a distracting distinctness, and she put her hand over
Frank's lips.
"The next time you speak--whisper," she admonished him. "I
expected,--Mr. Jardine expected that he would kill Mr. Lloyd while you
were gone."
"It must be that he has got no pistol," Frank surmised decisively. "And
that's strange, for these fellows all carry their 'shootin' iron' in
the leg of their left boot. That's the only reason, I dare swear. By
sheer strength, he couldn't. Lloyd could throw him from here to New
Helvetia. He doubtless expected to take Lloyd by surprise, and suddenly
push him over into an abyss, and didn't get the opportunity. He saw
enough of athletes at the carnival to know he would be outmatched in a
fair fight. Treachery or a pistol was his only chance. But why on earth
did not Jardine tell me?"
"He tried--he tried--but you wouldn't wait a minute--you wouldn't hear
a word."
Even in the dim light Frank's face showed crestfallen, dispirited,
mortified.
"I'm sorry you came--but we must make the best of it. See here, Lucia,
when we join them, do you get close to Lloyd and very quietly tell
him--don't choke him, like you did me; you've pretty near strangled me,
clutching me by the collar that way--but whisper the facts to him. Very
quietly, mind you. We mustn't excite the suspicions of that miscreant.
Our safety may depend on his thinking that we do not recognise him. Let
Lloyd know, and walk with him, and I'll keep right along with Mister
Mountain-Man. We will only make a feint of seeing the cave--just to
avoid precipitating some rascality--and take the first chance to get
out of this as soon as possible."
When they reached the waiting explorers, who being without adequate
light could not come to meet them, Lucia was no longer walking with her
cousin's arm, but following, as he preceded her, swinging the lantern.
The way had grown rough and unequal; sudden unexpected descents made
the walking difficult amidst the jagged edges of the crag and fragments
long ago fallen from the roof; climbing the acclivity, on which they
still stood, she was now and again fain to clutch at a projection
of rock to assist her steps, and, although she was rarely light and
active, and kept up well with Frank's long stride, he carefully handled
the lantern to afford her all the light possible. It seemed to Lloyd,
however, that she needed more effective assistance, and, as soon as
their proximity made it possible, he advanced to meet them, as the
crafty Frank had anticipated, and offered her his arm. Frank turned
for a moment, surveying this arrangement, as if he had not expected
it; then, addressing the mountaineer, but still keeping the lantern in
his own hands, he said bluffly, "Come on, old Sport--we'll take the
lead. Guide us to that marble palace we were thinking of buying when we
turned back."
"It has got marble palaces beat to a frazzle," Lloyd chimed in
enthusiastically.
She noted with a pang, half gratulation, half grief, that he asked no
questions as to the others. He had no curiosity as to their reasons for
declining the excursion. He seemed not even aware of their absence--to
him all had come since she was here. She felt the strength of his
support, his sure-footed agility, and moved on swiftly and easily
on his arm. But she could not, by lagging, find an opportunity for
her confidential whisper. When sharp, jagged rocks intervened in the
path, and she slackened her pace, the mountaineer seemed to observe it
immediately, and accommodated his gait to theirs, although, once or
twice, Frank, forging on with the lantern, the way being obvious, a
canon-like interval, between great, beetling cliffs, left them so far
behind that Lloyd called a halt.
"Remember Miss Laniston," he admonished the youth. "You are not walking
for a purse." Then, jocularly, "That lantern is not your personal
property--it doesn't look well for you to make off with it like that."
Somehow, on Lloyd's arm, Lucia forgot to be afraid. The terrible glooms
had a certain gruesome picturesqueness that no longer appalled her. She
could look up into the infinite vaults of the darkness, and her hope,
her soul, no longer fainted within her. The lantern, like a tiny star,
lucently white, with a rayonnant halo about its focus, showed vast,
rugged, crag-shaped forms looming indistinctly in these undreamed-of
subterranean realms, and now the path skirted an abyss of unimagined
depth, and now toiled up an ascent, mountain-like in its vague
immensity, but she had no tremors, no thought of regret for the bland
outer air, and the bliss of the candid sunshine. She trusted implicitly
to him. She knew that he was ignorant, all untrained mentally, sadly
neglected, hardly used by Fate, but she relied on the inherent strength
of his judgment, his fine, bright, native intellect, his optimism,
his simple valiance in the fight of life. She did not doubt that she
would have presently an opportunity to disclose the facts to him, to
communicate her warning, and she was sure that he would instantly know
the best course to pursue, and that he would have the courage and the
dexterity to make it effective. She realised his high moral qualities,
so rare in these days that they seemed like a special gift. His
unselfishness would take due account of her, of Frank--his magnanimity
would even spare the murderous mountaineer, unless, indeed, their
safety, their lives were the price of his.
So restored, indeed, were her faculties, that she was the first to note
the sudden responsive light, as the far-reaching gleam of the lantern
struck out the glitter of calc-spar. "See there!" she cried. "What is
that?"
"We are coming again to the palace, I do believe," said Frank, as if
surprised.
"Wa-al," observed the surly guide, stopping short, "warn't ye lowin' ez
ye wanted ter go the same way? I kin show ye other ways--ef so be ye'd
like ter travel 'em; a short cut ter nowhar."
Frank was conscious of having expressed unintentionally, in his
surprise, his lurking suspicions, and his answer was not readily
forthcoming. But Lloyd discriminated the note of offence in the guide's
voice, and sought to re-establish harmonious relations.
"That is all right--just what we want to show the lydy," he said
cheerily. "But I don't call it the marble palace," he continued,
addressing himself directly to Lucia; "it is the 'Hall of Heroes'--you
will see why directly,--and, oh, what a stage-setting it would make."
Even now the darkness began to shimmer with vague transient white
gleams suggestive of apparitions, of gigantic human forms. At a word
from the guide, Frank strode ahead down a steep declivity, and, pausing
at last, stood in the centre of an oval-shaped apartment, glimmering
white, with here and there a sudden crystalline sparkle. The lofty
ceiling rose above like the interior of a dome.
The mountaineer waited with the other two, as if he felt that since
Frank had usurped the lantern he might also assume the functions of a
cicerone and exhibit the wonders of the cave. Lucia began to realise
with a sinking heart that the mountaineer having decoyed Lloyd here for
the purpose of wreaking now his frustrated vengeance, would not for
one moment permit himself to be separated from his prospective victim.
She once more grew anxious lest it would be impossible to speak to
Lloyd apart, and began to scheme, to devise, rather than await, an
opportunity to warn him.
Young Laniston, placed at a disadvantage which he had not anticipated,
although he did not regret his manœuvre to keep possession of the
precious light on which all their lives depended, hesitated for
a moment--then he addressed himself to the methods by which the
mountaineer had earlier displayed to the explorers the beauties of the
sequestered place.
He took up from the ground a long pole with a short prong or fork at
its end. He lifted the lantern high on this, and like a miracle the
splendours of the underground scene burst forth. The walls were white
and sparkled with calc-spar. The wondrous forces of nature, tirelessly
building through the ages these unseen, unimagined, weird splendours,
were still at work, and though great stalactites hung down from the
lofty roof like a hundred chandeliers, the continual drip from these
ponderous pendants, of the waters charged with lime, had not yet built
up from the floor the stalagmites to form the columns in which they
would one day meet. These stalagmites, now in process of development,
had taken on strange, fantastic shapes. At the distance it was like a
hall of glittering statuary. Lloyd pointed out, with all the zest of
discovery, the similitudes which his keen imagination had discerned
in the rugged rock. Now he discriminated a statesman-like figure,
erect upon a column, gigantic, majestic, a scroll in his hand; here a
great, rugged pedestal, where the waters had been received in a wide
depression, supported an equestrian soldier mounted upon a rearing
charger; his fancy descried an aboriginal group, a warrior--he was
insistent on the distinctness of his plumed crest--with his tomahawk
uplifted, his victim a-crouch at his feet; he pointed out Neptune, on
the rocks, his trident in his hand, a dolphin sporting at his feet.
Somehow, all the vanished wonders of the world were lurking here,
awaiting the magic touch of imagination to give them form and
grace and bid them live anew. The mountaineer, impervious to these
impressions, walled up in his limitations, seemed to listen stolidly,
uncomprehendingly, as Lloyd, discoursing all unsuspicious, all
undismayed, gaily discerned poems in the stones, and music in the
dropping of the water, for they could discriminate the sound of the
ripple of a rill, somewhere in the darkness, from the staccato fall
of the drops from the stalactites, building ceaselessly the majestic
architecture of the cavern.
"Listen, listen," said Lloyd smilingly, one hand uplifted, "was there
ever anything more harmonious than that tinkling interlude with its
appoggiatura of drops that comes always _a piacere_ after the solemn,
hesitating tones of the _tema_?"
The foreign phrases suggested a chance to her despair.
"Do you speak Italian or French?" she asked.
"No--nor English, either, I'm afraid. Wish I did," Lloyd replied,
looking down at her, his face illumined in some stray shifting gleam
of the lantern. "The only consolation is that I have not much to say
anyhow. A few words will express my thoughts."
"Say," exclaimed Frank, from the centre of the floor of the Hall of
Heroes--"it is as cold as Greenland down here, and as damp as a marsh."
"And it goes through you, this damp cold," responded Lloyd. "It isn't
like the dry cold at the entrance of the cave." Then to Lucia, "Did you
notice how dusty it was there?"
"Well, say," exclaimed Frank, "have you seen enough of this?"
Lloyd submitted the question to Lucia, who assented with feverish
eagerness. Then he shouted to Frank, "Suppose we get a move on us. I'm
about fed up with this place."
As Frank retraced his way to rejoin the others, the precious lantern
once more dangling from his arm, he pondered anxiously as to his next
step. He knew, partly from the position of the group, and he thought
that he could divine from the intonation of Lloyd's voice, that Lucia
had not been able to exchange a word with him out of the hearing of the
mountaineer. Hence, he was sure that Lloyd was still all unconscious of
his danger, and thus cut off from his advice and co-operation, young
Laniston felt peculiarly helpless, yet laden with responsibility. While
in certain traits of his adolescence he represented a type of the
callow undergraduate, he had an appreciation of his own inexperience
and limitations that indeed did much to annul them, and rendered him
almost as cautious as a man versed in the mutations of human affairs.
He hardly knew what to do, and hence he was slow to act. He thought
at one moment that he would call Lloyd aside and disclose the facts,
thus bringing the matter to a crisis. But this, he reflected, might
precipitate the lurking treachery, whatever deed it was that the man
had in contemplation. At length he determined that, with the shifting
of the personnel of the conference, he would call the mountaineer
aside, thus giving Lucia one moment for her whispered confidence to
Lloyd.
"Come here, my friend," Frank said, stopping short and looking straight
at the guide and then down at the light, "Come and see what is the
matter with this lantern."
His face, all thrown into high relief by the light shining upward upon
it, placid, and smooth, and roseate, gave no intimation of the unrest
in his mind, and even a suspicious man might easily have been caught by
the lure.
But the saturnine mountaineer resisted stanchly. "Nuthin' the matter
with it," he retorted. "But I tell you now, ef ye fool with that thar
lantern an' git it out'n fix, you will be in hell fire a good spell
'fore yer time comes--that's whut!"
"Look out, man--bridle your words in the presence of this lydy--or
I'll cut your tongue out," Lloyd spoke abruptly, with such sudden
fierceness that the mountaineer started aside.
The stalwart Frank, knowing what he knew, could have fainted at this
provocation to the lurking menace. With desperate eagerness he sought
to re-establish such poor pretence of an _entente cordiale_ as had
heretofore existed. "Have patience with the speech of the country,
Mr. Lloyd. The thoughts of a plain man are plainly expressed, hey, my
friend?" he said jovially, clapping the guide on the shoulder.
It was but a momentary diversion, but in that restricted interval Lucia
whispered to Lloyd, "He is the man who attacked you in the Ferris
Wheel."
Lloyd looked surprised for a moment--startled. Then he responded,
laughing a trifle, "You must be mistaken. The doctor thought the hurt
was from the fall--not a blow. He had no motive. I never saw him till
to-day. I haven't an enemy in the world."
"He was in disguise," Lucia whispered.
"Oh, that, indeed." Lloyd looked down at her with a doubting but
lenient smile. "If ever I have to go on the road again, I'll get you to
write me a play!--you are a prodigy at plots--I can see that!"
Lucia was on the verge of collapse--fit to fall. For the sake of
this moment she had controlled her fears, and tried to the limit her
powers of endurance, and followed into this abyss the guidance of a
known traitor. She had risked her life in this cavern of darkness and
despair whence she might never issue, that she might tell Lloyd that
his own life was in danger--and for naught! She could not appeal to his
fears--for to fear he seemed impervious.
And so he thought she had come, simply because she wanted to see the
cave--the folly of it! And he would never know that she loved him
and his safety better than her life--and indeed why should he know
this, when she would have none of him, and his bizarre past, and his
humdrum future with his "bit of money" and his little dingy home of a
six-room frame house on a small plantation! He had already offered her
these values--which she had rejected, though she loved him, as she had
already told him--why should he know how much--how much!
She hung heavily on his arm, so had the elasticity of her gait failed
her, and almost at once he noticed the change.
"This is too much for you," he said considerately. "You are tired. Look
here, guide," he called out peremptorily. "Get us out of here now--the
shortest way."
The mountaineer, after his sullen manner, made no comment, but set
out at once at a fair pace, preceding Frank, whom he still permitted
without protest to carry the lantern. Young Laniston, crestfallen and
very considerably dismayed, sought to lessen the distance between them,
some twenty feet, by spurting in a fast walk, whereupon the guide
broke into a jog trot, keeping the interval exactly the same.
"Hold on for the light," exclaimed Frank, realising that Lucia must
needs be distressed to keep this pace or fall hopelessly to the rear.
He relapsed into his former gait and at once the guide relaxed his
speed in exact proportion. "You had better wait a bit," said Frank,
ignoring that aught of unpleasantness had happened; "you will fall into
a crevice if you don't mind."
He sent a shaft of light flickering on ahead, but sullen and sinister
the man made no response, still steadily preceding them into the dense
glooms, his figure barely glimpsed by the lantern's fluctuating light
as they followed.
Frank's alarms were now very definitely excited. He could not
understand the change in the man's policy in leaving the post which
he had so steadfastly maintained in Lloyd's immediate proximity. He
had either relinquished his scheme or he was now proceeding to put it
into execution. Frank was mindful too of the malignity with which the
mountaineer pointed the fact how his caution had overshot the mark by
retaining the custody of the lantern. Much good would it do them if the
guide, evidently curiously familiar with the place, should contrive
to distance them altogether, or dodge behind one of the buttresses
of the cliffs of this underground world, and so hiding leave them to
find their way out of this labyrinth without a clue, or perchance,
wandering in eccentric circles, perish finally of cold or starvation.
It was impossible for them to recognise any landmark of the dread
Plutonian scene--black night on every side, save dusky outlines of
crags and chasms, the tiny white focus of the lantern with its fibrous
halo failing in deep glooms, and beyond, the dim shadow of a man,
trotting steadily--how well he knew his footing!--to lose sight of whom
were certain death in this world of Erebus.
"If I only had a pistol, even without a cartridge in it, I'd stop that
light-heeled fellow," Frank said indignantly, but in a low voice, over
his shoulder to the two who followed close upon his steps.
"Don't be frightened, Miss Laniston," Lloyd reassured Lucia. "We shan't
lose sight of our precious guide. I could run him down in two seconds.
And if necessary I will just snatch you up in my arms and overhaul him
forthwith. I'd do it now, but it is best to give him line, and see what
his intentions really can be."
The next moment a chilly sound rang through the silent cave and all the
unfortunate explorers started with a nervous shock. In another instant
they recognised its character. It was the hooting of a screech-owl.
"That settles it," exclaimed Lloyd with a joyous sense of relief. "That
shows we can't be very far from the outside. The owls hide about near
the entrance of a cave in the daytime--then they fly out at night like
the bats."
Lucia tried to share his hopefulness; she looked about with eager
expectancy. "But I don't see or hear any bats," she said.
"They will no doubt put in an appearance before long," Lloyd answered.
"There is the owl again."
She shivered at the blood-curdling, ill-omened cry, despite its
fortunate augury to them.
The shrill, uncanny notes of the screech-owl again trembled
repetitiously on the thin, rare air, then the low, sinister chuckling
of the bird ensued, so true to life, so perfectly imitated that the cry
had been several times repeated, after considerable intervals, before
they perceived that they had heard no owl--that the mountaineer now and
again paused as he hurried on in advance and standing still mimicked
the creature's ill-omened cry with a perfection of similitude that
might have deceived the senses of more practical woodsmen than they
professed to be. The stoppage gave the explorers time to gain on their
strange guide and as the shrilling rang out once more the source whence
it emanated became obvious.
Frank, looking over his shoulder at the others, showed a startled,
dismayed face and Lloyd with a strange, unaccustomed thrill about his
heart, felt that a crisis impended. Their thought was the same--they
were following a madman, or he was signalling to confederates ambushed
in the hope of booty, or he was masking the noise of their approach by
this, a familiar sound.
Lucia suddenly spoke, a joyous break in her voice that was nevertheless
like a sob. "I see a faint light in the distance--we are truly nearing
the exit." She looked up at Lloyd through tears in her eyes. He felt
her hand grow light on his arm, her step quicken at his side--so does
hope control the nerves, the muscles.
But it was his turn to doubt. He had what is called "a head for
localities." The entrance which he remembered had for a distance longer
than the light of day could be glimpsed a straight blank wall on one
side, without an aperture or a break, which fact had made it possible
for Frank Laniston to go and return without a guide. Whereas here
there were vast spaces of void darkness on either side, the path was
damp and slippery in places, and he could smell the breath of running
water, and hear the vague susurrus that echoed the murmur of its flow.
There it had been as still as death, but for the whisking of the almost
noiseless wings of the disturbed bats and now and then their weird
mouse-like cry, and dust, dust, dust, was over all the dry precincts of
the way. He suddenly spoke his conviction. "That is undoubtedly light,"
he said, "but this is not the way by which we came into the cave."
The guide caught the words and paused abruptly. He showed a change
anew. He seemed suddenly metamorphosed from the malignant, tricky
gnome, fleeing from them as they approached, or the madman aping the
bird's cry of evil presage as he threaded the endless labyrinth of
this subterranean realm. He was now the simple prosaic yokel whom, of
their own free will outside, they had hired as a guide to explore a
cave as a bit of pastime in a pastoral day.
"Waal," he remonstrated, doggedly sullen as at first, "didn't you uns
say ez ye wanted the shortes' way out; this is the shortes' way."
"But I expected of course to go out at the same place--I wanted the
shortest way to that exit," said Lloyd sternly. "You know that our
horses are not here."
"But only a leetle piece off," the fellow remonstrated. A real owl
began to rive the dark still air with his keen shrilling, and anon his
low tremulous chatter. The guide paused to listen to the sound and then
went on. "I thought she mought rest outside whilst I went to lead down
her horse-critter." Once more he paused to listen to the scream of the
owl. The whole place echoed and re-echoed its sinister chuckle. "But
now I kem ter study 'bout 'n it I misdoubts it be too steep fur she.
Jes' step for'd, stranger, an' see. It be jes' round the turn."
Before Frank could warn Lloyd, before Lucia could utter a word of
remonstrance, before Lloyd himself took an instant's thought, he
dropped Lucia's hand from his arm and stepped around the great buttress
of the cliff, the mountaineer at his side.
Lloyd's figure was suddenly defined in a great glare of artificial
light and what he saw the others only knew afterward. Descent was
obviously impracticable. Sheer down, but only some twenty-five feet,
lay a vast replica of the white cavernous hall they had quitted, with
stalactites and stalagmites all a-glitter; but here was habitation,
movement; strange, troglodytic figures, with skulking black shadows,
shifted about amongst the columns; prosaic suggestions environed
the great vats and tubs, barrels and sacks of grain, the metallic
glimmer of a large copper still, and the open door of a furnace, the
fire flaring to a white heat. So silent had been the approach under
the normal cavernous sound of the owl's shrilling that not one of
the moonshiners looked up as Lloyd looked down. Only when the guide,
impatient for the catastrophe, uttered a sharp, short call did they
raise their eyes. Lloyd, dumbfounded, instinctively stepped backward,
and at this moment Frank, eager with curiosity, flung the lantern
forward as he moved, and thus the shadow of the guide was projected
from the darkness on the floor below.
It was the boast of Shadrach Pinnott that he had not missed his aim
for thirty years. It did not fail him now. He saw the form of a man
standing at gaze in a niche in the wall which vanished suddenly from
view; then a shadow fell from the niche across the floor below. With
a nice calculation of the station of the figure that threw the shadow
he fired and the rocks reverberated with the sharp crack of the rifle
like the musketry of a battle, and intermingled with it all were the
repetitious echoes of the death-cry of the victim.
The body of the guide, as, mortally wounded, he fell forward, slid
downward into the moonshiners' lair. The next moment the door of
the furnace clashed and all was darkness and silence. Lloyd and
Frank, realising that the height on which they stood and the doubt
of their numbers and personality precluded pursuit for a time from
the distillers on a lower level, made the best of their way with
the lantern, carrying the half-fainting Lucia with them, toward the
direction in which they had entered, so far as their recollection
might serve. How they would have fared in their dazed and exhausted
condition, what disastrous fate might have befallen them they often
speculated afterward. But it was not long before they heard the
resonant halloos of the searching party summoned by Jardine to their
rescue, and only the detail of the extraordinary treachery and fate of
their guide saved them from very trenchant ridicule, in that land of
sylvan prowess, for involving themselves in a trap whence they must
needs be extricated by raising the countryside.