rose a yell of defiance, followed by a flight of arrows and a volley
of pistol shots. Running towards them, but still a good distance off,
they could see a huddle of figures, dimly lighted by a few torches
of wood, interspersed with lanterns similar to those used by the
explorers. There was no time to make out who the enemy was. Evidently
they planned to carry things before them by the swiftness of their
attack, hoping to catch the cavemen off their guard. They went at it
pell-mell, discharging their missiles as they ran--but with deadly
enough aim nevertheless. One Indian of Anitoo's party fell, struck
down by an arrow. His comrades, enraged by this, formed a close line
of battle around him, taking, as they did so, from the folds of
their togas certain innocent looking objects, apparently long metal
tubes, which they pointed at their assailants. The explorers failed to
recognize these implements at first; then, as the Indians put them to
their mouths, they realized that they were nothing more nor less than
blowpipes, weapons used to-day only by the most primitive races. But
the cavemen handled these weapons skillfully, pouring a goodly shower
of darts into the turbulent throng advancing to meet them. As the hail
of arrows and shooting of pistols continued, however, it was evident
that the damage inflicted by the blowpipes was not enough to check
the approach of the enemy, who exceeded the cavemen in numbers and
were anxious to engage them at close quarters. This Anitoo determined
to prevent. Shouting to his men, he urged them to retreat within the
archway before which they were fighting, a command they refused to obey,
infuriated as they were by the loss of several of their number. Their
assailants, steadily pressing on, were soon near enough to give the
cavemen the desired opportunity. Blowguns, bows and arrows were cast
aside, and they jumped into a hand-to-hand fight, with short pikes and
such weapons as chance provided.
It was then that the explorers seemed to reach the utmost limit of
their misfortunes. Except for Andrew's pocket-knife and the revolvers
of Herran and Miranda, they were without weapons, and thus practically
defenseless in the thick of a combat that at every moment gained in
intensity. They were bewildered by the flashing lights of the torches,
and kept getting in the way of Anitoo's men at the most inopportune
times. Naturally, General Herran, as the only one among them who had
been in actual military service, did his best to keep the others in some
sort of order; but his protests and commands, unintelligible to all but
Miranda, went for very little. In vain he looked for some sheltered
corner into which he could withdraw his little party; but the fierce
fighting all around them shut off any such easy way of escape. There
seemed to be nothing to do but stay where they were--and be shot, as
Mrs. Quayle hysterically put it. And the shooting certainly increased
enough in volume every moment to warrant that lady's dismal view of the
matter.
But Herran, although fighting in caves was quite out of his line, was
not the kind of soldier to give up in despair--even with two women on
his hands and three men who were quite as inexperienced and helpless in
warfare as the women. The fiasco of Panama still rankled in his soul,
and he resolved this time to let as few of the enemy escape him as
possible. It was a serious business, but--at least he had a revolver,
and he intended to use it.
Plunging ahead of the others into the thick of the mob that faced him,
he shot right and left, and--according to Miranda, who watched the
affair delightedly--every shot found its mark. This was all very well,
and cheering enough to the explorers. It looked, indeed, for the moment,
as if the tide of battle was about to be turned in their favor by the
Hero of Panama. But then, all of a sudden, as was bound to happen, the
General's cartridges gave out, leaving him an animated sort of target
in the midst of the men he had been attacking with such ferocity. There
were cries of dismay from those who had been watching his brave exploit,
a roar of rage from Miranda, who rushed forward, revolver in hand, to
defend his old comrade. But Miranda was too late. A burly caveman,
one of those who had borne the brunt of Herran's onslaught, seeing the
latter's plight, whirled aloft a huge club that he carried and brought
it down with fatal effect upon the General's head. It was a Homeric
blow, and the fall of the hero under it, sung in epic verse, would be
described as the crashing to earth of a monarch of the forest, a bull, a
lion, or something equally majestic and thunderous.
But the victor in this deadly encounter had no time to enjoy his
triumph. Miranda, not able to ward off the terrible blow that he saw
descending upon his friend, at least succeeded in inflicting mortal
punishment upon the offending caveman who, before he could raise his
club to his shoulder again, received the full contents of the Doctor's
revolver.
It was the first--and probably the last--time that Miranda could count
himself a conqueror on the field of battle. His exultation, however, was
short-lived. Not only had he to bewail the loss of Herran, a good friend
and a brave leader, but the odds in the combat before him were going
so unmistakably against Anitoo and his men, the fighting had become so
widespread and desperate, that the safety of the explorers seemed, every
moment, more and more a matter for miracles. As nothing further could
be done with an empty revolver, Miranda shrugged his shoulders, threw
away his now harmless weapon and, turning hastily to his companions,
ordered them to put out their torches, fall flat upon their faces where
they stood, and to stay motionless in that position until the fortunes
of the battle were decided. This they all did, some with an almost
inconceivable promptness--and to any one who might be looking on it
must have appeared that the enemy had over-thrown this little group of
people before them with one well directed discharge of their weapons.
In the kind of warfare that now was raging, Anitoo's cavemen, on account
of their lack of numbers and deficient training, were unquestionably
getting the worst of it. Their white togas, and the flashing lights
that they wore, made their escape difficult; obviously it would have
fared badly for them if they had been left to fight their battle out
alone. But Anitoo was taking no unnecessary chances. Fearing for his
own men from the very first, he had dispatched a messenger into that
unknown region of the cave lying beyond the Condor Gate. There was
more, indeed, than the fate of his own men at stake. He knew that the
majority of the enemy were of his own race, and that with them were
associated two or three men from the outside world whose presence
there, under such circumstances, proved the existence of a formidable
conspiracy against that subterranean realm, of which he had spoken
vaguely to the explorers, and to which he belonged. The cavemen he had
with him, although brave enough, were undisciplined and without military
experience. They could make but a poor defense against an attack
directed by leaders trained in the rough school of the guerilla. All
this Anitoo knew, and the reinforcements for which he had sent arrived
barely in time to save his little party from being completely wiped out.
But, fortunately for him, they did arrive in time. With a confused din
of war cries and trumpetings, a flash of mysterious torches, waving of
banners, brandishing of pipes and blowguns, a body of men, suddenly
appearing out of the dim recesses of the cave, rushed, several hundred
strong, upon the encircling throng of invaders. The result was decisive.
The rebels, with victory almost in their grasp, were quickly surrounded,
many of them killed, while the few who failed to make their escape were
taken prisoners.
Among the latter was one who had played a leading part in the attack.
He was unarmed, his clothes were torn, an ugly thrust from a pike had
slashed across his face. But his bearing was undaunted; the dejection
of the vanquished was lacking in the composure with which he regarded
Anitoo, before whom his captors led him.
"Well?" he asked scornfully.
"I expected you, Don Raoul," said Anitoo.
The other laughed contemptuously.
"Why are you here?" demanded Anitoo.
"That is a long story. For one thing, your people are tired of living
like bats in the dark. With the help of Rafael Segurra, your one great
man, I promised to free them."
"Instead, Segurra is killed and you are a prisoner."
"Ah! your muddle-headed rabble have killed him, have they? But, where
are my American friends?" he asked abruptly.
"They are here. One of them, I think, was killed. But he was a
Bogotano."
"I don't see them."
For the first time Anitoo showed amazement. He called to his men, he
looked in every possible and impossible place. The explorers were
nowhere to be seen. Their disappearance, moreover, was complicated by
the fact that after the retreat of Anitoo's men, the great portal
under the Sign of the Condor had been closed. By this means the outer
region of the cave had been shut off, thus preventing the escape of
any of the combatants in that direction. As the Americans were not now
in sight, it seemed probable that they were on the other side of the
stone gateway--although there was a faint possibility that they had
sought safety in the unexplored portion of the cave whither Anitoo
had been leading them. Either way, their disappearance was certain,
nor could Anitoo find out anything definite about them from his men.
A few, indeed, remembered seeing them during the fight, and recalled
Herran's charge, his subsequent fall, and the swift vengeance brought
upon his assailant by Miranda. One man declared that they had all
been killed; but as this was quite improbable, and as the statement
was uncorroborated, it was promptly put aside as unworthy of belief.
The whole thing was very vague. As a matter of fact, every one had
been too absorbed in the defeat of Segurra and his men to look after
the explorers. Doubtless the latter, it was said, had succeeded in
retreating into the darkness of the outer cave. In doing this, it is
true, they ran the chance of falling into the hands of Segurra's men--in
which case they would have been recaptured by Anitoo.
One strange feature of their disappearance was that the body of
Herran had apparently vanished with them. Anitoo remembered the exact
spot where the explorers had been stationed during the battle and,
consequently, where Herran had fallen. But now, neither living nor dead
explorers could be found. It seemed incredible that these people, two of
them women, would have hampered themselves in their flight with the body
of a dead man. And yet, there was the evidence of eyewitnesses to the
killing of Herran; there was the spot where he had fallen--and as the
body was not there now, it was practically certain that the explorers
had carried it away with them. In this case they could not have gone
very far. As Anitoo was particularly anxious for their capture, and
believing that they had returned to the outer cave, where they were in
danger of being attacked by what was left of Segurra's men, he sent most
of his troops after them, remaining behind with Raoul and a few others
until their return.
"It was to get those strangers and bring them to our queen," he said,
"that I came out here."
"Well, you have lost them," sneered Raoul. "But you have me. Why not
take me to your queen?"
The two men looked at each other in silence. A faint smile lighted
Anitoo's usually immobile features.
"Yes," he said; "at last you will reach the place you have plotted
against for so many months. But it will do you no good."
"Don't be too sure of that," growled Raoul. "I want to see your
queen----"
"You shall see her. But what can you do? Your friend, Segurra, the first
traitor to the Land of the Condor, is dead. Your men are defeated----"
"Not all!" shouted Raoul. "Look around you!"
With those who knew him Anitoo enjoyed a reputation for astuteness that
had led to his being chosen for the command of the diminutive army
considered necessary for the defense of the Land of the Condor. He was
valiant, absolutely trustworthy. But he was accustomed to deal only
with simple problems, with people of comparatively guileless natures.
Treachery was out of the domain of his experience. And now he was to pay
dearly for the lack of prudence that had allowed him to send away, on an
indefinite mission, the troops he should have kept to guard his
prisoner.
Startled by Raoul's exultant cry Anitoo seized a pike from one of the
two men who had stayed with him. If he had fallen into an ambush he
would at least make a brave fight to free himself. But resistance from
the first was hopeless. The slight eminence on which he stood with Raoul
was surrounded by a score or more men who had crept up on him, their
lights extinguished, and protected by the impenetrable darkness of the
cave. As Anitoo and his two followers still carried the mysterious
torches that had excited the wonder of the explorers, they offered an
excellent mark to their concealed antagonists. And now the latter, dimly
visible on the outer edge of the circle of light cast by these torches,
jumped to their feet and, with weapons poised, made a rush for their
victims.
"So! Now for your queen!" yelled Raoul.
Anitoo made a desperate lunge with his pike at the man beside him. But
the latter was too quick for him. Dodging the blow, Raoul managed to
wrest the pike from his grasp. There was a tigerish struggle between
the two men, shouts of fury and triumph from those looking on. Then,
overpowered by the number of his assailants, and mortally wounded,
Anitoo fell to the ground. He had been so certain of the defeat of his
antagonists that this sudden turn in his fortunes filled him, even at
the approach of death, with the gloomiest forebodings.
"Ah! my poor queen--lost!" he gasped with his last breath.
Raoul snatched the torch from the dead man's tunic and waved it above
his head.
"You will be free men now," he cried, "not miserable bats in a cave!"
Those of his hearers who understood his words, spoken in Spanish,
repeated them to the others in their own language. There was wild
cheering, in which the two followers of Anitoo joined--amazed at their
leader's fate--and then a rush for the great gateway. But this impulsive
movement of his men did not agree with Raoul's hastily conceived plan of
conquest. Delighted by his easily won victory, coming to him in the very
hour of defeat, he had no mind to leave Anitoo's hostile troops in his
rear--especially as he heard them approaching from the outer cave, and
could even catch the first glimmer of their torches.
"Stop!" he commanded. "We need these men. Better to have them friends
than enemies. They will come with us. Some of you warn them--tell them
what has happened."
His followers, halted in their eager flight, looked at Raoul in
amazement. Then, hurriedly repeating to each other what he had said,
they suddenly broke into another cheer, while two of their number, in
obedience to Raoul's orders, ran towards the approaching troops.
At first the two rebels were met with a flourish of pikes and angry
cries that boded ill for their safety. When they succeeded in making
themselves heard, however, explaining what had happened and pointing to
the dead body of Anitoo in confirmation of Raoul's victory, the cavemen
checked their hostile demonstrations, looking from one to the other of
the men before them, and then to the little group surrounding Raoul, in
astonishment. They had the most exaggerated trust in Anitoo's wisdom and
prowess; that he could be vanquished by any one impressed them mightily.
The death of their leader was, indeed, a potent argument in favor of the
man who had killed him. What did this victorious stranger intend to do
now? they asked each other. Then the foremost of them put the question
to the two rebels, who answered with contagious enthusiasm:
"He will free us! The wealth of the Condor will be ours! We will have
the world--not a cave--to live in!"
The instant effect of this assurance was all that could be desired. One
by one took up the words they had just heard with a shout of triumph,
waving their weapons in air and declaring that they would follow this
new-found leader to the death. Then they all broke into a run, saluting
Raoul, when they reached him, with the submissive gesture they were wont
to accord their superiors.
Elated by the complete success of his strategy, Raoul looked exultantly
at the men prostrate before him. Then he spoke to them sternly.
"Where are the Americans?" he demanded.
"Gone," some of them murmured. "We could not find them."
"Where have they gone? They must be near--somewhere."
"To the queen--they have gone to the queen!"
"Ah, yes! to the queen! Follow quickly! We go to the queen!"
Raoul's words were greeted with a cheer. The men rose to their feet and
all, at a signal from their leader, swept forward to the great gateway,
shouting as they ran--
"To the queen! To the queen!"
XVI
NARVA
To return to the explorers, left prostrate on the field of battle, it
must be recorded that, for once in his career, Miranda, after his first
taste of active fighting, and seeing how the fortunes of the day were
going against them, repressed his natural impulsiveness and developed
a prudence and caution that would have become a general seasoned in
strategy.
"For me it is not good to be here," he whispered sepulchrally to his
companions as they lay face downward about him. "We cannot fight. We
have no guns. We will be kill. We must go!"
It was a good summary of the situation. Every one agreed to it, so far
as their constrained positions would permit an exchange of opinions;
but how to act on Miranda's obviously excellent plan was not clear. If
they got on their feet again, they would probably be shot--and even if
the enemy failed to bring them down right away, they could not make
up their minds in which direction to make their escape. To retrace
their steps into the depths of the outer cave would bring them between
two fires and, aside from other tragic possibilities, would certainly
arouse the suspicions of Anitoo and his cavemen. To seek safety in the
other direction, to pass within the section of the cave guarded by the
Condor Gate, was to court unknown dangers in a region that loomed dark
and mysterious enough. It was this latter course, however, that Miranda
chose.
"This Anitoo take us to his queen," he argued. "Perhaps she is good
woman. It is better we go alone. Senor Anitoo, he come after."
So they made up their minds to set out at once in search of this unknown
queen. She might, or might not, be friendly. But anyway, she would be
better than lying on one's stomach between two opposing rows of fighting
men. Luckily for the carrying out of their plan, they had extinguished
their torches. They were thus in comparative darkness, hidden alike
from friend and foe. Indeed, if any one had been able to see them in
their present prostrate position they would have been taken for dead,
and escaped further notice. This view of the situation becoming clear
to Miranda, he cautiously raised his head and peered into the darkness
before him. A few feet farther on he could dimly make out the body
of the huge caveman who had fallen before his revolver a few moments
ago--and at the side of the caveman lay his victim, General Herran. The
sight stirred Miranda's grief for the loss of his friend to a fresh
outburst, leading him to abandon, with one of those impulsive changes
characteristic of him, his plans for escape.
"Ah, Caramba!" he wailed, with the nearest approach to tears he had ever
been guilty of; "he was one great hero! He was a man! I not leave him!
He die for me!"
And then he fell to stroking his friend's face--wet from the blood
pouring from his wounds, as he supposed--caressing him somewhat roughly,
indeed, in the vehemence of his grief, and absent-mindedly tugging at
his great beard, as he had so often seen the General do himself. The
more he pondered his loss, the more doleful it appeared to him; and this
feeling grew until he reached such a pitch of pathos that he resolved
never to leave Herran, dead or alive. Better to die right there with
him, he said, than to abandon his mortal remains to the canaille who had
killed him.
These lamentations and melancholy vows, however, aroused some feeble
objections among Miranda's companions, who were growing restless in
their uncomfortable positions, and saw no relief in the idea of staying
indefinitely where they were. But Miranda paid no heed to what they
said, except to growl out an expletive or two between his wails of
grief, and to stroke his fallen hero's face with an increased vigor of
affection. And then, in the midst of this lugubrious occupation, he
suddenly jumped to his feet, regardless of whatever lurking enemy there
might be near him, and started capering around Herran's body.
"This hero, he is not dead!" he cried in a sort of whispered ecstasy.
"When I rub the nose of him--Caramba!--he try to breathe! And he cough
and say some words in Spanish!"
It was fortunate that the darkness was deep enough to hide Miranda from
observation, else his dancing figure and the gestures of delight with
which he accompanied this announcement would have brought upon him more
attention from the enemy than might have been to his liking. Another
fact in his favor, besides the darkness, was that the fighting had
drifted away from this corner of the cave, leaving the explorers quite
alone, in an obscurity that shrouded them from danger, but that still
revealed to them enough of the outlines of the cave in the distance to
show them where they were and how they might best steer their way in
safety through the Condor Gate, as Miranda had at first proposed. And
now all were eager to corroborate the extraordinary news that Herran was
still alive.
True to his professional instincts, Miranda plumped down on his knees at
the General's side, and commenced a series of probings, pummelings and
rubbings in his search for wounds, mortal or otherwise. He worked with
his usual feverish haste, and it was not long before his activities drew
from Herran protests that became more and more distinct and emphatic.
Then Miranda remembered that he had seen the caveman's club descend upon
the General's head, so that if there were any wounds to be attended to
they would be in that part of his anatomy and nowhere else. And there,
sure enough, under Herran's battered hat and his smashed miner's lamp,
was a massive lump that testified to the magnitude of the blow that
had crumpled him up. Indeed, had it not been for the hat and the lamp,
serving in this case as a buffer, even Herran's iron skull must have
yielded under the weight of the caveman's attack.
At first Miranda thought that the skull surely was fractured, and
thereupon investigated the lump on top of it. This he did with so much
earnestness and nicety of detail that he was soon rewarded by a series
of such vigorous oaths and threats as to leave no doubt in his mind of
his victim's ability to look out for himself.
"He's all right, this General of Panama!" he exclaimed gleefully. "His
brains is not smashed. But perhaps he have a headache. Soon he fight
again. And now we go to the queen."
The subject of these optimistic assurances sat up with a groan, blinking
his eyes savagely at his companions, who were now crowded around him,
and wiping disgustedly from his face some of the kerosene oil that had
trickled down from the mangled miner's lamp, and that Miranda had first
taken for Herran's blood.
"Now, we go--we fly!" urged Miranda, his mind completely absorbed
again in the problem of extricating himself and his companions from
the dangers of the battlefield. "They not see us. We save our life and
go to this queen. You are all right, General--is it not so?" he added
impatiently.
The other looked at him venomously and groaned. Then, shaking himself,
like a dog who has been temporarily worsted in a rough-and-tumble fight,
he got to his feet and staggered along for a few paces.
"Yes, Caramba! I am all right," he said in Spanish, with painful
sarcasm. "It is a headache, as you say, that is all! Let us go!"
"That is good! Come!" grunted Miranda approvingly.
At first Herran was somewhat uncertain of his footing. But Miranda
helped him until he got over his dazed feeling sufficiently to walk
alone. Then they all followed along, single file, skirting the edge of
the darkness, beyond which they could dimly see the cavemen fighting,
but without being able to tell how the fortunes of the battle were
going, and making for the Condor Gate as quickly as they could. Once
beyond that point they would be relieved, they thought, at least
temporarily, from the inconveniences of a battle in which most of
them had been forced to play the part of target only. Having passed
this danger zone, they would set about placing as generous a distance
as possible between themselves and their warlike companions. Further
retreat, it is true, meant the abandonment of the outer cave for a
venture into realms whither Anitoo had been conducting them, practically
as captives, to an unknown fate. But the situation left them no
alternative. Everything depended on their finding the queen--and then,
having found her, their fate depended on the kind of woman she might be.
"A great thing this," muttered Leighton to himself; "at my age to be in
the power of the queen of a race of cavemen!"
"They are good peoples," remarked Miranda dubiously.
"I trust Anitoo," declared Una. "His queen will protect us."