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The White Waterfall

by James Francis Dwyer · English · Gutenberg #10862 · 361,561 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The White Waterfall

Author: James Francis Dwyer


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #10862]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE WATERFALL ***

THE INTERNATIONAL ADVENTURE LIBRARY

THREE OWLS EDITION



THE WHITE WATERFALL

An Adventure Story

BY JAMES FRANCIS DWYER


TO L.G.D. and G.M.D.


  "THAT'S THE WAY TO HEAVEN,
   THAT'S THE WAY TO HEAVEN,
   THAT'S THE WAY TO HEAVEN OUT
   OF BLACK FERNANDO'S HELL."


PREFACE

It is perhaps inadvisable to mix fact with fiction, but, it appears,
some reference to certain portions of "The White Waterfall" that might
strain the belief of the average reader will not be out of place. In the
wonderful islands of the Pacific many things happen that seem improbable
to the minds of those who dwell close to the heart of civilization. The
mysterious Isle of Tears is not altogether a dream. There are several
islands in Polynesia that have been looked upon from time immemorial as
islands of the dead. These places are shunned by the islanders, and the
centuries have invested them with the same atmosphere of brooding
mystery that Professor Herndon and his party felt when they landed upon
the silent isle where the Wizards of the Centipede performed their weird
rites without interference from the outside world.

Nor is the Vermilion Pit created out of thin air. The savage has used
many startling methods to separate the born warrior from the coward, and
the author has seen a place just as wonderful as the pit, where the
young men of the tribe were tested in the same manner as that related
in this story. The cunning savage has always thought it inadvisable to
pick his fighting men till their courage had been thoroughly tested, and
in dull days of peace the headmen of the tribes racked their brains to
discover nerve-shaking ordeals to try the daring of the growing youth.
The safety of the tribe depended upon the valour of the fighting line,
and it would have been an inexcusable blunder to put the nervous ones in
the front rank.

The strange stone structures similar to the one upon which Holman and
Verslun narrowly escaped being offered up as sacrifices to the Centipede
are to be found in many islands of the Pacific at the present day. In
the Tongan, Caroline, and Cook groups these peculiar stone ruins remain
as evidence of the existence of an ancient people of superior
intelligence to the islanders of to-day. As to the meaning or use of
these structures we are entirely in the dark. The natives of these
groups know nothing concerning them, and the Polynesian builder in that
dark past was too busy clubbing and eating his neighbour to write
histories. Scientists are in doubt, as in the case of the great ruins at
Metalanim, whether they were built as sacrificial altars or as monuments
to ambitious chiefs, and there are no records to enlighten us. But these
relics are convincing proofs that the islands have been inhabited for
many hundreds of years, and we are left to conjecture regarding the
origin and history of the people.

The Dance of the Centipede, which Holman and Verslun witnessed in the
Long Gallery, can be seen to-day by any tourist who leaves the beaten
paths. Every missionary to the islands can tell of "devil dances" that
take place in secluded groves, and in which, to his great disgust, his
converts often take part. It takes time to turn the savage from his old
beliefs. Although the South Seas constitute the last fortress of
romance, and a mention of the coral atolls immediately conjures up a
vision of palms and rice-white beaches, the sensitive person senses the
dark and bloody past when the wizard men were the rulers, and death
stalked in the palm groves.

J.F.D.
New York, March, 1912.


[Illustration]


CONTENTS


CHAPTER

   I. The Song of the Maori
  II. The Professor's Daughters
 III. A Knife From the Dark
  IV. The Storm
   V. I Make a Promise
  VI. The Isle of Tears
 VII. The Pit
VIII. The Ledge of Death
  IX. Into the Valley of Echoes
   X. A Midnight Alarm
  XI. Kaipi Performs a Service
 XII. The Devil Dancers
XIII. Tombs of Silence
 XIV. Back to the Camp
  XV. A Day of Skirmishing
 XVI. The Stone Table
XVII. Beneath the Centipede
XVIII. Barbara's Messenger
  XIX. Leith Scores
   XX. The Black Kindergarten
  XXI. Together Again
 XXII. The White Waterfall
XXIII. The Wizard's Seat
 XXIV. The Way to Heaven




THE WHITE WATERFALL



[Illustration]

[Illustration]


CHAPTER I

THE SONG OF THE MAORI

There is a Tongan proverb which tells us that only fools and children
lie awake during hours that could be devoted to slumber, and it is a
wise proverb when you judge it from a Polynesian standpoint. No special
preparations are required for slumber in the last haunts of Romance, and
as one does not lose caste by dozing in public, the South Sea dweller
sees no reason for remaining awake when he could be peacefully sleeping.
The shade of a palm tree furnishes an ideal resting place, and if a dog
fight occurs in the grass-grown street, he becomes a box-seat spectator
without moving from his couch. Levuka, the second largest town in the
Fijis, was dozing on the afternoon of December 14, 1905, and I decided
to follow the example set by the inhabitants. The thermometer in the
shack at the end of the wharf registered 98 degrees, but the picturesque
little town, with its white and vermilion-tinted houses, looked restful
and cool. The hot, still atmosphere weighed down upon the Pacific,
ironing out the wind ruffles till the ocean resembled a plain of glass,
in which the Union Company's steamer _Navua_, from Auckland, appeared to
be stuck fast, as if the glassy sea had suddenly hardened around her
black hull.

A thin strip of shadow huddled close to a pile of pearl shell at the end
of the wharf, and I doubled myself up and attempted to sleep. But
hardwood planks don't make an ideal resting place. Besides, the rays of
sun followed the strip of shadow around the pile, and each time I
slipped into a doze I would be pricked into wakefulness. At last,
maddened by the biting rays, I collected half a dozen copra bags,
splintered a piece of _kauri_ pine, and after rigging up one bag as an
awning, I spread the others on the planks and fell asleep.

But another disturbing element awakened me from a short slumber. From
the sea end of the deserted wharf came a big, greasy Maori and a
fuzzy-headed Fijian, and their words went out into the silence like
sound projectiles. The Maori had such a high-pitched voice that I
thought, as I rolled over restlessly, he would only have to raise it a
little to make them hear him up in Sydney, eighteen hundred miles away.
It was one of those voices that fairly cavort over big distances, and I
buried my head in the shell as the pair came closer.

It was useless to attempt to shut out that voice. I stuffed a piece of
bag into the ear that wasn't jammed against the pearl shell, but the
noise of that fool talking fairly sizzled in my brain. Finally I gave up
all hopes of trying to sleep till the pair had left the wharf, and I lay
upon my back as they came slowly up the sun-bitten structure.

It was only when I gave up all thoughts of sleep that I recognized that
the Maori was talking English. Up to that moment I thought the pair were
arguing in some unfamiliar tongue, but suddenly their conversation
gripped me, and I strained my ears to listen.

"There's the white waterfall," chanted the Maori.

"Yes, the white waterfall," repeated the Fijian.

"An' you go along sixty paces."

"To the right?" questioned the Fijian.

"No! To the left, you fool!" screamed his companion.

"All right, you go to the left," muttered the rebuked one. "An' that's
the way to heaven!" cried the Maori.

"The way to heaven," echoed the Fijian; then the two lifted up their
voices and chanted:

  "That's the way to heaven,
   That's the way to heaven,
   That's the way to heaven out
   Of Black Fernando's hell."

The incident stirred my curiosity. If I had only heard the words of the
chant I would not have puzzled my brain to determine their meaning, but
it was the manner in which the Maori instructed his friend as to the
direction in which one must walk from the white waterfall that made me
interested. I turned the words over in my mind as I watched them saunter
slowly toward me. Black Fernando's hell and the white waterfall were
places that I had never heard of. I thought of all the missionary hymns
that I had ever listened to afloat and ashore, but the lines that the
pair had chanted were not familiar.

The two walked on in silence for a few minutes after they had lifted up
their voices in the chant, then the Maori began to cross-question his
companion concerning the information he had just given him.

"How many paces?" he asked.

"Sixty," answered the Fijian.

"To the right, isn't it?"

"Yes, to the right," stammered the learner. "You fool nigger!" screamed
the instructor. "It is to the left, pig! Do you hear me? You must go to
the left from the white waterfall! Oh, you blinded fool! you make me
sick! Sing it now with me!"

The Fijian, who was apparently afraid of the bully, hurried to obey the
order, and I wondered as I listened.

"Sixty paces to the left," squeaked the Fijian.

"Sixty paces to the left," roared the Maori. "Now together!"

  "That's the way to heaven,
   That's the way to heaven,
   That's the way to heaven out
   Of----"

I was the cause of the interruption. I lifted myself into a sitting
position, and the movement disturbed the heap of shell. Part of the pile
rattled down upon the planks of the wharf, and the Maori and his pupil
stopped singing and stared at me as if they were much surprised at
finding any one within hearing distance. The wharf had appeared
deserted, and I gave them a start by crawling from underneath the awning
I had made from the copra bag. The Maori wore a dirty khaki coat, with a
pair of trousers reaching to his knees, while the Fijian, instead of
being short-rigged in shirt and sulu, sported a full suit of duck.
"Good afternoon, boss," said the Maori, trying to wipe the look of
surprise from his face with a grin. "Mighty hot afternoon, isn't it,
boss?"

"It is," I answered. "If I knew where that white waterfall is I'd go and
stand under it for a few minutes."

The small Fijian gave a little gurgle of surprise and looked up at his
big teacher, who regarded me with eyes of wonder.

"What white waterfall, boss?" he asked blandly.

"The one you were singing about," I cried.

The Maori smiled sweetly. "We weren't singing about a white waterfall,
boss," he spluttered. "I just guess you were asleep an' dreamed
something."

That didn't improve my temper. I had an edge on the fellow on account of
the high-powered voice he owned, so when he suggested that I had been
dreaming, I climbed to my feet so that I could make my words more
impressive when I started to tell him my opinion of his bluff.

The action startled the Fijian. He had an idea that I was going to use
the piece of _kauri_ pine upon his head, so he gave a yell and started
full speed up the wharf toward the town. The Maori stood his ground for
a minute, then he made a face to express his contempt for me and bolted
after his mate. I stared at his bare legs walloping the planks, and
feeling certain that I had lost all chance of finding out where the
white waterfall and Black Fernando's hell were situated, I found a new
shadow patch and lay down again.

I fell asleep and dreamed that I was chasing those two islanders in an
endeavour to find out the meaning of their mysterious chant, but just as
I had overtaken the pair, some one gripped my arm and shook me gently.

When I opened my eyes I looked up into the face of a good-looking young
fellow of about two and twenty years, who was smiling broadly as if he
thought it a great joke to wake a man out of a sound sleep on a hot
afternoon.

"Are you Jack Verslun?" he asked.

I nodded. It was too warm to use words recklessly.

"Pierre the Rat sent me after you," he continued.

"Why?" I asked.

"I have a berth for you," he answered. "I'm from _The Waif_. The mate
died on the run down from Sydney, and Captain Newmarch sent me ashore to
hunt up some one for his perch. Do you want it?"

"Where are you bound?" I asked.

"Manihiki group."

"What for?"

"Science expedition under the direction of Professor Herndon of San
Francisco."

I sat up and looked across the stretch of water at _The Waif_, and the
young fellow waited patiently. I knew the yacht. An English baronet had
brought the vessel out from Cowes to Brisbane, but he had made the pace
too hot in the Colonies. Out in Fortitude Valley one night the keeper of
a saloon fired a bullet into his aristocratic head, and _The Waif_ was
auctioned. She had taken a hand in a number of games after that. A fast
yacht is a handy vessel south of the line, and some queer tales were
told about the boat that had once shown her heels to the crackerjacks in
the Solent. But I couldn't afford to be particular at that moment.
Levuka isn't the spot where a man can pick and choose, so I wiped the
shell grit from my drill suit and told myself that I had better accept
the berth instead of waiting in expectation of something better turning
up. Pierre the Rat, who ran "The Rathole," where penniless seamen and
beachcombers lodged, was my creditor, and when Pierre was very
solicitous in obtaining employment for one of his boarders, it was a
mighty good intimation that the boarder's credit had reached highwater
mark.

"Well," I said, climbing to my feet, "I might as well take it. I thought
I had enough of the Islands, but as this has turned up I'm your man.
Say," I added, "did you ever read Pilgrim's Progress'?"

The young fellow looked at me and grinned. "Yes, I did," he answered.

"Do you remember much of it?" I asked.

"Not much," he replied.

"Is there anything in it about a white waterfall that is on the way to
heaven out of Black Fernando's hell?" I questioned.

The youngster put his head on one side and looked as if he was turning
things over in his mental storehouse, then he gave me a quick, shrewd
glance and burst out laughing.

"Well?" I growled. "What's the grin for?"

"What has Bunyan got to do with my business?" he asked. "I came to sign
you up for a mate's job on _The Waif_, and I am in a hurry."

"Yes, I know," I grumbled, "but I thought you might have heard something
of a white waterfall. I'm not sure that it is mentioned in 'Pilgrim's
Progress,' but it seems to taste of Bunyan."

"P'raps so," said the youngster, "but Bunyan isn't in our line at
present. Captain Newmarch told me to hurry back to the yacht, as he
wants to get away by sunset, so if you're ready we'll make a start. My
name is Holman, Will Holman."

We walked up the quiet street together and I began to like Will Holman.
One couldn't help but like him. He had the frank, open ways of a boy,
but the cut of his jaw and the manner in which he minted his words led
you to believe that he would give a man's account of himself if any one
pushed him up against a wall. While he made some purchases in the little
stores, I went up to the broken-down shanty where Pierre the Rat ran his
house of refuge, and, after I had collected my few belongings, I went
back to the wharf, where a boat from _The Waif_ was waiting to take us
aboard the yacht.

It was when I was climbing into the boat that I got a surprise. One of
the two natives at the oars was the little Fijian who had been the pupil
of the Maori, but he didn't bat an eyelash when I stared at him.

"What's up?" asked Holman. "Do you know Toni?"

"He's one of the brace that were singing that song about the white
waterfall," I growled.

The Fijian let out a volley of indignant denials, and Holman laughed.

"You might be mistaken," he said. "Toni came ashore with me about two
hours ago, but I don't think he left the boat."

"I'm not mistaken," I said, as the Fijian kept on protesting that he had
never moved from the boat, "but it doesn't matter much. Let it go."

We were about a quarter of a mile from the shore when a man raced down
from the town, ran along to the sea end of the wharf and waved his arms
as if he was signalling us. Holman turned and looked at him.

"I wonder who it is?" he muttered. "Perhaps it is somebody with your
board bill, Verslun."

I started to laugh, then I stopped suddenly. The man on the wharf was
shouting to us, and when my ears caught a word I recognized him. It was
the big Maori who had been instructing the Fijian earlier in the
afternoon.

I told Holman, and he looked at Toni, but Toni's face was blank. For
some reason or other he wished to ignore his instructor who was
screaming on the end of the wharf.

"He must be mad," muttered Holman. "The darned fool thinks we--Listen!"

A land breeze brought the last line of the chant to our ears as we
neared _The Waif_, and the words seemed to stir me curiously as they
swirled around us. I had a desire to memorize the chant, and even after
we had got out of range of the high-powered voice of the singer I found
myself murmuring over and over again the words:

  "That's the way to heaven out
   Of Black Fernando's hell."

[Illustration]



CHAPTER II

THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTERS

In the old days, when slave-carrying was a game followed by gentlemen
with nerve, the officer with the best nose on board the man-o'-war that
overhauled a suspected slave carrier was always sent aboard to make an
examination. It was his business to sniff at the air in the hold in an
endeavour to distinguish the "slave smell." No matter how the wily
slaver disinfected the place, the odour of caged niggers remained, and a
long-nosed investigator could always detect it.

Now the trouble odour on board a ship is the same as the slave smell. An
experienced investigator can detect it immediately, and when I climbed
over the low bulwarks of _The Waif_ I got a whiff. I couldn't tell
exactly where it was, but I knew that Dame Trouble was aboard the craft.
It's a sort of sixth sense with a sailorman to be able to detect a
stormy atmosphere, and I felt that the yacht wasn't the place that the
dove of peace would choose as a permanent abode. I don't know how the
information came to me. It seemed to filter in through the pores of my
skin, but it was information that I felt sure was correct.

Captain Newmarch was a bilious Englishman with a thin, scrawny beard. He
endeavoured to make one word do the work of two--or three if they were
very short words--and working up a conversation with him was as tough a
job as one could lay hold of. Sometimes a word came to the tip of his
tongue, felt the atmosphere, as you might say, then slid back into his
throat with a little protesting gurgle, and after a ten minutes'
conversation with him, those little gurgles from the strangled words
made me look upon him as a sort of morgue for murdered sentences.

Professor Herndon, the head of the expedition, was on the deck when the
captain and I came up out of the cabin, and Herndon was everything the
comic papers show in the make-up of science professors, with a little
bit extra for good luck. He was sixty inches of nerves, wrinkles, and
whiskers, with special adornments in the shape of a blue smoking cap,
and a pair of spectacles with specially ground lenses of an enormous
thickness.

Newmarch grunted something which the Professor and I took to be an
introduction, and he put a skinny hand into mine.

"You have been a long while in the Islands?" he squeaked.

"Longer than I care to say," I replied.

"Have you been around the spot we are making for?" he asked.

"I was on Penrhyn Island for three months," I answered. "I was helping a
German scientist who was studying the family habits of turtles."

I made a foolish break by admitting that I possessed any knowledge of
Polynesia. The Professor had left his home at sunny Sausalito, on the
shores of San Francisco Bay, in search of that kind of stuff, and before
I could do a conversational backstep he had pushed me against the side
of the galley and was deluging me with questions, the answers to which
he entered in shorthand in a notebook that was bulkier than a Dutchman's
Bible. The old spectacled ancient could fire more queries in three
minutes than any human gatling that ever gripped a brief, and I looked
around for relief.

And the wonder is that the relief came. I forgot the Professor and his
anxiety concerning the "temba-temba" devil dance when my eyes happened
to catch sight of the vision that was approaching from the companionway.
A boat carrying a science expedition to one of the loneliest groups in
the Pacific was not the place where one would expect to find the
handsomest girl in all the world, and my tongue refused to mould my
words. The girl was tall, of graceful build, and possessed of a quiet
beauty that had a most peculiar effect upon me. Only that afternoon, as
I lay in the shadow of the pile of pearl shell on Levuka wharf, I had
thought of crossing to Auckland and shipping up to 'Frisco so that I
could hear good women laugh and talk as I had heard them in my dreams
during the years I had spent around the Islands, and now the woman of my
dreams was in front of me. But I was afraid of her. When she came toward
me I thought of the years I had wasted down in that lonely quarter where
ambition is strangled by lassitude bred in tropical sunshine, and the
ghost of the man I might have been banged me fair between the two eyes.

"My daughter, Miss Edith Herndon," squeaked the Professor, and when I
put out my big hand to take her little one I thought I'd fall down on
the deck on account of the Niagara of blood that seemed to rush to my
brain.

It's funny how all the little imperfections in your dress and manner
rise up suddenly and bang you hard on the bump of observation when you
find yourself in front of some one whose good opinion you want to earn.
I felt it so the moment I stood before the girl in the cream serge suit.
My drill outfit, that I had thought rather clean when I brushed the
shell grit from it after my sleep on the wharf, looked as black as the
devil's tail when she appeared. My hands appeared to be several degrees
larger than the prize hams that come out of Kansas, and my tongue, as if
it recognized the stupidity of the remarks I attempted to make, started
to play fool stunts as if it wanted to go down my throat and choke me to
death.

The girl guessed the sort of predicament I was in at that moment. God
only knows how many months had passed since I had spoken to a woman like
her. Not that good women are lacking in the Islands, but because they
were on a different plane to me. I had been belting native crews on
trading schooners between the Carolines and the Marquesas, and when
ashore I had little opportunity for speaking to a woman of the type of
Edith Herndon.

And she understood the feeling that held me tongue-tied. To make me feel
at my ease she started to tell of everything that had happened from the
moment that _The Waif_ had cleared Sydney Heads, and the time she
spent in that recital was as precious to me as the two-minute interval
between rounds is to a prize-fighter who has been knocked silly the
moment before the round ends. I had shaken the dizziness out of my head
when she finished, and I had obtained control over my tongue.

"You must tell us a lot about the South Seas," she cried. "You have been
down here such a long time that you must have many interesting things to
relate. Captain Newmarch will not talk, and Mr. Leith refuses to see
anything picturesque in the sights he has seen during his wanderings."

"Who is Mr. Leith?" I asked.

"He is father's partner in this expedition," she said quietly. "He has
lived down here for many years, but he will not tell us much. And
Barbara is anxious to know everything she can."

"Barbara?" I stammered. "Then--then there is another lady aboard?"

"Oh, yes! my sister," cried the girl. "I think I hear her coming now."

There was no question about the latter part of her remark. A burst of
laughter that was more infectious than influenza came from the
companion-stairs, and immediately in its wake came a girl who made me
think, as I compared her to Miss Edith, of a beautiful yacht alongside a
stately liner. Barbara Herndon was sunshine personified. Laughter went
with her wherever she went, and a pair of Tongans, polishing brasses,
immediately put their molars on view, as if they had understood what
caused the smiles upon her pretty face as she came toward us.

"Oh, you are the new mate?" she cried, as I was introduced. "Mr. Holman
was just telling me about you. He said that you repeated a chapter of
'Pilgrim's Progress' every time you woke up after a sleep."

I blushed as I made a mental resolve that I would punch the head of that
youngster when I had a suitable opportunity, and in between my
stammering explanations I made notes on the differences between the two
girls. Edith was as stately as Juno, with a face that was so sweet and
restful that a glance at it was better than an opiate for a man whose
nerves were all out of tune. She had that kind of repose that you see
sometimes on the face of an Oriental statue, the repose that comes to
women who have met great trials or for whom great trials are waiting.
Barbara was altogether different. She found the world rather an amusing
place, and it seemed as if she took it for granted that her sister was
capable of shouldering the cares of the family, leaving her free to
smile at all the amusing incidents she found in the course of the day.

It appeared to me that I was an amusing incident to her at that moment.
She returned to the fool story that Holman had told, and I couldn't
sidestep her questions.

"But it is true that you were quoting Bunyan on the wharf when Mr.
Holman found you, isn't it?" she asked mischievously.

"No, it isn't true," I spluttered. "I only asked Mr. Holman a question
to see if he was familiar with 'Pilgrim's Progress'."

"Why did you ask him that?" she quizzed. "I'm sure he looks a perfectly
respectable young man."

Miss Edith was smiling, but she took pity upon me at last and
endeavoured to rescue me from my tormentor.

"Oh, Barbara!" she cried reprovingly, "Mr. Verslun will think you are
very inquisitive. You must not pry into his private affairs."

"But it is nothing private," I gurgled. "I simply asked Mr. Holman a
question in an endeavour to find out what a Maori and a Fijian were
talking about."

"Oh, it is something mysterious!" cried the younger girl. "I knew it! I
knew it! We are getting into the region of mystery at last! Oh, Mr.
Verslun, you are a perfect treasure! It has been a nasty, dull, old trip
from the moment we left Sydney Harbour, and you are the first person to
bring a little colour into the voyage."

She was so worked up at the thought of hearing something wonderfully
mysterious and romantic that I started to make a long yarn out of that
incident on the wharf just for her benefit. Miss Edith was interested
too, but I was convinced, as I polished up the points of the little tale
and endeavoured to pull in a thrill, that the elder sister was deriving
her pleasure from watching the face of the younger one, and not from my
story.

"It pleases Barbara," she cried, when I had told how Toni had denied all
knowledge of his friend, and how the Maori had sent the farewell chant
after the boat. "She thinks she will see and hear wonderful things
before we get back to civilization."

"I hope she will," I said, and little did I dream that the wish I
expressed at that moment should come true in such a remarkable manner
before we had returned.

"And you don't know what they meant by their song about the white
waterfall and Black Fernando's hell?" murmured Barbara.

"No, I don't," I replied. "The Maori ran away when I attempted to
cross-examine him, and Toni denies all knowledge of the duet on the
wharf."

"Oh, we must ask him again!" she cried. "There he is near the wheel.
I'll go and bring him!"

She raced madly after the Fijian and hauled him before us in triumph. I
was more convinced than ever that it was Toni who had blundered over
his lesson on the wharf, but Toni denied the charge more vehemently than
he did on the boat. He asserted in reply to Barbara Herndon's questions,
that he could not sing a note, that he was absolutely ignorant of white
waterfalls, and the only hell he knew was the one spoken of by the
missionary in Lower George Street, Sydney; and the girl sighed as she
gave up the effort.

"It seemed such a nice mystery to unravel," she murmured, "but if Toni
persists in saying that he knows nothing of the white waterfall the
investigation falls to the ground."

The Fijian was backing away with renewed protestations when a head came
round the corner of the galley, and a voice that was deeper than the
caves of Atiu fired a question at us.

"What about the white waterfall?"

"Oh, Mr. Leith," cried Miss Barbara, "we have just been investigating a
mystery. Mr. Verslun discovered it this afternoon in Levuka. But you
haven't met Mr. Verslun yet, have you?"

"I haven't," growled the owner of the voice.

"Mr. Verslun, this is Mr. Leith, who is father's partner," said Miss
Barbara. "He knows a lot about the Islands, but he refuses to tell any
of his experiences."

I looked at the man who stood in front of me, and a curious thing
flashed through my mind. I was reminded at that moment of a story I had
read of a man charged with an attempt upon the life of a prince. The
would-be murderer informed the judge that a terrible hate of the
princeling had gripped him the moment he put eyes on him, and he had
made the attempt upon his life before he had managed to control the
unexplainable surge of hate. I understood the emotion that had gripped
that unfortunate as I stood face to face with Leith. A feeling of
revulsion gripped me, and I experienced a peculiar squalmy sensation as
I took his hand. It was unexplainable. Perhaps some ancestor of mine had
unsatisfactory dealings with a man of the same unusual type in a faraway
past, and the transmitted hate had suddenly sprung into the conscious
area. I do know that you can keep a secretary-bird away from snakes till
it grows old, but the first reptile it sees it immediately starts out to
beat him up. I had the inherited hate that makes the secretary-bird rush
madly at a snake that may be the first of its species that it has ever
seen, and I guess that Leith had no love to spare for me from the moment
he took my hand.

He was a huge brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of
two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen. They were claws,
that's what they were. The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if
waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their
grip. The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it
made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages. The big
brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one's
primitive instincts warned one to keep in a state of readiness for the
onslaught that seemed imminent.

But it was the face that was specially unattractive. It was a sallow,
flat face, and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it. They were
dead, lustreless eyes. They had a coldness in them that reminded me of
the icicle eyes of the crocodile, and, curiously, I associated that
reptile's notions of fair warfare with Leith as I looked at him. That
sullen face, with the eyes that would never brighten at a tale of
daring, or dim from a story of pathos, belonged to a man who would
imitate crocodile tactics by lying quiet till his prey was within
striking distance.

"What is all this about the white waterfall?" he repeated, after the
crooked fingers had dropped my hand.

"Oh, it's something that happened to Mr. Verslun," replied Miss Barbara.

"Where?" asked Leith.

"On the wharf over there," I answered coldly, nodding toward the
structure as I spoke. "It's really nothing important though, and I
related it solely for Miss Herndon's amusement."

"But Toni?" he growled, turning toward the two girls.

"Oh, Toni puts forward an alibi," laughed the youngest sister. "He
asserts that he was in the boat when the incident happened and he
persists in saying that he knows nothing about the matter."

Leith again turned toward me, and his brows straightened as he looked me
in the eyes. "Can't you tell the story over again?" he asked.

"I'd rather not," I said, somewhat rudely. "I'm tired of it. It was
really only a small happening that I am afraid I expanded a little in an
endeavour to thrill Miss Herndon, and the story is now her personal
property."

"But the bare facts?" he growled.

"There are no bare facts," I replied. "I covered them with fiction, and
I think Miss Herndon is going to copyright the whole."

He took the remark as a direct refusal on my part to give him an outline
of the affair to satisfy his curiosity, and I felt elated at noting the
sudden glint of anger that appeared in the lustreless eyes.

The two girls stood silent for a moment while Leith and I surveyed each
other without speaking, then a Tahitian boy broke the awkward silence by
informing me that the captain wished to see me in the cabin, and I
hurriedly excused myself to the sisters and went below.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER III

A KNIFE FROM THE DARK

It was after nine o'clock that evening before I again saw young Holman,
and by that time Levuka was far behind. We had taken advantage of a
stiff breeze that had sprung up about sunset, and _The Waif_ was
plunging through a moon-washed ocean, sending furrows of foam from her
forefoot while the wind snored through her canvas. I forgot the
happenings of the day as I felt the quivering vessel that seemed to
thrill with the ecstasy of life as she flung herself at the watery
wastes ahead. The tremor in her boards seemed to crawl into my body and
warm me like wine, and I felt inclined to bless Holman instead of
punching his head as I had thought of doing during the baiting I
received from Miss Barbara Herndon. The youngster had saved me from days
and nights of weary monotony in sleepy Levuka, and I welcomed him gladly
as he joined me on the poop.

"Say, you made a hit with the ladies!" he cried. "Your fame as a
story-teller is set upon a solid foundation. And I don't suppose you are
inclined to thank me for giving you the opportunity to tell of the
wonderful things that happened while you slumbered on the wharf?"

"Drop it," I growled; "I've had enough of the joke. By the way, what
position do you hold in the expedition?"

The boy laughed. "I hold none," he cried, "but I'm trying to make myself
useful to the Professor so that he'll invite me to come ashore with him.
The Professor and his daughters, with Leith and half a dozen natives,
comprise the full strength of the expedition, and I'm trying hard for an
invitation to the field of wonders."

"But what are you doing aboard?" I asked.

"My uncle owns _The Waif_," answered the young fellow, "and he thought
this trip would be a nice cheap holiday for me. I wanted to take a run
to the States, but that would have cost him money, so I allowed myself
to be forced aboard the yacht. But, Gee! I'm mighty glad I came now."

I glanced at his face as we turned in our walk, but he moved his head
away quickly.

"So it has been pleasant?" I said.

"Pleasant?" he cried. "Why it has been a little foretaste of heaven.
Say, I like you, and I know you like her by the manner in which you
explained everything to her. Don't you think she's a jolly nice girl?"

"Who?"

"Why, Miss Barbara Herndon," he cried.

"Oh!" I gurgled. "You took me by surprise, and I hardly knew--well, I
didn't know what had made the trip so pleasant."

He put out his hand, and I gripped it warmly. There was something clean
and good about the youngster. When he glanced up at me as I took his
hand, I looked into a face that was as open as the day--a face that
possessed all the passionate purity of youth, and my grip was sincere.
One didn't ask for credentials in dealing with Will Holman.

"I liked you from the start," he said, "but I wanted the opinion of the
girls. That's why I put Miss Barbara up to the game of firing questions
at you about that silly business on the wharf."

"And did I pass muster?" I queried.

"Sure you did!" he cried enthusiastically. "Miss Barbara Herndon says
that you are true blue, and Miss Edith--"

He stopped and looked at a patch of shadow near the galley. "Some one is
hiding there," he whispered. "I saw him sneak into it."

"Nonsense!" I growled. "The moon and something else are affecting your
brain."

"But I'm sure of it," he gasped.

He sprang for the spot as he finished speaking, but he found nothing. He
returned to my side shaking his head as if only half convinced about the
matter.

"Some one was listening to us talking, but whoever it was he managed to
slip away while we were arguing the question."

"Well, he didn't learn much," I said. "It was probably one of the
islanders, and you've scared the life out of him now."

Holman gripped my arm as I turned away, and he put a question in a tense
whisper.

"What do you think of Leith?" he asked.

Somehow the question did not surprise me, but I was not in a hurry to
give my opinion of the, Professor's partner.

"I have only spoken a few words to him," I countered cautiously.

"But your impression?" stammered the youngster. "Don't you think--well,
of course you haven't got the lay of things yet."

I smiled at the guilelessness of the boy who was making a confidant of
a stranger. "What's wrong with Leith?" I asked. "What are you hinting
at?"

Holman glanced at the Tongan at the wheel, then at the shadow patch that
had disturbed his nerves a few moments before.

"He's the devil!" he whispered.

I felt inclined to laugh. Leith was certainly not a person that one
would take to the moment an introduction was given, but the manner in
which the young fellow had imparted his opinion was amusing. But it was
evident that I had not guessed wrong when I divined trouble the moment I
came over the side of the yacht.

Holman caught my coat with his left hand as we turned, and he spoke
excitedly.

"Do you know what we're after?" he queried hoarsely.

"It's a scientific expedition," I replied. "That's what you and Captain
Newmarch told me, and I have not questioned any one else."

"But do you know the particular line we are after?"

"No," I replied.

"Well, we're after skulls. Leith has told the Professor about some
ancient boneyard that he knows of, and he's dragging old Herndon down
there."

"I cannot see the crime now," I said. "I've gone after skulls before
to-day. I brought a hundred of them up to Vavau for a German scientist
last year. He was taking them home to European museums to prove that the
Polynesians of ten centuries back had bigger brains than the niggers of
to-day."

"Yes, I know that," gurgled Holman; "but Leith--oh, damn it! I can't get
you to understand! He pulled the Professor into this deal, and the old
man is as green as grass. Herndon supplied the money and all that, and
he's that much of a silly old doodlebug that this fellow is buncoing him
out of his good gold."

"Yes," I muttered; "and what do his daughters say?"

"Say?" cried the youngster. "They can say nothing that will do any good
when they are talking to a madman. He sees Fame coming down the pike,
and he's blind to all the tricks of that devil. It's a fact, Verslun!
Leith is after the old man's cash--and after Edith Herndon as well."

I stood and looked at the youngster. His boyish face was aflame with
indignation, and any suspicions I had regarding his good intentions were
swept away immediately.

"After Edith Herndon?" I repeated slowly.

"Yes!" he gasped. "Oh, I knew you didn't like the big, sallow brute.
Miss Barbara told me how you turned him down cold when he wanted you to
repeat that yarn to satisfy his curiosity. He's a bad egg, do you hear?
He's out for trouble, and we're going to run into it head on before we
finish the trip. Only for the girls I would have stayed ashore at
Levuka."

"And the captain?" I questioned.

"We don't know about him," he snapped. "He's Leith's captain. I mean
Leith put him in his job when the Professor chartered the yacht. Anyhow,
he doesn't say enough to let any one know which side of the fence he is
on. He has only learned to say yes and no, and he is mighty particular
about the number of times he will use those words."

I laughed at the bitterness the youngster threw into his speech. It is
good to be young. One can love and hate with some intensity, and it
appeared to me that Holman had found marks for both adoration and hatred
on the yacht that was slipping into the mysterious islands of the South
Sea.

"You mustn't look at the black side of things," I said. "Leith's face is
not a likable one, I will admit, but a lot of good fellows have ugly
dials. It seems that the Professor wants skulls, and it appears that
Leith knows of a spot where he can gather up the oldest specimens in
Polynesia. There's nothing wrong about that. As to Miss Herndon, she
struck me as being a young lady who was well able to look after
herself."

"That's all right," stammered the youngster. "Perhaps I said too much,
but I had to speak to you."

"And I'm mighty glad you did!" I cried.

He gripped my hand and turned away, leaving me to my own reflections. It
was a wonderful night. The silvery sea through which _The Waif_ drove
a path with plunging forefoot awoke strange dreams and fancies within my
brain. All the mystery of the tropic night welled up around me, and my
soul seemed to have suddenly awakened to the beauty of life. The veil of
morbid pessimism that came before my eyes during the weary days I had
spent upon the beach at Levuka was torn aside, and a wave of gladness
entered my being. I felt that the voyage would be an eventful one to me,
and I tramped the poop with a light step. Occasionally the sallow
features of Leith persisted in rising before my mental vision to blot
out the dream face that was continually before me, but I resolutely put
the Professor's partner from my mind and fed myself upon the visions
bred by the splendour of the night.

Holman had left me about an hour when I happened to glance at the patch
of shadow that had attracted his attention while he was talking to me.
I stopped and watched it intently. Some one had crawled into the
velvety strip and was lying perfectly still.

"Who is there?" I asked.

There was no answer. The strip of shadow broadened and narrowed as _The
Waif_ plunged, but I could discern nothing. Outside the captain and
myself, the crew of _The Waif_, together with the six men that were with
the Professor's party, were all natives, and I wondered as I watched the
shadow why one should be crawling around as if afraid of being seen. It
was possible that he was attempting to thieve something from the galley,
and it was also possible that he was spying, as Holman had suggested.

I picked up a small iron pin and tossed it at the spot where I felt sure
the islander was hiding. I didn't throw the pin with any force, although
the yell that came out of the shadow would convince an onlooker that I
had thrown it with murderous intent.

I sprang forward while the shriek of pain was still vibrating in the
air, but the native was determined to have revenge for the rap from the
iron pin. A knife flashed in the moonlight, and I staggered as the blade
touched my forehead like a tongue of flame. A dark figure dashed along
the deck toward the forecastle, and brushing the blood from my eyes I
started in pursuit.

At the head of the companion-stairs I collided heavily with Newmarch,
who had just rushed up from the cabin, and the force of the shock nearly
threw him off his feet.

"Confound it!" he cried. "What's the matter with you?"

"One of the Kanakas nearly cut my eye out!" I roared. "He flung a knife
at me and ducked for the f'c'stle."

I left him standing in angry astonishment and rushed forward. I stood at
the top of the ladder and listened. The only noises that came up were
the shrill snores of the islanders, but the blood that streamed down my
face made me forget prudence, and I scrambled down into the stuffy
quarters, where the odour of natives was overwhelming.

A swinging lamp dimly illuminated the place, and I snatched it from its
hook and swung it over the face of the naked occupant of the first bunk.
A glance convinced me that his sleep was genuine. His mouth was wide
open as he snored, and the native who feigns sleep hasn't enough sense
to make his imitation more real by opening his mouth.

The man in the next bunk, a muscular Kanaka, had his face turned away
from me, and in spite of his prolonged snore my suspicions were aroused.
I thrust my hand beneath the single blanket that covered him, and was
immediately convinced that I had discovered the culprit. The blanket was
cold.

"Here, you scoundrel!" I yelled, dropping the lamp and poking him
roughly in the ribs. "What the devil do you mean by trying to knife me?"

He opened his big eyes and stared at me stupidly, while the occupants of
the other bunks, who were aroused by my shout, sat up and rubbed their
eyes.

"Why did you throw that knife?" I screamed.

"I no throw knife," he muttered. "Me sleep, very tired."

The pain of my wound maddened me, and I seized him roughly and dragged
him toward the ladder with the intention of bringing him before the
bilious captain.

I had grasped a rung to haul myself up when a heavy boot came down on my
fingers and the voice of the captain screamed an objection.

"Stop that business!" he shrieked.

"But this devil tried to knife me!" I protested.

"Let him go!" yelled Newmarch. "Do you hear me? Let him go this
instant!"

I let go my grip of the Kanaka, who immediately dived for his bunk and
curled himself up as if he had no further interest in the proceedings.
The captain was beside me then, and his quick breathing betrayed his
excitement. As I lifted the lamp back to its place the light fell upon
his thin features; their pallor surprised me as much as his words.

"Too many wonderful things happen to you!" he stammered.

"Why--what do you mean?" I queried.

"Never mind!" he snapped. "If you start a rough house on board this boat
I'll stop you before you get well under way."

I was too astounded to reply. The blood upon my face and hands was plain
evidence of the wound I had received, and the captain's indifference
left me breathless. Without another word he turned and scrambled up on
deck, and I followed.

Once out of earshot of the listening crew I determined to make another
effort to show him that my conduct was justified.

"That devil was sneaking in the shadow of the galley all the evening," I
cried. "I attempted to stir him out and he jerked the knife at me."

He stopped in front of me, made one of his conversational feints by
opening his mouth and shutting it again, then dived hastily for the
companion, leaving me to search for sympathy in the moonlit night. I
remembered as I endeavoured to staunch the wound, the question which I
had put to Holman concerning the captain only an hour before, and I
smiled grimly as I bound my handkerchief about my forehead. Captain
Newmarch of _The Waif_ hadn't risen in my estimation since the moment I
made the inquiry.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER IV


THE STORM

Holman glanced inquiringly at the piece of sticking plaster above my
right eye when he met me on the deck the morning after the knife
incident, and I grinned sheepishly.

"You were right about that patch of shadow last night," I remarked.

"How?" he queried.

"This came from it," I replied, touching the plaster with my finger as I
spoke.

The boy whistled and looked around cautiously. "You'll be getting wise
in a day or two," he murmured. "She said you would when I told her this
morning about our conversation of last night."

I laughed, and he turned suddenly toward me. "Do you think we'll put in
anywhere in the Samoan Group?"

"I don't think so," I replied. "Why?"

Holman came closer. "If we do I'm going to get the girls ashore and keep
them there," he muttered. "I don't care what you think of the
proposition. This trip is going to be a tough one, and I'm certain there
is some deviltry afoot."

I tried to laugh at the serious face upon the youngster, but the
conviction which he threw into his words choked my mirth. Whether it was
the little brush with the Kanaka or the gloomy forebodings of the boy I
couldn't tell, but I felt a trifle anxious after my first night aboard
_The Waif_.

"But there is nothing to be gained by running away if we do put in to a
port," I growled.

"How is that?" stammered Holman.

"Well, if Leith is an admirer of Edith Herndon, as you say," I argued,
"and if the captain is in league with Leith, the yacht wouldn't leave
till the girls came aboard. Besides, the Professor wouldn't go on
without them."

"I don't know about the Professor," grunted Holman. "That old doodlebug
only thinks of the silly specimens that he is going to collect down
here. If he had any love for his daughters he wouldn't have brought them
along."

"But you told me they insisted on coming."

"So they did!" he retorted savagely. "But they knew that the poor old
fool was in the hands of a scoundrel and they wouldn't let him go alone.
They think they can protect him from that devil, and it nearly makes me
cry to hear them say so."

Miss Edith Herndon and her sister came up on deck at that moment, and if
I was impressed by the calm sweetness of the elder girl's face on the
previous afternoon, the strength and beauty of it as I saw it in the
fresh morning sunlight made my heart pound violently against my ribs.
The prettiness of Miss Barbara made the quiet dignity of the elder
sister more noticeable, and that apparent strength of character made me
doubt Holman's contention that she would be unable to help the scientist
if Leith's motives were discovered to be criminal.

It was Barbara's keen eyes that detected my plaster, and I squirmed as I
saw the light of curiosity in her eyes.

"Oh, tell us how it happened!" she cried. "Please make it a night attack
upon the yacht, Mr. Verslun! I heard a wild cry just after I retired and
I felt sure that war canoes had surrounded us. They always surround the
ill-fated ship, don't they?" she continued merrily. "And the ship is
always ill-fated in all the really thrilling sea stories I have read!"

Leith came sauntering aft as she fired her questions at me, and he
stood near Miss Edith with his dull eyes fixed upon me as I answered.

"I'm afraid I cannot feed your imagination to-day," I replied. "I
tripped over a coil of rope, and the deck sprang up and bumped me."

I glanced at Leith as I spoke, and I fancied I detected a glint of
amusement in the lustreless eyes that were turned in my direction.
Whether it was caused by my hastily constructed lie or by the girl's
inquiries I could not tell, but my dislike for the clumsy giant made me
suspicious about his knowledge of the incident of the preceding evening,
and I felt certain that he was smiling at my fib.

As if he wished to do something which would convince me of his ignorance
of the happening, he hastily changed the subject.

"The captain thinks we are in for a spell of bad weather, Mr. Verslun,"
he drawled; "are you of the same opinion?"

"If signs go for anything we are," I replied. "We are running into a
zone of trouble."

He walked away without further speech, and the two girls went below in
response to a message from their father. The Professor was slightly
indisposed, and he demanded that his daughters remain with him in the
cabin. The selfishness of the scientist irritated Holman exceedingly,
and he made bitter comments about him during the hour or two he kept me
company.

"I never yet met one of those scientific gazaboos who didn't think he
was something more than mortal," he growled. "I try to keep on good
terms with the old bone measurer, but his vanity nearly turns me sick.
Do you know what he told me yesterday?"

"What?" I asked, amused at the youngster's annoyance.

"Said that he might mention my name in the report of the expedition that
he would send to some old research society in the States. When I didn't
show any signs of elation he got offended, so I guess I'm cut out of the
history."

He went grumbling down into the cabin, and I watched the ocean. The
barometer was low, and out of the west a pack of fat black clouds
swarmed up from the horizon, stacking themselves one upon another till
they resembled a huge pile of rounded boulders which a sudden puff of
wind might bring toppling down upon us. The faint scouting puffs of
air--"the devil's breath" of the poetical Polynesians--whined through
the stays, but the small waves that tried to rise in expectation were
clouted back by the heavy, oppressive atmosphere that ironed out the
ocean till one's imagination pictured it waiting for the word like a
strained runner on his mark.

It burst at last. Three violent blasts ripped over us like projectiles,
and the "song of the dead men" was twanged upon the straining ropes.
_The Waif_ stopped for an instant, as if debating whether she would run
or cower before the onslaught, then she dipped her nose into the mad
lather that rose around her and plunged forward. That jump seemed to be
a challenge to the storm. It burst upon us in all its fury, and the
yacht became a tiny seesaw upon the murderous Himalayas that rose around
us.

Great chunks of green water came hurtling over the rail, thundering down
upon us till _The Waif_ was buried in a boiling turmoil from which she
would leap and shake herself, only to be pulled down again when the next
sea fell upon us. When she sprang out of the lather, those devilish,
snarling, snaky waves sprang after her, slapping at her flanks, tearing
and biting at her like a pack of wolves. There's an awful likeness to a
wolf pack about storm waves. When you see them all foam-lathered
stretching out like a pack in full cry, or watch them leaping up as if
they were trying to see whether the unfortunate ship had been torn down
by one of their band, you begin to credit them with some sort of
intelligence.

_The Waif_ was no poppycock yacht, built to dodge about the Solent and
run for Cowes if the wind blew a capful. She had been built to hold her
own with the hardest slamming seas that ever chased a shattered hull,
and it was lucky for us that she was. The storm that came screeching
after us from way across the Coral Sea was one of those high-powered
freak disturbances that juggle with lumps of water like a vaudeville
performer juggling with cheap crockery. It took the tops off those
rollers and pelted them at us, and the wind seemed to yell in triumph
when the yacht was buried in the whirlpools in which she dived headlong.

All through the night we raced before it, and through the following day
_The Waif_ never paused for an instant in her mad race to the eastward.
The Kanakas became demoralized with fear, and I forgot the trouble
hanging over the heads of the girls and their father as I helped
Newmarch drag the crew from their bunks to cut away the wreckage of the
vessel.

I saw a new side of the captain during those hours. A very devil of
energy took hold of him with the coming of the storm, and he became a
human dynamo. He pounded the frightened crew unmercifully, dragging the
screaming islanders back to their work by the hair of their heads, and
heaping upon them curses that were strange and blood-curdling. That he
was a good sailorman I had little doubt. He handled _The Waif_ with
skill and patience, while the crew, with rolling eyes and quivering
lips, were so terrorized by his wrath that they fled to do his bidding.

I had been wondering since the moment when he had ordered me to let go
my grip of the Kanaka in the f'c'stle, if he was afraid that any
disagreement between me and the knife-thrower would start trouble with
the crew, but from the way he hazed the niggers during the storm I was
convinced that it was not through any fear of them that he ordered me to
leave my assailant alone. The conviction did not increase my love for
him. As I viewed the happening he was inclined to shield the big brute
who threw the knife simply because the offence did not appear to be one
that merited punishment, and this view was not pleasing to my nerves.

It was on the second day of the storm that a little incident happened
which is worth mentioning. Toni, the small Fijian who had chanted the
song of Black Fernando's hell, was caught by a huge wave and pounded
hard against the cabin. The mad turmoil of water swept his nearly
lifeless form into the scuppers, but before another comber could snatch
him overboard, I managed to reach his side and drag him into safety.

I forgot the incident in the whirl of happenings that followed, but the
Fijian had a longer memory. Late that afternoon he was holding the wheel
with Soma, the big Kanaka who had jerked the knife at me, and as I
stopped to peer at the binnacle he beckoned me toward him.

"That was me that sing," he shrieked, as I put down my head. "I tell
damn big lie you an' Miss Herndon."

"Why?" I asked, amused at the peculiar manner in which he tried to
express his gratitude for the rescue of the morning.

"Big Jacky tell me not say anything," he screamed. "He tell it to me one
big secret all that talk about waterfall. Tell me not to tell any one.
You know why?"

I glanced at Soma and found that he was straining his ears to catch the
words the other was shrieking, and as I was more than suspicious of him,
I promptly closed the conversation.

"I'll see you in the morning," I roared.

The Fijian nodded and I fought my way forward, wondering as I clung to
the rigging what the pupil of the Maori had to tell me about the song.

The wind had ceased somewhat on the morning of the third day, but the
snaky rollers were still racing after the flying yacht. A watery sun
peeped out from between the driving cloud masses, the rays glinting
through the heads of the waves that curled menacingly as the battered
yacht drove through them.

Newmarch hailed me from the poop when I came on deck, and there was a
peculiar look upon his scrawny features as he addressed me.

"Do you know that nigger you rescued?" he asked.

"Toni?"

"Yes."

"What about him?"

"You did your heroic stunt for nothing," he remarked. "The fool can't be
found, so I guess he went overboard in the night."

The news came as a shock to me. Toni's last question that he had put as
he clung to the wheel with Soma had flashed through my mind several
times through the night. He had asked it in a manner that insinuated
that I might be interested in the reasons why Big Jacky, his companion
on the wharf at Levuka, wished the whereabouts of the white waterfall to
remain a secret, and now his disappearance blocked my inquiries. I felt
annoyed with myself for not listening to what the Fijian had to say at
the moment he confessed that he had lied, and then the face of the
listening Soma came up before my mental eye. Soma was a person that I
was beginning to cordially dislike.

I turned to Newmarch and fired a question at him.

"Do you think he was helped overboard?"

"Why, no," he said slowly. "Why do you think that?"

"Oh, nothing," I replied. "I thought his narrow escape of the morning
would have made him careful."

It was a few hours after this conversation that I had my first chance
of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment we had run into the
disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I
hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage
which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as
she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the
wind like the whips of invisible devils.

"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.

"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as _The Waif_ took
a header. "We've weathered the worst of it and we're still sound. The
storm centre has slipped away to the north, and we can count ourselves
out of the ruction for the present."

Her shapely hand clutched my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the
back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the
hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the
companion. Leith's bass voice rose above the noise of the waves, and
there was an angry note in it.

"This isn't a nice place for you, Miss Edith!" he cried.

The girl half turned her head, looked at him for a second, then without
any intimation that she had heard what he said, she turned again toward
me and started to cross-examine me upon the amount of damage we had
sustained. I thought that the white, shapely hand tightened its grip
upon my wet sleeve at the moment Leith's bass voice came booming to our
ears, and I blessed the big brute's interference for the thrill which I
derived from the pressure of her fingers upon the greasy coat.

But Leith was not to be denied. The cold stare, instead of driving him
back into the cabin, only roused his temper. Very cautiously he climbed
along the heaving deck to the point where we were standing, and,
clutching a rope, he swayed backward and forward immediately behind us.

"Miss Edith!" he called.

The girl turned her head sharply. "Well?" she cried.

"This isn't a proper place for you!" roared Leith. "One of those seas is
liable to come aboard at any moment, and you might be washed away before
any one could assist you."

Edith Herndon's lips showed the slightest trace of a smile. "You had
better be careful too, Mr. Leith," she retorted. "Mr. Verslun is holding
on to me in case one of those old gray rollers should make a sudden
leap, but you have no one to hold on to you."

A frown passed over Leith's face like a cloud shadow across a yellow
plain. He slackened his grip on the rope and lurched toward us.

"You must go below at once!" he screamed, addressing the girl. "Your
father is too ill to look after you at this moment, so the duty is mine.
There is danger here, and I order you below!"

He touched her shoulder with his big fingers that resembled talons, but
the girl made a quick side movement and slipped from his grip.

"Do not touch me!" she cried fiercely. "How dare you put your hand on
me!"

But Leith's temper was up at that moment, and he was angry enough for
anything. He made a spring for the girl's hand, and I thrust my shoulder
forward to bump him off. _The Waif_ nearly stood on her end at that
instant, and her acrobatic feat combined with the push flung Leith off
his feet and sent him rolling ludicrously along the deck.

Miss Herndon gave a little cry of alarm and sprang for the
companion-stairs, down which she disappeared without taking a glance at
the brute on the wet planks. Leith picked himself up, gripped a loose
backstay with his left hand and swung himself toward me, striking out
viciously with his free right hand when he came within hitting distance.

The blow landed on my shoulder, and I returned the compliment with an
uppercut that jerked him from his swing rope and sent him stumbling
backward against the rail. The fall stunned him for a few moments and he
rolled about in the wash; then Soma, the Kanaka who jerked the knife at
me, rushed from the galley door and dragged him to his feet. The native
steered him to the companionway, where he stood for a moment glaring at
me as if undecided whether to continue the fight or beat a retreat, but
the wild plunging of the yacht convinced him that the spot was not one
where he figured to advantage, so he stumbled below.

I looked around and saw Holman clinging to the rigging, his boyish face
wearing an expression of extreme pleasure.

"You're getting wise," he cried, as he scrambled toward me; "but don't
think you've walloped him. He'll come back at you when he has a better
opportunity of beating you up."


[Illustration]


CHAPTER V

I MAKE A PROMISE

The morning following the unpleasant incident with Leith broke clear and
sunny. The Pacific, as if tired after its mad pranks of the preceding
three days, was a shimmering stretch of placid blue water, and the
shattered spars and loose cordage of _The Waif_ were the only reminders
of the terrific storm that had swept us before it.

Captain Newmarch set all hands at work to repair the damage, and before
midday we were bowling along under as much canvas as we could spread.
The storm being directly from the southwest had not carried us from our
course, and Newmarch chuckled when he had taken an observation.

"We'll strike it in the morning," he growled.

"What? Penrose Island?" I asked.

"No, the Isle of Tears," he answered sharply.

"The Isle of Tears?" I repeated.

"That's what I said," he remarked sourly. "And now you know as much as I
know. It was kept a little secret by the orders of my employers, but we
are so close to the spot now that I don't think it will matter if I let
the cat out of the bag."

"And is it there that the Professor will conduct his search?" I asked.

"You had better ask that question of Professor Herndon," he replied. "I
know nothing about what they'll do ashore."

He left the poop before I had time to put another question to him, and
as I walked up and down I turned over in my mind the tiny morsel of
information I had received. The captain's secrecy was peculiar, to say
the least, and as I reasoned that Professor Herndon knew absolutely
nothing of the Islands, it was quite evident that the orders prohibiting
Newmarch from making known the exact destination of the yacht had come
from Leith. It was not the first time I had heard of the Isle of Tears.
Strange stories floated across the Pacific concerning the little islet
east of the Suvaroff Group, and out of the reticule of the mind I
attempted to drag these stories and piece them together during the
minutes that passed after Newmarch had given me the information. They
were not pleasant stories as I remembered them at that moment. The
island had a "past." The mention of it brought hazy recollections to
natives--recollections that were too misty to put into words, but which
the untutored mind connected with happenings that were anything but
pleasant. And I recalled a night at "Tonga Pete's" place on the Rue de
Rivoli at Papeete, when a sailor from a copra schooner in the bay, who
had been marooned upon the island by Captain "Bully" Hayes, told a wild,
weird story of unexplainable happenings that he had witnessed during the
two days and two nights he had spent ashore.

Holman came hurrying upon deck as I was endeavouring to remember all the
story that the sailor had told, and the youngster immediately rushed me
with the news.

"The captain has just told me," I said.

"Well, Leith has just given the information out in the cabin," he cried.
"They must have decided to give it out at the same moment."

"But the Professor?" I asked. "Surely he knew. Do you mean to say that
he was ignorant of the fact that it was the Isle of Tears and not
Penrose Island that we were making for?"

Holman laughed at my question. "You haven't spoken much to him, Verslun.
He couldn't remember the name of a place three minutes. He only knows
that there are archaeological treasures on this island we are going to,
and he doesn't care two cents about its name. Leith has told him some
tall stories about the camp, judging by the way the old man's eyes shine
when he mentions it. Yesterday he read me Leith's description of stone
_hamungas_ and things that are supposed to have been built before Julius
Caesar invaded Britain, and he's pop-eyed with joy as he thinks how
he'll yank Fame by the tail when he gets on the ground and snapshots the
affairs. Gee! I'm glad I haven't got a kink for digging up relics and
dodging about places that went to smash thousands of years ago. A vice
like that is more expensive than the poker habit."

"Well, Newmarch says we'll strike it early in the morning," I said, "and
then we'll see whether your suspicions are correct."

"I'm infernally afraid they are," snapped the youngster. "I wouldn't
care ten cents about the brute only that the girls are aboard. I felt
sorry when I saw him climb to his feet yesterday. If you hit him again
hit him with something that will crack his skull. He's a devil, Verslun,
and before we are much older we will find it out."

I laughed at his gloomy forebodings, and as Miss Barbara Herndon came on
deck at that moment he raced away and left me to my own meditations.

My thoughts were mixed. I had pleasant and unpleasant ones. If Leith
was the scoundrel that Holman suspected, the two girls were in danger,
and now as we neared the island where they would leave the yacht to
accompany their father, the clutch of fear was upon me. On _The Waif_ I
felt that I had some little power, but on land, more especially on the
lonely island toward which we were heading, that feeling of
protectorship which the sailorman has for his passengers would be lost.
If Leith knew the island, and it was evident that he had visited it
before, any villainy that he contemplated would be held in check till he
was ashore and in command of the expedition and I would be powerless.

I recognized that Holman's fears were without solid foundation. They
were transmitted through Barbara Herndon, but I also recognized that the
elder sister would hardly support the statements unless she had good
grounds for her anxiety. Her woman's intuition had branded Leith's
motives in bringing the Professor into the Islands as bad, and the
sallow-faced giant could not erase the impression. The actual reason for
trickery was a matter of speculation. Professor Herndon was wealthy; it
was his money that had fitted out the expedition, but how Leith expected
to benefit himself by treachery was more than I could tell. Still, try
as I would to fight off the impressions that Holman's tongue had fixed
within my mind, I was unable to alter the opinion I had formed of the
man the moment I met him. There was an atmosphere about the yacht that
was unexplainable. Try as I could to find legitimate grounds for fears I
could not. The Professor was a scientist who wished to study certain
things the whereabouts of which were known to Leith. Apparently the
Professor was satisfied with the bargain he had made. Leith, as the two
girls had informed Holman, had called upon their father at the Langham
Hotel in Wynyard Square, Sydney, and, after fascinating the old man with
his stories, had presented his credentials and made a bargain with him
which resulted in the chartering of the yacht. His former life was a
mystery that he guarded jealously from the probes which the girls had
skilfully endeavoured to use. It was clear that he had spent many years
in the Islands, but that fact is not one that is generally put forward
as a recommendation of good character. The South Sea holds a large
percentage of the nimble people who manage to be in another spot when
Dame Justice throws her lariat. The Law of the Fringe has made curiosity
a criminal offence, and a new name covers more than charity.

I had had little chance of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment I
came aboard, but I determined, after I had looked at the matter from
every side, that I would ask her point blank if I could be of any
assistance. Leith's face was the only prop he put forward as a support
to his claims of respectability, and his face betrayed him.

My chance came early that evening. A big tropical moon rose out of Asia
and spread a silvery wash upon the ocean. Professor Herndon and his
eldest daughter were leaning over the rail, but the moment I joined them
the old man informed us that he had to see to his scientific outfit so
that everything would be in readiness for the landing on the following
morning, and he hurried off and left us together.

The girl did not speak for a few minutes, and I made no attempt to break
the silence. Somehow I felt that her intuition had already told her that
I wished to speak about the happenings of the morrow, and her opening
remark proved that my surmise was correct.

"You will stay with the yacht, I suppose?" she questioned.

"I cannot say," I replied. "Captain Newmarch hasn't spoken to me about
the matter. Does your father intend to go far inland?"

"Father has just told me that the actual distance is not great, but the
travelling is very hard. It seems that it is only a few miles to the
spot where Mr. Leith says that father can see all the sights and obtain
all the specimens he desires, but those few miles will take us four days
to travel. There are all kinds of obstacles in the way."

"And you are not afraid?" I stammered. "You do not dislike the idea of
going?"

She lifted her head and looked me in the face, the big amber eyes
shining softly in the moonlight.

"I dread it," she said quietly. "It is foolish to say so, but--"

She stopped speaking and turned her face away from me. In the little
silence that followed I heard the _plop plop_ of the waves against the
side of the yacht. A native chanted a Samoan love song in the fo'c'stle,
but that and the soft whine of the pulleys were the only sounds that
disturbed the night. We seemed such a long way from civilization at that
minute, and a great pity for the girl's plight gave me sufficient
courage to make a proffer of my services.

"Miss Herndon," I spluttered, "if I could do anything to help you,
please tell me. I might help you if you wish. Tell me what you think is
best."

"If you stay with the yacht you can do nothing," she murmured.

"Then you want me to go?" I cried. "You would like me to go with----"

"Father and Barbara and me," she said softly. "Mr. Holman is coming,
and if you could come too--"

"I can!" I cried. "I will go with the party if you say so."

"But if Captain Newmarch orders you to stay with the yacht?"

"He can order away," I spluttered. "I am going where Leith is going,
that is as long as Leith accompanies you and your father."

Something moved on the top of the galley as I put my resolution into
words, and I sprang up quickly. The moon made every inch of the yacht as
bright as day, yet I was not quick enough in my rush. A tin pan, knocked
down by the eavesdropper, rolled across the deck, but the spy had fled.

"Some one was listening to us," I explained as I returned to the girl's
side.

"I am sorry then that I asked you to accompany us," she murmured. "I am
dragging you into our troubles, Mr. Verslun, and it is not right."

"Hush!" I cried. "Your troubles are mine just because you are a woman
out on the very fringe of the earth where you can get no one else to
help you bear them. You see I can claim a right in this spot. This is
the jumping off place of the world down here, and an offer of assistance
must not be refused."

She stood in front of me, a tall, splendid figure, the moonlight
silvering the piled masses of hair and giving one the impression that
her head was surrounded by a shining halo. Suddenly she put out her hand
and took mine.

"I accept your offer gladly," she said softly. "You are very, very kind,
Mr. Verslun. It may be, as you say, the jumping off place of the world
down here at the very outposts of civilization, but the power that
protects one in the crowded cities is surely here as well. Good-night,
friend."

It was an hour after the time when Miss Herndon went below that I asked
the captain's permission to go along with the expedition. He plucked his
scrawny beard with a nervous hand as he stood staring at me.

"What the devil do you want to go for?" he asked.

"For the fun of the thing."

"I don't know," he muttered. "I'll see Leith."

He turned away and I walked for'ard. The beauty of the night was
extraordinary. The yacht seemed to be veneered with a soft luminous
paint that gave us the appearance of a ghostly ship skimming over a
ghostly ocean.

At the top of the fo'c'stle ladder I found a native stretched full
length and sobbing mightily. He walloped his head against the planks
when I endeavoured to get him upon his feet, and the sobs shook his
frame.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Toni! Toni! Toni!" he wailed. "Toni he gone. Toni, my brother, all same
come from Suva, now him dead."

"I'm sorry, but it can't be helped," I said. "He should have been more
careful."

The native lifted himself from the deck and glanced around fearfully.
Satisfied that there were no listeners he dried his eyes and crawled
upon his knees to the spot where I was standing. "He not washed
overboard," he whispered. "Soma stick one knife in him, then he tip him
over. Me see him, very much afraid."

"When?" I asked.

"Night afore last," he gasped. "Captain see him do it. Very bad thing.
Toni, my brother, all same work one time Suva."

Holman joined me when I relieved the captain late in the night; I told
the youngster what I knew about the disappearance of Toni.

"Who knifed him?" he asked.

"The big Kanaka who pulled Leith out of the scuppers when he fell
yesterday."

"Holy smoke!" cried the boy. "I'd like to get the strength of things on
board this boat. Why, that big nigger is going to be the guide of the
expedition on shore."

"Who says so?"

"Leith pointed him out to the Professor this afternoon," answered
Holman. "I was talking to the old scientist at the time."

I whistled softly. If Soma was a henchman of Leith's it was clear to me
why the captain had shielded him the night he jerked the knife at me
when I dropped the pin upon his woolly head, but why Toni had been put
away was a mystery.

"Is it any good of attempting to convince the Professor?" I asked.

"Not a bit," snapped Holman. "The girls have been imploring him to turn
back this last three days while we were stuck in the cabin, but he won't
listen to them. He's a maniac, that's what he is. He doesn't know what
those two women are suffering through his darned foolishness, and if he
did know it wouldn't trouble him. If you want the real extract of
selfishness you must make a puncture in a scientific guy with a hobby,
and you can get as much as you want."

"Well, I'm going along to see what happens," I said. "If Leith refuses
to accept me I'm going just the same."

Holman gripped my hand--gripped it fiercely, then he left me hurriedly.

I tramped backward and forward as _The Waif_ sailed steadily through the
waves of glittering mercury. A few days before, when I was an occupant
of "The Rathole" in Levuka, life seemed to be empty and cold, but a
wonderful change had come in those few days. Although I had not spoken
to Edith Herndon more than half a dozen times, it appeared to me that it
was those few short conversations that had chased the loneliness and
morbid thoughts from my mind. Her very presence stimulated me in a
manner that I could not express, and as I stared out across the
moon-whitened ocean I started nervously at the thought which had sprung
suddenly into my brain. It was an insane thought, and I tried to laugh
it away. Edith Herndon was as far above me as the moon was above the
waves that were silvered by her beams. I pictured myself lying like a
beachcomber upon the pile of pearl shell when the strange chant of the
Maori and the dead Toni concerning "the way to heaven out of Black
Fernando's hell" had come to my ears, and I blessed the new influence
which had come into my life.

"My way to heaven lies in this direction," I soliloquized, and the
quivering yacht went bounding on as I allowed wild dreams to race
unchecked through my brain.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER VI

THE ISLE OF TEARS

A sleepy Samoan in the main cross-trees screamed a message to the deck
while the pink flush of the tropical dawn was still in the sky, and _The
Waif_ plunged through the water toward the island. One after the other
the members of the expedition came on deck. Leith stumbled up when
Newmarch shouted down the information, and the big brute watched the
tiny spot that came gradually nearer; the Professor danced up like an
adventurous boy, and he gurgled ecstatically as he peeped over the rail;
while the two girls came up arm in arm and looked in silence across the
dawn-reddened waters. Holman's gaze travelled from the island to Leith
and back again to the island as if he was trying to trace a criminal
connection between the two.

As the yacht drew closer a strange silence seemed to fall upon the
vessel. The Professor's gurgles of joy died away slowly, and none of the
others seemed inclined to break the stillness. The crew and the half
dozen islanders that Leith had brought to carry provisions and specimens
were also silent. They were grouped for'ard, but not a murmur came from
them as _The Waif_ crept slowly ahead, feeling her way cautiously into
the little bay on the north side of the island which Leith had suggested
to Newmarch as a good anchorage.

The peculiar stories that had gone abroad concerning the Isle of Tears
were responsible for most of the wide-eyed looks of wonder which the
imaginative Polynesians directed upon the shore; the strange predicament
in which they were placed tied the tongues of the two girls; the
Professor was thinking of the archaeological treasures, while thoughts
that one could only guess at prevented Leith and Holman from speaking.

The island had a strange, wild beauty that seemed to throttle speech.
The underlying coral reefs were of colours that ran from pure white to
gorgeous crimson, and the effect upon the water above them was wonderful
to behold. _The Waif_ seemed to make her way over a floor of beautiful
parquetry which Mother Nature had been constructing for centuries.
Chameleon-tinted seaweeds stretched upward, waving backward and forward
like the hair of sea nymphs hidden in the crevices of the multi-coloured
rocks.

The vegetation on the shore was weird and wondrous. The trees
immediately near the edge of the bay were covered with riotous lianas
that looped themselves like pythons from limb to limb, and from whose
green masses blazing red flowers appeared at intervals like watchful
eyes. Scarlet hibiscus and perfumed frangipanni were everywhere, while
climbing jasmine tried to cover up the black basalt rocks in the
foreground as if to hide everything that was ugly from the eyes of the
visitor. The sweet, intoxicating odours came out to us in greeting, yet
the place seemed to inspire us with a feeling of awe and mystery that
became more oppressive as the yacht moved lazily across the bay.

I glanced at Edith Herndon at the moment the anchor plunged down into
the bed of coral, and the look of perplexed wonder upon her face
startled me.

"It looks a nice place, yet it feels an awful spot," she murmured. "All
those snaky creepers with their coloured flowers seem to be hiding
something."

I understood her feelings regarding the place. That look of weird
expectancy, common to places that are cloaked with a tremendous silence,
had gripped the two girls, and the yacht seemed homelike when they
compared it to the shore.

"Oh, Edith," cried the younger sister, "I wish father wouldn't go!"

"So do I, dear," murmured the elder girl, "but it is useless to attempt
to persuade him to give up the quest."

"But I hate the place!" cried Miss Barbara. "Don't you?"

"Oh, no," stammered Edith, bravely attempting to cheer the spirits of
the younger girl. "You will not be lonely, Barbara. Mr. Holman and
father and I will be with you, and perhaps Mr. Verslun will be in our
company."

Newmarch approached at the instant and squeaked out an answer to the
request I had made the previous evening.

"I asked Mr. Leith if you could go with him," he said, "but he doesn't
think you would be of any use. He has all the help he requires, so you
had better stay on the yacht."

There was a slight grin on his thin face as he imparted the information,
and his merriment tickled me. I had made up my mind without waiting for
Leith's decision, and I was more pleased than annoyed at knowing that my
presence was not desired with the party that went inland.

The anchor had hardly touched the bottom before Leith started to
transship the provisions that were required for the trip across the
island. The sight of land seemed to stir the sallow-faced giant out of
the lethargy that had gripped him on the way down from Levuka. He
suddenly discovered that the mantle of authority was upon his shoulders,
and he bullied the island boys as they lowered the stores.

Holman was right when he stated that Soma was the man that Leith had
picked as first assistant. The big Kanaka was placed in charge of the
other five carriers, and he immediately imitated Leith by shrieking out
orders and strutting about in a manner that was ludicrous. Professor
Herndon was bubbling over with excitement. The stories which Leith had
fed to him continuously concerning the remains of an extinct
civilization had worked him up to a pitch that bordered on insanity, and
it was pitiful to watch him as he made endless notes in the bulky
notebook.

"I shall be known throughout the world inside three months," he
whispered to Leith.

"In less than that," drawled the giant.

"Yes, you're right!" snapped the dream-fed scientist. "If everything is
as you say our task will be an easy one. Are you ready Edith? Barbara,
come along!"

He climbed down the ladder with a haste that was nearly his undoing, as
he let go his grip before the boat was directly beneath him. Holman
saved him from a ducking, but his solar topee, which had a distinctly
scientific look, was soaked in salt water before it could be rescued.

Captain Newmarch stood by with a look of unconcern upon his thin face as
the two girls went over the side, and he gave an unintelligible grunt as
Leith followed. Within two hours after _The Waif_ had cast anchor the
two boats containing the stores and the ill-assorted explorers were
making for a small promontory that stretched out like a green tongue
into the sparkling waters of the bay.

Once on shore, Leith put Soma and the carriers in the lead, Holman and
the two girls next, with himself and the Professor bringing up the rear,
and in that order they moved across the little strip of white sand that
glittered like diamond dust. The heavy green foliage came out to meet
them, dropped over them like a veil, and left us staring at the riotous
creeper masses with the brilliant flower eyes that appeared to be
watching _The Waif_.

Newmarch gave a peculiar chuckle as he turned toward me when the party
had disappeared.

"Now, Mr. Verslun," he cried, "we have plenty work to keep us busy for
the week or so we will be here. Get about it the moment the boats
return, and keep the men on the jump."

I nodded, and he went below without another word, leaving me still
staring at the spot where the explorers had dived into the leafy wall.
The strange loneliness of the place seemed to clutch me hard at that
moment, and I mentally abused myself for not making a stronger protest
against the whole affair. But I knew as I damned my own inactivity that
protest would have been useless as far as the Professor was concerned,
and the filial affection of the two girls would not allow the old
ancient to wander off alone.

I had planned to allow the party a few hours' start before I made any
attempt to follow, feeling certain that I would be able to find the
track, and, moreover, I wished to catch up to the expedition at a point
where Leith would have no chance of verifying the story I would tell to
account for my presence. The big brute would probably think I was lying
when I told him that Newmarch had sent me after him, but the Professor's
desire to push on would probably prevent him from making an effort to
check my story by sending a runner back to the boat. And luck was with
me at that moment. As I racked my brain in the construction of a
suitable excuse to account for my appearance, my eyes fell upon the
Professor's camera that had been overlooked in the hurry of departure,
and I sprang upon it joyfully and hid it till the time had elapsed.
Knowing the importance which the old scientist attached to the
photographs which he intended to take, I knew that he, at least, would
reason that the captain had acted wisely in sending me in pursuit with
the instrument, and I trusted that his gratitude would move him to get
Leith's permission to allow me to remain with the expedition.

The party had been gone some six hours when I slipped over the side into
the dory. Newmarch was below, and only one of the crew was on deck. I
seized the oars and struck out for the shore, but I had hardly covered
twenty paces when the captain rushed to the rail, took one glance at me,
and then dashed toward the companion-stairs.

I sensed the motive in that mad dash for the cabin, and I pulled madly.
Thoughts of Edith Herndon thronged my brain, and I drove the dory toward
the promontory with every ounce of strength I possessed. To return to
the yacht while she was in the eerie jungle-growth under Leith's
protection would be worse than death, and I didn't pause for an instant
when the captain's squeaky voice hailed me.

"Come back at once!" he shouted. "Are you coming?"

I bent my back to the oars and pulled with every muscle strained. The
perspiration half blinded me, but one glance upward convinced me that I
had sensed the captain's motive when I saw him rush from the side. He
was standing on the poop, taking deliberate aim at me with a Winchester
rifle that he had taken from the rack in his own cabin.

It seemed an age before he fired. The bullet missed the side of the boat
by about three inches, and I shrieked my defiance. The devil had my
nerves on edge, but the green tongue of land was close, and I pulled as
never man pulled before.

A bullet lodged in the stern of the boat, another splintered the end of
an oar, and then the rifleman's nerves must have got the better of him.
The succeeding shots fell wide, and I whooped like a madman as I drove
the boat on to the green tongue of land. Springing out hastily I made a
dash across the white strip of sand, and dived into the moist creeper
growth.

I lay there panting, watching the yacht to see what Newmarch would do.
It was impossible for him to leave the yacht to follow me, but I guessed
that he would make an attempt to communicate with Leith. And I guessed
rightly.

I had not been five minutes in the bushes when a boat put off for the
shore. It contained three of the crew, two Tannese and the Fijian that I
had found mourning the death of Toni, his "all same brother who had
worked with him at Suva." They pulled for the spot where I had left the
dory, and here the Fijian sprang out, while the others proceeded to tow
the dory back to _The Waif_. I surmised that Toni's "all same brother"
had been sent to carry a message to Leith, and I lay in the bushes
waiting as he raced toward me.

Cautiously he clawed his way through the undergrowth, and when he was
certain that the creepers had completely veiled him from the eyes of
watchers on the yacht he picked up a small flat stone from the ground,
drew a yachting knife from his belt and crouching on his heels started
to sharpen the blade. As he rubbed industriously he sang a weird tune in
his native tongue, rounding off each verse with five words in English
that explained his industry. The words were: "Now I'll kill you, Soma,"
and the chant was a poem of consolation to the spirit of the dead Toni,
assuring it that the hour of vengeance was at hand, and that Soma would
go to the great unknown the moment he got within reach of the yachting
knife.

I poked my head from my hiding place, and the Fijian turned quickly.

"I think the captain told Soma to kill your brother," I said softly. "If
the captain didn't tell him, Leith did, Kaipi."

Kaipi stopped sharpening the blade and fixed his big eyes upon me. "I
not to speak to you," he said. "Kapitani tell me not to. I go catch up
Leith, give him one piece of paper the Kapitani gave me."

"But Soma?" I asked.

"I kill Soma when chance comes," muttered Kaipi.

"Well, we're of the same mind, Kaipi," I said pleasantly. "Soma is no
friend of mine and I'll help you as much as I can if you turn over the
note which the captain gave you and do just what I tell you. Otherwise,
Kaipi, I have a revolver, and a knife is no match for a revolver."

The Fijian considered the matter for a few moments, his dreamy eyes
watching me the while. At that moment duty was forgotten in the thirst
for vengeance upon Soma, and the debate with his conscience was of short
duration. He pulled a note from the folds of his pareo and tossed it to
me with a short laugh.

"Me not care about that," he grinned. "Me catch Soma, that's all."

The note was exceedingly brief. It read:

  "The mate is following you,--NEWMARCH."

Kaipi had returned to the job of sharpening his knife in which I had
interrupted him, and at intervals he assured the dead Toni that
vengeance was only a matter of a few hours. As far as I was concerned
the captain could not have chosen a better messenger.

"Kaipi," I said, tearing the note into small pieces, "you have been
sent to help me find Leith and the Professor. See, I have the
Professor's picture maker. He forgot it this morning, and the captain
sent you and me to take it to him. Do you understand?"

The Fijian grinned, tried the edge of his knife blade with the ball of
his thumb, then sprang to his feet.

"And don't be in too great a hurry to fix Soma," I cautioned. "Toni's
spirit can wait a few days till you get a suitable opportunity. Now,
we'll strike the trail."

Kaipi grinned again, put his sharpened knife into his belt and plunged
into the dense undergrowth. The snaky, moist lianas made progress next
to impossible. They clung around our legs like live things, and I damned
the Professor's idiotic craving for notoriety as we waded through the
clammy creepers in search of the trail made by the party. The prickly
rope-like vines seemed to be in league with the devil who was leading
the aged scientist and his daughters into dangers that made my brain
dizzy as I attempted to dissect the possibilities which imagination put
forward.

At last we found the traces of Soma's handiwork with an axe, and guided
by these signs we hurried forward. The ground rose gradually toward the
centre of the island, where columns of basalt loomed like the towers of
feudal castles against the pure Venetian blue of the tropical sky. But
the sky was visible only for moments that were far removed from each
other. The crawling vines that overran the trees made an impenetrable
barrier against the sunlight, and most of the time we were stumbling
along in a mysterious twilight that increased my nervous agony. Masses
of rock of volcanic origin were thickly strewn around, and anything like
fast travelling was impossible.

The sun dropped slowly toward the west, and we had great difficulty in
holding to the path. The axe marks and the branches broken by the
carriers were really the only signs that we had to go by, but the eyes
of the Fijian were exceedingly sharp in detecting the slightest evidence
left by the party. We passed the spot where they had lunched, and
increased our speed in an endeavour to overtake them before nightfall.
The silence and unexplainable mystery of the place made me anxious to
catch up with them before the darkness came down, while hunger and
revenge made Kaipi move at a speed that was most unusual.

Darkness came down like a suffocating blanket, and we halted.

"No go farther," muttered Kaipi. "Better make fire and sleep. Catch um
to-morrow."

I sat down while the Fijian gathered a pile of rotten wood, but before
he could set fire to the heap I was on my feet clawing my way into the
darkness in front. From somewhere out of the inky night came the voice
of Edith Herndon lifted up in a little Italian melody that I had heard
her singing the night we left Levuka. It seemed to me that she suspected
my near presence, and that she was singing to guide me to the spot where
the party had camped.

Five minutes afterward Kaipi and I stumbled into the circle of light
round the fire, and Leith sprang to his feet with a growl of rage.

"What's this?" he cried. "Who the devil gave you permission to come
here?"

"The captain sent me," I replied, looking straight at the giant as I
fired the lie at him. "The carriers forgot Professor Herndon's camera,
and Captain Newmarch sent Kaipi and me after you."

Leith's mutterings were drowned by the scientist's cries of joy as he
took the camera from my hand, and the big brute had time to recover
himself before the Professor had stopped chattering. I guessed that he
reasoned that it would be bad policy to show that he was angry at my
arrival, while the camera partly convinced him that I had told the
truth. His surprise and the Professor's evident pleasure made me think
it an opportune moment to put forward a request to stay with the party,
and I put my wish into words.

"Captain Newmarch said that Kaipi and I might go along if you and
Professor Herndon had no objections," I lied. "He thought we would prove
useful."

Leith scowled angrily, but the Professor gave an immediate assent to the
request. His short-sightedness prevented him from noticing the frown
which passed over the face of his partner, but the sour look fled
immediately the two girls expressed a desire to keep me in the party.

"Oh, please let Mr. Verslun come," cried Miss Barbara. "It will make it
ever so much more pleasant."

"I was thinking of the stock of food," growled Leith, as if attempting
to explain his evident displeasure.

"I'll go on half measure and let Mr. Verslun have the other half,"
laughed Holman.

"And he can have some of mine," cried Miss Barbara.

"And mine," murmured Edith.

Leith grinned as he noted the feeling of the party. It would not be
diplomatic to go against the wishes of all, and he knew it. With a wave
of his hand he ordered Kaipi to the fire where Soma and the other five
islanders were sitting, and nodded his head as an intimation that I
could stay.

"By the way," he growled, as I fell upon the plate of tinned salmon
which Edith Herndon handed to me, "who was doing the shooting this
afternoon?"

"I was," I replied. "I fired my revolver half a dozen times when we got
off the trail and couldn't find our way back to it. I thought on account
of the way that the path wound in and out that your party might be near
the spot where we were bushed."

He made no further comment and I breathed a sigh of relief. Unless
Newmarch sent a second messenger to make sure that the news of my
desertion would reach Leith, I felt that I was safe.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER VII

THE PIT

We were under way early on the morning after I joined the party. Leith
had the camp astir by daybreak, and after a hasty breakfast we trailed
off behind Soma and the carriers, heading directly toward the basalt
towers that rose up in the middle of the island.

I for one was not sorry that we were making an early start. All through
the night I lay awake expecting another member of the crew to rush into
camp with a message from Newmarch to Leith, and when we started on the
trail, I took particular care to lag behind the procession for the first
few hours so that I would be in a position to intercept any diligent
runner from _The Waif_. I took the first opportunity of telling Holman
of the manner in which the bilious Englishman had hastened my departure
with the Winchester, and the youngster's face wore a perplexed
expression.

"That precious captain is Leith's partner in villainy," he cried, "but
our hands are tied. The Professor is simply crazy with delight over the
things that the brute is going to guide him to, and all our suspicions
don't amount to much when you put them together. You see we've got
nothing definite to go on at present. All we can do is to watch and
wait, and be ready to act when the moment comes. Soma and his five mates
are Leith's pets, you can bet your life on that, but we have one ally in
your friend Kaipi."

The path of the preceding day was smooth compared to the ground we
climbed over that morning. There was no trail as far as we could see.
Soma, who was in the lead, found his way by occasional marks that could
only be visible to the eye of a native. Barbara Herndon remarked on one
occasion that there was danger of our getting lost, but Leith grinned at
the remark.

"Soma has been here more than once," he replied. "What he doesn't know
about this place isn't worth knowing."

The path continued to ascend, but the thick tropical growth did not
lessen during the tramp of the morning. Leith walked with the
Professor, who appeared to be in a state of joy bordering upon hysteria,
while Holman and I in the rear tried to assist the two girls over the
roughest sections of the road. I thought as we scrambled through
impenetrable scrub and crawled over rocky piles that it was the
strangest expedition that had ever set forth. If Leith was the wicked
devil that we suspected him to be, four persons were risking their lives
to gratify the whim of a half-crazy scientist who was dying for
notoriety. He would not be turned aside from his pursuit of the
specimens which Leith had told him of; his daughters would not desert
him, and their resolve had brought Holman and myself. We were blind
automatons that the fame-seeking archaeologist was dragging at his heels.
He did not consider the sufferings of the two girls; least of all did he
think that Holman or myself was doing anything to safeguard his life or
property. He was blind to everything but the natural curiosities around
him, and he made frequent entries in the notebook that was to be his
crutch to Olympus.

Leith did not allow me to remain long in the rear. He called me up to
the front, and very politely asked me to help in hustling along the
carriers who were inclined to dawdle as the way grew rougher, and,
although I would much rather have had the task of helping the two
girls, I had to accept the position without demur. Leith was in charge,
and Holman and I were only intruders who had on standing, and whose food
was paid for by the Professor.

We halted at midday in an ugly-looking spot far up the shoulder of the
mountain that we were climbing, and through a break in the trees we
caught a glimpse of the Pacific. The ocean seemed directly beneath us,
and yet, as Edith Herndon expressed it, we seemed to be a thousand
leagues away from it.

[Illustration: "We halted at midday in an ugly-looking spot far up
the shoulder of the mountain."]

"This horrible silence makes me long for the clean sound of the waves,"
she whispered, as I rolled a stone over to make her a seat. "This
stillness stops one from speaking. Do you know that Barbara and I
haven't spoken a word during the last hour? We simply hadn't the courage
to make the effort."

Under the watchful eye of Leith I endeavoured to cheer her up, while
inwardly I cursed the prattling old Professor who chattered of the
honours he expected as the rewards of his discoveries. The affair was
enough to bring tears to the eyes of a man with a heart of stone.

"I'm just thinking we should have stopped this business before it got
this far," muttered Holman, as he reached closer to get a light for his
cigarette.

"What should we have done?" I asked.

"I don't know," he growled. "We should have done something though. Pity
we didn't lose Leith overboard with your friend Toni."

"What's wrong now? Has anything happened?"

"No, nothing has happened," he replied. "I wish something would. This
silence is beginning to put my nerves on edge, but I'm afraid to yell
out for fear that I might wake something that has been dead for
centuries. Does it strike you that way?"

"Very much."

"Well, it's the same with the girls," muttered Holman. "The stillness of
the place has brought their ordinary conversational tone down to a
whisper."

Leith lurched across and interrupted our conversation. "Get the boys
going, Mr. Verslun," he said. "We want to cross the Vermilion Pit while
the light is good, and it is hard going from here on."

We started forward up the boulder-strewn slope, and with each step the
difficulties of the ascent became greater. I took an axe and helped Soma
chop a path which would make it easier for the two sisters, but no
matter what amount of trouble we took, they found it a difficult matter
to follow. Once, goaded into fury by Leith's attempts to hurry the girls
when Holman was assisting them over a particularly rough stretch, I
turned upon the old scientist who was puffing along with the natives in
the lead.

The half-insane ancient heard my outburst to the end, staring at me
through the thick lenses of his glasses as if I was some new kind of a
bug whose appearance he wished to implant firmly within his mind.

"Science calls for sacrifices," he squeaked. "If my daughters are
heroines who wish to share my hardships in the pursuit of information
that will be of great benefit to the world, I fail to see what it has to
do with you, sir!"

"But they have no interest in your silly discoveries," I cried. "They
are doing this infernal tramp to look after you. Do you hear?"

"Confound you, sir!" he screamed. "Mind your own business and don't
interfere with mine!"

I choked down my wrath as Leith came crashing through from the rear, and
the old egoist, flushed and ruffled, dropped back to meet him, evidently
convinced of my insanity through my inability to appreciate his efforts
to prove that the skulls of long-dead Polynesians possessed peculiar
formations they were foreign to the islanders of the present day.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we began to draw near
the Vermilion Pit which Leith had mentioned when he had urged haste at
the midday luncheon. The surroundings became more strange and mysterious
with each step we took. The basalt peaks that we had noticed from the
deck of _The Waif_ were now quite close to us, and they seemed to move
in upon us from both sides. The trees and lianas became less numerous,
and the black rocks came toward us in a sinister manner that conjured up
thoughts of a dead something toward which the encircling ridges were
guiding us like the arms of a corral. The place was fear-inspiring. It
had the unearthly appearance that made the imaginative minds of the
ancients people the silent woods with devils and dryads. The soft
moaning of the Pacific was barred out by the leafy barriers, and we
walked in a silence that was tremendous. The ticking of our watches
sounded to our strained ears like the blows of a hammer, and once, when
the Professor sneezed mightily, Miss Barbara gave a scream of fear
before she realized what had caused the noise.

The ascent became still more difficult. The natives puffed under their
loads, and Holman rushed angrily to the front and demanded a halt on
behalf of the girls struggling in the rear. During the few minutes that
Leith grudgingly allowed them in which to recover their breath, the
youngster hurried up to the spot where I was busy fixing the loads of
the natives, and in a nervous whisper he asked my opinion of the route.

"Where the dickens are we going?" he cried.

"This is the most eerie-looking patch of country that I have ever seen
in my life."

"Leith said that we had to reach the Vermilion Pit before the sun went
down," I replied. "I guess it is somewhere at the end of this staircase
that we are trying to climb."

"Oh, Gee!" cried the boy. "Say, this game has got those two girls scared
to death. There's something wrong with the place, Verslun. My skin feels
it. The island looks as if it has been left too long by itself, and I'm
beginning to think that all those rocks and trees are watching us and
wondering what we want here."

That was how it felt to me from the moment I had left _The Waif_, and I
had tried vainly to overcome the feeling. The island seemed to resent
the appearance of human beings. It possessed a personality through being
too long by itself. It had wrapped itself round a dead past, and we were
filled with the awe which suddenly strikes the unimaginative globe
trotter who wanders into the cool recesses of a Hindu temple. And I was
of the same opinion as Holman regarding the trees and rocks. Traders in
the lonely spots of the Pacific have gone insane through becoming
convinced that the mountains and the trees were watching their
movements, and the trees and rocks upon the Isle of Tears struck me as
possessing a watchfulness that smacked of the supernatural. I thought
of the story which the sailor told in the café chantant at Papeete just
then, and I was inclined to give it more credence than I had at the
moment he narrated it.

But I tried to rally Holman so that he would cheer up Edith Herndon and
her sister.

"You're like an old woman," I growled. "Go back to the girls and make
them laugh over some funny stories instead of getting nightmares about
the scenery. Why, this place reminds me of a real pretty bit of scenery
near my home town in Maine."

Of course I lied when I said that. You couldn't find any scenery like
that outside the tropics. That place was queer; there wasn't the
slightest doubt about that. I recalled as I stumbled along how a trader
at Metalanim in the Caroline Islands had swam out to our schooner when
we were down there the previous year, and how the poor devil had told
old Hergoff, the captain, that a chatak tree at the back of his hut had
begun to make faces at him, and I began to understand the complaint that
had gripped that trader as I climbed along by the side of the puffing
islanders. He had been jammed up too close against a personality. When a
place has been too long by itself, as Holman had remarked, it cultivates
a strength that tries the nerves of an explorer, more especially if it
is situated near the equator. Places like Papua, the Caroline Islands,
parts of Borneo, and the Never Never country in inland Australia seem
to possess a fist that attempts to push you off when you endeavour to
bring the atmosphere of civilization into a silence that has been
unbroken for centuries.

Holman went back to the sisters, and we moved slowly forward. The basalt
rocks came closer, showing plainly through the breaks in the lianas that
grew less thickly on the higher slopes. The creepers fell away slowly,
as if they had done the work they were required to do, and before we
realized it we were walking between two natural walls of rock about
eighteen feet high, above which the sky looked like a strip of blue
paper that rested upon the marvellously even tops of the barriers.

The Professor was gurgling joyfully as we tramped through that miniature
cañon. He was bumping up against new wonders at every footstep, and he
stumbled continuously as he endeavoured to jot down his impressions in
the fat notebook. The Professor felt nothing mysterious about the place.
He had the bullet-proof skin of your cold analyst who yearns eternally
for facts.

"Wonderful geological formation!" he chattered. "My friend Professor
Hanlaw of Oakland would enjoy a glimpse of this spot. A geologist could
spend a lifetime here."

Leith's sallow face was disturbed by a grin as he listened to the old
science-crazed ancient disbursing information regarding the formation of
the rock. It troubled me little at that moment whether feldspar and
augite were the two largest components, and I knew that Holman and the
two girls were not interested. We knew that the place was ugly and
sinister, but feldspar and augite didn't give it that look.

The height of the walls increased as we advanced. We were in a narrow
roadway scarcely more than twelve feet across, while on each side rose
the nearly perpendicular rocks that blocked our view of the country
immediately beyond. The ground beneath our feet was covered with small
bits of lava from the crevices of which the moist flabby leaves of the
nupu plant stuck up like fat green fingers.

As we stared ahead we noted that the road seemed to dip suddenly as if
the highest point of the island was reached at that spot, and the
prospects of a walk upon a down grade were cheering after the stiff
climbs. As we neared the place, Soma, who was walking about ten paces in
front of the carriers, slackened speed, and the islanders dropped back
till Leith and the Professor led the procession.

Leith halted and beckoned to the two girls and Holman, who were some
distance in the rear. "Hurry up!" he cried. "You'll get the sight of
your lives in a few moments."

"What is it?" gurgled the Professor.

Leith grinned as the scientist dipped his lead pencil into his open
mouth so that he would be able to dab down first impressions the moment
he turned his thick lenses upon the wonders.

"You'll see in a moment," replied the big brute, as he walked slowly
forward, and just as he spoke, we did see.

A ridge of bright vermilion came up suddenly about one hundred feet from
the point where the road seemed to dip, and we walked forward wondering
what lay between the spot where the track ended and the bright barrier
of rock that appeared to rise higher as we approached the end of the
trail. We seemed to sense the approach of something that chilled and yet
attracted. The place possessed a devilish fascination. It seemed to
repel with its very uncanniness, and yet I was aware that I was
imitating Holman in thrusting forward my head in an endeavour to see
what filled the space that was hidden from our eyes.

The desire was soon satisfied. Fifteen paces brought us to a point that
left the strange curiosity naked to our eyes. The vermilion walls,
thirty yards in front of us, formed part of the sides of an enormous
circular crater, and we stood spellbound as we pulled up within a few
feet of the ledge and looked into the fearsome depths beneath.

"Ladies and gentlemen," drawled Leith, looking around at us with the
air of a cheap showman springing a novelty upon a gaping mob, "you are
on the edge of the Vermilion Pit, the greatest wonder between Penang and
the Paumotus."


[Illustration]


CHAPTER VIII

THE LEDGE OF DEATH

I suppose that Leith was not far wrong when he gave that place the
credit of being the most wonderful spot in Polynesia. None of us felt
inclined to contradict him as we stood near the lip of the crater and
gazed into it. The thing appalled us. It looked as if some fiend had
bored it between those barriers of black rock as a trap for man and
beast. The entire inner walls, probably from the action of intense heat
upon a peculiar kind of rock, were of a bright vermilion near the top,
gradually changing into darker shades as the eye followed them deeper
and deeper till the outline was lost in the depths of the mighty
cauldron. The inky clouds, which seemed to heave like black masses of
cotton wool far down in the abyss, left the imagination to perform
acrobatic feats as it attempted to picture the possible depths that lay
below. The thing was weird, terrible, fear-inspiring. It looked like a
mighty crucible in which infernal things might have been manufactured in
the days when the world was taking shape.

The rays of the westering sun beat upon the sides directly opposite our
point of observation, and the colours seemed to leap from the rock. It
glowed in a manner that was indescribable. Sudden flashes came from it
as if the vermilion mass was studded with blazing carbuncles, but the
fascinating beauty of the part that was exposed to the rays was in
violent contrast to the cold depths where the mind pictured a body
falling through leagues of space.

For about five minutes no one spoke. The awful suddenness with which the
thing had appeared in our path throttled conversation. An inner self
connected the pit with the singular feeling of depression which had
gripped us the moment we landed upon the island, and we stood
breathless, wondering stupidly how we had sensed the vermilion-lined
horror into which the path led.

It was the Professor who broke the silence. The momentary awe which he
experienced when the strange freak of nature sprang up before his eyes
was dispelled by the vanity which prompted him to air his knowledge
concerning the cause of the vivid colours which seemed to radiate from
the walls. He prattled upon the effect of heat upon minerals till he
made us dizzy, and Holman broke in upon his chatter with a question that
he fired point blank at Leith.

"But what did we climb up here for?" asked the youngster. "Did we come
for the view alone?"

Leith grinned as he surveyed the questioner. "No, we didn't come for the
view," he answered. "It happens to be on the way to our destination."

Holman looked around at the basalt walls that hemmed us in on both
sides, and then glanced at the pit in front.

"But we can go no farther," he said.

Leith's smile spread across his ugly flat face. "You are too young to
know everything," he sneered.

The youngster's eyes opened as he looked again at the circular pit with
its brilliantly tinted sides. The answer perplexed him, and he waited
anxiously for an explanation.

"But how can we?" he asked.

Leith stood for a moment before replying, then he moved closer to the
edge of the crater and pointed down.

"The road is directly beneath you," he remarked. "If you come closer to
the edge you can see it." Holman glanced at me in amazement, and moved
by the one impulse we stepped toward the ledge. The rim of the vast pit,
at the point where Leith was standing, was composed of porphyry of a
dark-green shade, and as we neared the edge we noticed that this had
been worn to that peculiar velvety smoothness that one notices on the
pillars of Indian temples, where the sweaty hands of millions of
worshippers have helped in the polishing process through unnumbered
centuries.

Leith noticed that our glances were directed upon the peculiar polished
portion of the rim, and his grin broadened.

"You won't be the first to go over on to the track below," he drawled.
"If I had a dollar for every man who slipped over here since the world
began I wouldn't bother with specimens for American and European
museums. See, the ledge is directly beneath, and it leads away to the
right."

We stretched out our necks and looked, and I tried to thrust back the
exclamation that came to my lips. Directly beneath the polished part of
the rim, and about four feet below it, was a ledge barely three feet
wide, and this narrow path wound away to the right and disappeared
through a cavernous opening in the brightly tinted walls of the crater.
The ledge was bare and unprotected, polished to the same velvety
smoothness as the spot on the rim near which we stood, and when one
looked at it and then let his eyes glance over the infernal depths that
were immediately beneath, the brain reeled with thoughts of the danger
to which a climber would be exposed while making his way along it to the
cavern in the wall.

Holman took a great breath of air and turned savagely upon Leith.

"What sort of a fool game are you up to?" he cried. "What do you mean?"

Leith's lower jaw came forward menacingly. "You had better hold your
tongue!" he roared. "If you don't I'll--I'll----"

He stopped and glared at the young fellow, a murderous expression
creeping over his sallow face. The half-voiced objection to the route
had stirred all the sleeping devil in him, and the big stubby fingers
crooked as if certain they would be called upon to grip Holman's throat.

"You'll do what?" asked the youngster coolly.

"I'll bundle you back to the yacht!" screamed the giant. "You've been
allowed to come on this trip through the good nature of Professor
Herndon, but you mustn't think you have any voice in the direction of
affairs."

Holman did not reply. The dangers of the path over which it was evident
that Leith intended to take us dazed him, and he looked at me as if
asking confirmation of his opinions.

"But the young ladies?" I inquired, looking at Leith. "Do you expect
them to go down on to that path?"

"I don't expect the young ladies to do anything against their
inclinations," he answered blandly. "They have come with the expedition
through no urging from me. Regarding the ledge, there is absolutely no
danger, and it is the only path by which we can reach the interior of
the island. Soma, go over the rim and show them."

Edith and Barbara Herndon, with their father, moved up closer to the
edge as the grinning Kanaka stepped forward to obey Leith's order. He
walked quickly to the polished porphyry slab, moved cautiously to the
extreme rim, then, turning his back on the crater, he dropped upon his
hands and knees and lowered himself down till only his grinning face
appeared above the top.

We crept closer and watched him walk along the ledge toward the cavern,
apparently unaffected by thoughts of the death which a slip of his foot
would bring upon him. Returning to the spot beneath the polished
slipping-off place he put his muscular hands into two clefts in the slab
above and drew himself up on to the solid earth.

"No danger," he cried. "All boys go over here before they could call
themselves men. That long, long time ago."

The Professor grabbed his notebook as he heard the explanation, and he
immediately proceeded to deluge the Kanaka with questions.

"What was that?" he squeaked. "You say all the boys had to climb over
there?"

"That's so," grinned Soma. "This place make 'em test. Young boy go over
this quick he make plenty good fighting man. Feller go over slow he no
good."

The Professor's pencil moved quicker than the pen of a court
stenographer. The Kanaka's remark had brought him much copy, and the
dangers of the path were forgotten as he jotted down the information.

"And they went over here?" he cried, his eyes wide open as he gazed at
the edge of the crater.

"Right over here," grinned Soma. "See rock mighty slippery here. All
boys' hands and feet do that. Polish it mighty fine."

"But surely this test is not carried on at the present time?" cried the
scientist. "When was this wonderful custom in force?"

"About the time that Christopher Columbus was paddling to America,"
replied Leith. "There are no natives on the Isle of Tears now. Soma is
speaking of a time when these islands were inhabited."

The Professor gurgled like a drowning mule. "This is a most interesting
morsel of information," he murmured. "Hand me my camera, Barbara; I wish
to take a snapshot of the place."

The delay irritated Leith, but he kept his temper in check while the
Professor fussed and focussed to get a good view of the spot.

"The old fool should be in a padded cell," growled Holman. "He's so busy
digesting that tale that he's not thinking of the dangers of this path.
I'm going to speak to him aside."

"I hope you have better luck than I had," I whispered. "I bullied him as
we were climbing the slope, and I believe he complained of me to Leith.
He sees a mental picture of himself with bay leaves on his brow, and he
wouldn't consider the nerves of twenty daughters."

I was right in my prophecy. When Holman approached the old maniac he
ruffled up like an angry porcupine, and he screeched out his opinion
concerning people who would not mind their own business.

"You're the second person who has kindly informed me what I should do,"
he exclaimed. "And who are you, sir? You have no standing with this
expedition! This is a scientific exploration party, but it seems to me
that a number of busy-bodies have pushed their way into it. I shall ask
Mr. Leith if he cannot stop this interference!"

Leith listened till the Professor had finished speaking, then he turned
savagely upon Holman. "I've given you one chance," he roared, "and you
don't seem to profit by it. Now I'm not going to speak again! If I have
to tell you to keep your finger out of this pie on another occasion,
you'll go back to the yacht, and you'll go back without provisions, do
you understand?"

The youngster was not lacking in courage, and he stood up boldly as the
bully screamed out his threats.

"I won't go back," he said quietly. "At least I won't go back alone."

Leith's big fingers crooked ominously as he glared at Holman, but Edith
Herndon prevented the conflict that was imminent.

"Mr. Holman is only concerned about our safety," she cried, stepping in
front of the youngster. "He thinks that the path is dangerous for women,
and it is on that account he protests."

Leith recovered his temper with an effort. "It is not dangerous," he
drawled. "We will put a strong rope under the arms of each so that it
will be impossible for an accident to happen. Soma will go first with
one of the other boys, and they will guide every one into the opening.
Once through there the path leads into a valley in the centre of the
island, and the road is perfectly safe."

Edith Herndon looked at her sister as Soma unwound the strong manilla
rope which he had carried from the yacht, and they exchanged glances
that showed clearly the terror in which they viewed the journey across
the ledge.

Leith frowned as he glanced toward the pit. The colours were fading from
the brilliant sides as the sun sank lower, and the inky clouds that
seemed to heave far down in its mysterious depths fought their way
slowly upward as the invading sunbeams were driven out. It became more
terrifying as each moment passed.

Leith seemed to recognize this, and he turned upon the Professor. "If we
don't get down in half an hour we will have to postpone it till the
morning," he exclaimed. "I didn't look for a hitch like this. I tell you
that there is not the slightest danger, and the young ladies will be
just as safe upon that ledge as they are up here."

The Professor turned to the two girls as he closed his camera. The mad
hunger for notoriety evidently blinded him to the dangers which would
have been perceptible at any other time, and Holman's remarks had not
improved his temper.

"Come, come, Edith!" he entreated. "We must get along. You hear what Mr.
Leith says? There is no danger. A rope will be put around your waist,
and an accident will be impossible."

The younger girl took a glance at the terrifying abyss and shrank back
to Edith's side.

"Wait till the morning," she whispered.

"What is that?" asked the Professor.

"Barbara wants you to wait till the morning," replied Edith. "I think it
will be better. This light doesn't make the place look attractive."

Leith moved his big hands in a manner that showed he was willing to wait
till the following day, and Barbara Herndon gave a little gasp of
relief. Soma coiled the rope that he had laid out in expectation of an
immediate descent, and the whole party moved back about thirty yards
from the obstacle in our path. As I analyzed my own feelings, on turning
my back upon the spot, I felt that Barbara Herndon was not alone in
desiring to make the trip when the wholesome sunbeams were pouring into
the shadowy cauldron.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER IX

INTO THE VALLEY OF ECHOES

Holman and I had sat up late discussing the Vermilion-lined crater on
the night we halted upon its brink, and it was Leith's voice that roused
us in the morning. He showed no signs of resentment over the difference
with Holman on the preceding afternoon, and he attempted to joke with
Barbara Herndon as we made a hasty breakfast.

"I hope you slept well?" he grinned.

"I didn't," she replied. "I had dreams of that place, and they were
perfectly horrid dreams."

"Well, dreams don't amount to much," he replied, "and this sunshine will
soon make you forget them."

The sunshine, or probably the night's rest, had a wonderful effect upon
the nerves of the younger girl, and she viewed the crater with much more
composure than on the previous afternoon. Soma had the rope in
readiness when we approached the edge, and together with another carrier
he slipped down upon the slippery pathway, and, with head above the rim,
grinned an invitation to the party to follow his example.

"Now who goes first?" asked Leith.

I had settled that matter with Holman as we sat smoking the night
before, and I stepped forward while the youngster gripped the rope with
Kaipi and the other four carriers. We had decided that I should go down
to the ledge to assist the two girls to the cavern, while he should stay
above ground to make certain that no hitch would occur while they were
being lowered.

That place wasn't so bad when you turned your back upon it. After the
rope had been adjusted I crawled back carefully till my toes hung over
the edge, then thrusting my hands into the two small crevices in the
rock I slipped over, feeling at the same time that peculiar sensation in
the pit of the stomach that one gets when an elevator drops about six
floors at a fast gait. I was perfectly satisfied that a critical
examiner, reasoning on Soma's theory of courage, would not have marked
me down as a great fighter by witnessing the careful manner in which I
made the descent.

I didn't attempt to look at the gulf beneath me either. Not that one
could be ignorant of its existence. Every inch of skin seemed to be
yelling out the information to my brain, but I kept my chin up, and
tried to ignore the black depths which chilled me whenever I allowed the
mental photographs of the place to rise up before my vision.

The Professor followed me over the edge, and was guided by Soma to the
opening in the cavern. Leith came next, and when he landed upon the
smooth path he stood directly underneath the slipping off spot with the
evident intention of remaining there to assist the two girls when they
were lowered down. The post was one that Holman had assigned to me as we
talked the matter over on the previous evening, and the moment Leith
showed no inclination to leave the spot, I started toward him from the
mouth of the cavern, where I had stepped to allow the Professor to pass
me by.

The big bully immediately noticed my movement, and he waved his hand as
a signal for me to go back.

"But I'm coming," I snapped.

"What for?"

"For the fun of the thing," I shouted, and at that moment I forgot the
pit in my anxiety to reach the spot before Edith Herndon was lowered
over.

"Go back at once!" roared Leith. "I will see to the safety of the
ladies."

I was close to him at that moment, and I returned his angry glare. "I'm
going to do that," I cried, "if the devil himself ordered me out of the
way."

Leith looked like the devil at that moment. His sallow face seemed to
heave as if a disturbed emotional centre was immediately beneath the
flabby cheeks, and he cursed in an undertone as Edith Herndon slipped
from the edge and swung for a moment above the ledge before she managed
to get her footing.

Leith attempted to take her arm as her feet touched the unprotected
path, but the girl, though unnerved by the ordeal, shook off his big
claw, and with her hands clasping mine I led her across the short but
dangerous ledge of rock that led to the opening in the wall. I felt
strong enough to fight a dozen devils like Leith at that moment. The
trusting manner in which the dear girl had given her hands into mine
conferred upon me a strength which the crusader of old felt surging
through his body when his consecrated sword blade was delivered into his
hands.

I returned in time to render the same help to Miss Barbara Herndon,
while Leith still remained upon the path, his manner suggesting that he
had discovered something humorous in the situation. Holman followed Miss
Barbara, and then came the islanders, who scrambled over the ledge with
that utter disregard for safety noticeable in the actions of the
unimaginative savage. Holman's face seemed to have altered during the
preceding thirty minutes. The ready smile, which I had first noticed
when he awakened me on the wharf at Levuka, was gone, and a set, defiant
look had taken its place. The happenings of the day before, or the
possible forebodings concerning the immediate future, had changed him
from a boy to a man.

Soma stood at the mouth of the cavern as we passed through, and he
grinned at the Professor. The Kanaka had discovered that the Professor
placed a monetary value upon his information regarding the long-dead
past, and he was ready to contribute to the contents of the fat notebook
whenever the opportunity occurred.

"All good people in this party," he cried. "That's mighty plain."

The Professor dived for his lead pencil. He had a scent for copy that a
New York reporter would have envied.

"How is that, Soma?" he spluttered.

"Wizard men say so," grinned the Kanaka. "Wizard men tell much truth."

"But what did the wizard men say?"

"They say that only the bad boys can slip," answered Soma. "No good men
either. Big hole just for bad people. That what witch doctors say long,
long time ago. They call it Ledge of Death."

The Professor's pencil raced madly across the paper, and Holman looked
back at the black depths with a grim smile upon his clean-cut features.

"I suppose there have been exceptions," he remarked quietly. "There are
exceptions to every rule, and I suppose an occasional bad egg escaped a
fall into this abyss in spite of the wizard men's prophecy."

Leith looked up quickly, and he flushed angrily when he found that the
young fellow's eyes were upon him. Barbara Herndon gave a little
hysterical laugh, and the Professor stopped writing and looked around
inquiringly as if he was in doubt whether he had missed something of
importance.

"What is it?" he inquired. "I didn't hear."

"It was nothing," replied Leith, in his slow, drawling voice. "Holman
suggested that the word of the wizard men might not be infallible, and
lest we have some one who ran the gauntlet under false colours we had
better move on so as to keep the exception out of danger."

The cavern, into which we passed from the slippery ledge, did not lead
into the interior of the mountain as one would be inclined to think
after viewing it from the top of the crater. We had hardly traversed it
for more than sixty yards when we were once again in the bright
sunlight, in what appeared to be a deep, wide valley in the centre of
the island. The basalt cliffs surrounded the place on every side, and
although we had great doubts regarding Leith's veracity, we felt
inclined to accept his word that the path by which we had come was the
only one by which we could reach the spot where we stood. The circles of
black rocks above the tops of the highest trees, though indescribably
beautiful, were strangely repellent in their weird conformation. They
struck us as the walls of a prison from which the only way to liberty
lay across the path in the crater.

The trees--ebony, chatak, dakua, and sandalwood--grew here in greater
numbers than we had met them on the first day, while the lawyer-vines
and thorny creepers rivalled the devilish meshes that had held us back
as we climbed the slope to the Vermilion Pit. Like green serpents they
covered the treetops, and as we struck forward in the same order as we
had marched on the first day the solemnity of the place was more
apparent than ever. It appeared that Nature, for some reason of her own,
had made the place difficult of access, and that our invasion was
something that the trees and vines protested against.

But in spite of the strange melancholy of the place, the two girls were
in much better spirits than they had been on the previous day. The
successful passage over the ledge had brought about a reaction, and a
remark of Holman's caused Barbara Herndon to laugh with all the
spontaneity that was noticeable upon _The Waif_. The effect of that
ripple of laughter was startling. The sound rebounded from the rocky
cliffs, cannoned against the barriers opposite, and then bounced
backward and forward till the whole atmosphere of the valley seemed
alive with the laughter of sprites. For quite five minutes we stood
listening, then the silence chased the last faint echoes out across the
cliffs, and we breathed again.

"It is the Valley of Echoes," said Leith. "The cliffs throw back the
sound in a marvellous manner."

"I'll not laugh again, not in this spot," murmured Barbara Herndon.
"Those noises chilled my blood."

In spite of a blazing sun we found the air unpleasantly cool in the
shaded spots as we struggled slowly through the undergrowth. The moist
flabbiness of uncommon tropical plants startled us whenever the leaves
brushed against our faces and hands, while the constant popping of the
green pods of the nupu, the sounds resembling nothing so much as the
groans of a person in extreme pain, did not have a cheering effect upon
the party. The Professor was the only one who seemed to be actually
enjoying himself, and even his joy was tempered by a malignant Fate.
While endeavouring to dot down some information tendered him by Soma, he
had tripped upon a vine that was in wait for such an opportunity, and
he skinned his nose badly upon a projecting rock.

But rocks or vines would not dampen the Professor's ardour. He saw
himself upon a pedestal that he would build out of the Polynesian lore
and the relics which he would collect. With Spartan fortitude he would
not allow the expedition to halt for one moment while the injured nose
was being attended to, and he took up the interrupted matter with Soma
before the blood had been staunched.

Kaipi worked himself close to me just before midday, and, with one eye
upon Soma and the other five carriers, whispered a message.

"Soma much friend of big man."

"How do you know?" I questioned.

"Talk to him out back of camp last night," he murmured. "Me make believe
sleep, me watch. I think I kill him to-day."

"Kaipi," I whispered, "if you wait a little while I promise you that
you'll have your revenge for Toni's death. You watch Soma and the
others, and when the time comes you can give him all he deserves. If you
stuck a knife into him here Leith would shoot you."

Kaipi nodded his head and trudged forward as Soma came sidling toward
us. The Fijian's desire to get revenge for his "all same brother's
death" was something that might be to our advantage later on, and I
looked upon Kaipi as a staunch ally in the event of trouble.

We ate our midday meal in the sombre silence and again plunged forward.
The appearance of gayety which Barbara Herndon had tried to assume after
we had left the Vermilion Pit had passed away, and once again there was
the look of pathetic helplessness upon the faces of the two girls.
During the luncheon Holman and I endeavoured to make conversation, but
the thoughts of both were upon their surroundings, and they answered
questions with an effort. The prison-like appearance of the valley, and
the utter absence of sound, both of bird and insect life, had a
depressing effect upon their nerves.

Holman's face showed that the mental sufferings of the two sisters had
worked him into a decidedly unfriendly state of mind toward the
Professor and the big brute who was leading the old scientist on the mad
hunt, and another quarrel was barely averted during the early afternoon.
Leith suggested that Edith Herndon should walk beside him so that he
might assist her over the rough parts of the way, and in the
conversation that ensued the youngster asserted that the girl was in
better company when she was walking with her sister and himself. Leith's
voice rose to a roar as he made another threat regarding what he would
do if the youngster did not hold his tongue, but Holman was defiant, and
an immediate conflict was only averted by the tact of Edith Herndon.

The afternoon closed in with us still tramping on. The blood-red sun
slipped hurriedly toward the basalt barriers that encircled the valley,
and as I glanced at the cliffs the picture of the creepy ledge, that was
our only way back to the outer world, was continually in my mind. The
knowledge that the velvety polish upon the block of porphyry was brought
there by the hands of thousands who had once peopled the island or
visited it from the adjacent groups was not provocative of mirth, and I
knew that the feeling that they were journeying in a place that had been
of special veneration in long past centuries was producing a depressing
effect upon the two girls.

As the tropical twilight fell upon the valley we came to one of the
strange stone structures that are to be found in the Tongan and Cook
groups, and which have puzzled explorers who have sought in vain to find
a reason for their construction or an explanation of the methods by
which a savage people lifted the huge blocks of rock into position.

The one that suddenly appeared before us was situated on a small slope
that was free from trees and creepers, and as it stood there, black and
massive, one could fancy it part of the ruins of Karnak instead of a
relic left by a people that were much below the intelligence of those
who raised the wonders in the land of the Nile. The four supporting
piers of stone were about four feet square and fully fifteen feet in
height, while the immense flat rock that was laid upon them was more
than twelve feet in length and breadth, with a six-foot thickness. It
was moss-grown and gray, but the supporting pillars had not deviated one
inch from the perpendicular, although the weight upon them was
tremendous. The bed of coral rock on which they rested had proved a
reliable foundation, and the singular structure had scoffed at time.

The Professor started a lengthy discourse on sacrificial altars the
moment we halted, ranging from Stonehenge to Toluca in search of
comparisons, but we were too tired to give it much attention. Holman
remarked in a whisper that Soma could probably outpoint the Professor if
it came to an array of facts concerning the probable uses of the
gigantic table, and when I glanced at the Kanaka, as he stopped to
listen to the scientist's discourse, I felt inclined to agree with the
scoffer. Soma had an intelligence that lifted him above his class, and I
was convinced that many of the Professor's surmises caused him secret
merriment.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER X

A MIDNIGHT ALARM

I think that Professor Herndon was the only person in the company who
was quite contented with the day's doings on that evening when we camped
near the table of stone. The polished slide and the ledge along which we
had passed to the cavern stirred his imagination concerning the wonders
that were before him, and he convinced himself that he had the god of
his ambition by the heel. The fat notebook was made the repository of
countless surmises regarding the period at which the ledge was in active
use as a test for courage, and the stone structure that loomed up
immediately beside the camp was tagged with countless suppositions
regarding its uses and its probable date of construction. Soma gathered
in some easily earned shillings by raking his mind in search of
traditions and retailing them to the scientist by the light of the fire.
He made magazine prices for tales that he spun from his fertile brain,
and the Professor could hardly write fast enough in the excitement
brought about by the discovery of so much historical knowledge.

"It is wonderful!" he cried, pausing for a moment to polish the thick
lenses of his glasses upon the end of his silk coat. "The chance of
enlightening the world upon this subject is one that I would not have
missed for a million dollars."

"The dollars for me," murmured Holman. "I don't think the old world
cares three cents about anything that happened a thousand years ago in
this patch."

The Professor adjusted his glasses and turned them upon the doubter for
the space of three minutes, but Holman was blissfully ignorant of the
look which the angry archaeologist favoured him with. The youngster was
watching the firelight upon the face of Miss Barbara Herndon, and his
thoughts were probably in a dream-fed future instead of a dismal past.

Leith sat silent and gloomy, his head pillowed against the trunk of a
maupei tree, his face in the shadow of his hat, which he had pulled
down over his forehead. The supper had been eaten with little
conversation, the Professor being the only one who showed conversational
powers of any note. With the notebook already partly filled he felt
certain of a niche in the Pantheon of Fame, and he could not resist a
desire to prattle childishly about the sensation which his discoveries
would cause. It's a terrible thing for a man to get the applause craving
in its worst form. It is liable to make him do things which no craving
for treasure would allow him to do, no matter how badly he desired the
tempting gold.

The girls retired early, and soon afterward Leith wrapped himself up in
a blanket and lay down at the foot of the tree. The Professor at last
became tired of firing questions at the wonderfully well-informed Soma,
and the Kanaka, finding that the market for legends was not as good as
it was in the early part of the night, retreated to the other fire,
where Kaipi and the fire carriers were slumbering.

The heavy silence that comes in the night to the outposts of the world
fell upon the place like a cold hand at that moment. A moon that
appeared to have a pellicle across it, like the film upon a dead man's
eye, peeped over the barrier of black rocks--peeped over as if it
wondered what we were doing in that God-forgotten quarter. Sudden puffs
of wind rustled the leaves of the maupei and fled hurriedly, and from
somewhere in the coral rocks one of those red-striped lizards that are
sometimes found in the rocky parts of the Carolines sent his unearthly
_shik-shuck_ into the stillness, where one fancied it a little
projectile of sound crushed in its efforts to pierce the tremendous
silence of the night. One's imagination pictured the places where there
were lights and music, the tinkle of glasses, and the laughter of men
and women, and the wilderness suffered in the comparison. Coral atolls
with waving palm trees are delightful spots when one reads of them when
seated in a comfortable armchair in a snug library, but the real island
comes down heavily upon the nerve-centres when night falls upon the
spot. Then the fringe dweller feels that he is an outcast from the warm
places of the world where men and women meet in social intercourse.

Holman, who had been staring in silence at the fire for some twenty
minutes, turned toward me after the Professor had retired.

"Sleepy?" asked the youngster.

"Worse than that," I muttered.

"Let's turn in."

The "turning in" was an easy performance. We lay down on the pile of
leaves which the carriers had scraped together, pulled a rug over us,
and in spite of the surroundings I was soon fast asleep.

It was Holman's fist that disturbed my slumber. It came with some force
against my short rib, and I sat upright. The moonlight made it possible
to see across the valley, while every object around the camp was clearly
outlined.

Holman was sitting up on his leafy bed, and I put a question
breathlessly as I jerked myself upright.

"What's up?"

"Didn't he say that this place was uninhabited?" asked the youngster.

"Yes," I answered. "Why?"

"Well, some one has just pushed his head and shoulders up above that
stone table," whispered Holman. "He put his head up, looked across at us
for about five minutes, then dodged quickly back."

"You weren't dreaming?"

"Dreaming? Rot! I haven't closed my eyes since we retired!"

I threw off the rug and looked around. Leith lay under the maupei tree
in the same position as we had seen him in at the moment I lay down.
Near him the Professor snored dismally, probably dreaming dreams of the
greatness that would be thrust upon him in the near future. No sounds
came from the tent that sheltered the two girls, but a combination of
curious nasal sounds rose from the spot where the natives were sleeping
around their fire.

"It might be one of the niggers," whispered Holman. "Let us see."

We stole silently across the intervening space, and, crouching in the
shadows, counted the sleepers. There were seven. The prowler that Holman
had seen upon the top of the stone structure was evidently an outsider,
and the knowledge brought no pleasant feelings. Leith had assured the
Professor on several occasions that the island was uninhabited, yet it
was quite possible that natives from the adjoining groups had visited it
during the period that elapsed since his last visit. Yet we felt that it
was no stray visitor from another island that had peeped over the top of
the massive table, and it was with a suspicious eye upon the sleeping
Leith that we crept quietly over the coral rocks toward the tremendous
stone piers of the structure that rose like a monster gateway against
the gray sky. The atmosphere of that place was indescribable. We seemed
to be in the midst of relics that were older than the pyramids. The
temple of Luxor may seem impressive by moonlight, but the knowledge we
possess of Thebes in its glory somewhat modifies the awe which we would
feel if we knew nothing of the people who had raised the great monuments
in the city of Amen-Ra. And Holman and I knew nothing of the dead race
that erected the mighty stone table on the cleared slope, which by its
construction gave evidence of a knowledge of mechanics of which the
present-day Polynesian is entirely ignorant. I recalled the Nan-Tauch
ruins and the tombs of the mysterious Chan-te-leur kings Ola-Sipa and
Ola-Sopa in the Carolines, the _tolmas_ and the _langis_ of the
Marshall and Gilbert groups, and I wished the Professor anything but
pleasant dreams. The place seemed waiting for the return of its dead. The
scenery possessed that singular expectancy that compels one to turn around
every few moments to convince one's self that an unfriendly watcher is not
immediately in the rear.

Still keeping in the shadows, we circled the camp till we were in front
of the stone table, but just when I took a step into the moonlight space
before it, Holman grasped my arm and drew me back.

"Look!" he gurgled. "Look! there he is again!"

All doubts concerning the youngster's previous observations were swept
away at that moment. A head and shoulders rose suddenly above the black
line of the immense flat stone, remained there for the space of three
minutes, then dropped back so that we could not see it from the position
in which we stood.

"Take the two front pillars!" whispered Holman. "I'll watch the two back
ones. Come on!"

We dashed across the open space, the youngster rushing to the rear,
while I ran to the front columns. It was impossible for any one to
descend unless we saw him, and with nerves on a tension we walked around
the huge supports and watched anxiously for the midnight watcher to
descend.

We must have remained on guard for twenty minutes or more, but there was
no sign of the spy. Around us the massive structure cast a patch of
velvety shadow, but not the slightest sound came from above.

Holman tired of the inactivity, and stepped across to where I was
standing. "I'm going to climb that chestnut tree and see if the beggar
is still there," he murmured. "You stop here till I take an
observation."

He darted across to the big Pacific chestnut and climbed hurriedly,
while I walked round and round the square pillars and strained my ears
for the slightest sound that would give a hint that the person on the
roof of the mysterious table was preparing to descend.

A low whistle from Holman pierced the silence, and I answered.

"Come up here," he cried softly. "He's given us the slip."

I climbed the tree to the branch where the young fellow sat awaiting me.
From his position he had a clear view of the top of the big table, and
as I reached him I looked through an opening in the thick leaves. The
top of the stone was empty!

"Do you think he slipped down while I was climbing the tree?" asked
Holman.

"I'm certain he didn't," I answered. "It would have been impossible."

We stared at the stone in silence. The top was covered with short moss
that had gathered there through the centuries, and instead of being flat
as we had surmised there was a noticeable slope, so that the part that
was directly behind the camp was fully two feet higher than the rear.
This was the only peculiarity in its construction, and although we sat
in silence, staring at its moss-covered surface, we were utterly unable
to put forward the slightest supposition that would account for the
disappearance of the watcher. The incident was an extraordinary one. The
man could not have dropped from the table before we reached the
supporting piers, and we were equally certain that he had not slipped
down the pillars while we stood guard beneath.

"I'm going up there," muttered Holman. "We can get the rope from the
camp. Come along! I'd like a look at that place at closer quarters."

We climbed hastily down the tree, crept cautiously back to the camp and
took the stout rope which we had used in reaching the Ledge of Death.
The camp was quiet. The curious nasal sounds produced by the natives,
together with the rather high-toned snore of Professor Herndon, were the
only sounds that came through the still night.

Holman flung one end of the rope over a projecting corner of the flat
slab, twisted one half of it round and round the pillar to make
occasional grips which we could use in the ascent, then clutching the
hanging end he worked himself slowly up. I followed him, only to find
the upper surface of the table as bare of any signs of life as we had
previously noted from our perch in the chestnut tree. The tough moss
upon the stone was fully four inches long, and covered the slab
completely. In vain we stamped around looking for a possible hiding
place. The massive block didn't offer a cranny that a lizard could hide
in, and with an unsolved mystery upon our hands we descended to the
ground.

"What do you make of it?" asked Holman.

I shook my head. The enigma baffled me. Our suspicions regarding the
honesty of Leith made the strange appearance of the figure on the table
of stone more perplexing than it would have been under ordinary
circumstances. Leith had asserted that the island was uninhabited, yet
we were not inclined to rush to him with the news of the discovery. We
felt that it was another of the small discoveries that made us pile up
suspicions against the big bully at the head of the party. We had no
proof of the midnight visitor, and the story of his sudden disappearance
while we watched below would only provoke an unbelieving grin from
Leith, and an idiotic laugh from the foolish old Professor.

"Better keep it to ourselves," growled Holman.

"For the present at any rate," I remarked. "If Leith knows that there
are others upon the island, and if those others are friendly to him, it
will only make him more careful of his actions if we tell what we have
seen to-night."

Arriving at this decision we came back to the camp and crawled quietly
under the rug, where we watched the mystical monument till the flaming
tropical dawn lit up the valley.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER XI

KAIPI PERFORMS A SERVICE

The Professor used a roll of films in snap-shotting the stone table
while we were breaking camp. He photographed it from every point of the
compass, and made a magnificent effort to dislocate his collarbone by
falling from a tree up which Holman had urged him to climb so that he
could get a view of the upper surface. In his mad pursuit of antiquities
the Professor forgot that tree climbing was an accomplishment that he
had never mastered properly in the days of his youth, and our departure
was somewhat delayed by the shock which he received from the fall. The
camera fell upon the pile of leaves which Leith had used as a mattress,
and it escaped with abrasions that were microscopical compared to those
received by the Professor, who glared angrily at Holman as Edith Herndon
attended to his injuries.

"I thought you could climb," murmured the youngster. "'Pon my word I
did. I wouldn't have urged you to get up there if I didn't think you
could hang to a limb."

"I am acquainted with a number of persons who would look well hanging to
a limb," retorted the Professor, as he rubbed his ankles.

"Same here," said Holman, unperturbed by the sharp retort. "When I think
over their actions, Professor, I wonder how they escaped being suspended
from such places. Especially when you consider that trees are
plentiful."

We made slow progress during the morning. The Professor's accident
robbed him of a lot of the nimbleness which had been noticeable during
the two preceding days, and the other members of the expedition had to
move at a pace that would suit his stiff limbs.

"I'm unlucky," whispered Holman, as he sat beside me at the midday halt.
"I tried to show him how he could get a good snapshot, and now he's as
poisonous as a red-necked cobra just because he was silly enough to skin
his shins."

We crossed the lowest part of the valley during the early afternoon,
and commenced to ascend gradually toward the black walls on the far
side. Leith had remarked at the lunch table that we would probably reach
our destination on the following morning, and the information brought a
thrill of expectation in spite of the suspicions we entertained. The
undefined dread had upset our nerves, and I think the two girls, as well
as Holman and myself, were looking forward anxiously to the arrival at
the objective point so that our suspicions could be either verified or
abandoned. Leith was more affable than usual on that afternoon, and he
held forth in such a gloomy fashion upon the wonders that were within
reach that the Professor almost forgot his injuries and his animus
against Holman as he listened to the description.

"It is my opinion that the island was the burial ground of the chiefs of
the nearby groups," remarked Leith. "There is every indication that the
people who were buried here were not ordinary people, as you will see
when you view the wonders that will meet your eyes to-morrow."

The Professor beamed through his thick glasses, and, forgetting his
injuries, gave a little jump in negotiating an obstruction, but the look
of agony which passed across his face proved that his injured limb
objected to useless gambols.

"We may be wrong after all," muttered Holman, after he had listened to
Leith's description of the wonders of the tombs of the long-dead members
of Polynesian royal families. "I hate to be suspicious of a fellow, and
I'll be glad if he proves genuine in the end."

"So will I," I remarked. "If he measures up all right I'll be half
inclined to apologize before I go back to take a gruelling from Captain
Newmarch."

It was Kaipi who stampeded the small ray of charity that had pierced the
cluster of suspicions we had collected. The little Fijian performed the
trick about seven o'clock in the evening, and it was done in a most
effective manner. When we had made camp, Leith had sent Soma on ahead
with the ostensible purpose of locating the easiest route to the base of
the cliffs, and an hour afterward Kaipi managed to attract my attention,
and he indicated by signs that he had information to impart. I seized a
chance to help him with the small tent which sheltered the two sisters,
and as we tugged at the knots he slipped a small piece of paper into my
hand.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Soma drop it," he explained nervously. "I follow him just little way
think get good chance kill him, but no chance come. He drop little piece
of paper from his belt; me pick 'em up. I no know what it say; you
read."

I crammed the note into my pocket as Leith approached, but at the first
opportunity I dived into a thicket of leaves and opened it with nervous
fingers. It was brief, exceedingly brief, but no number of words could
have produced the same cold chill of dread which took possession of me
as I glanced over the scrawl upon the paper. The note read:

"Five babies for kindergarten. Arrange everything. Meet at the Long
Gallery."

I stumbled out on the clearing in a half stupor. The arrival of the
long-expected confirmation of our suspicions had the same effect upon me
as a blow from a sandbag. Leith was apparently everything that Holman
and the girls had suspected him of being, and as I looked around at the
nearly impenetrable jungle growth upon which the night had come down
with that appalling swiftness of the tropics, I understood the helpless
condition in which we were placed. Soma and the other five carriers were
evidently tools of the big bully; the person or persons to whom the note
was addressed would also stand behind him in a fray, and against this
little army there was Holman, Kaipi, the two sisters, and myself. The
Professor's insane craving for a sight of the antiquities would probably
make him a partisan of the big brute till his devilish tricks were laid
sufficiently bare to allow the childish mind of the scientist to see
through them. The situation was pitiful to contemplate, and sick with
terror at thoughts of the fate of the two girls, I found Holman and
pulled him out of the circle of light thrown by the fire which Kaipi was
tending.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I've got proof!" I cried. "Soma dropped a note that Leith sent him off
with when we halted. Kaipi found it and brought it to me."

I recited the few words that were now pounding madly through my brain,
but the mere recitation would not satisfy Holman. He wanted to see the
words--to stare at them, so that his eyes might confirm the information
which his ears had gathered, and together we dived deeper into the
creepers till it was safe for him to light a match by which he could
view the scrawl.

"My God!" he cried hoarsely. "He's a devil, Verslun! We're fools!
Infernal fools! Do you hear me? I'll shoot the brute now!"

He flung aside my hands and made a dash toward the fire, plunging
through the creepers with a strength born of the sudden flame of temper
which had come with the confirmation of Leith's duplicity. The boy's
love for Barbara Herndon made him a madman as he raced madly to obtain
vengeance from the brute who had led us into the trap.

Like two maniacs we rushed into the light of the fire, but only the two
girls and the Professor were seated round it. Leith was not in sight.

"Where is he?" gasped Holman.

The Professor looked up in mild astonishment. "Who?" he asked.

"Leith!" cried the boy. "Where has he gone?"

"Mr. Leith has gone forward to help Soma," squeaked the Professor. "It
will be moonlight, so he took the opportunity of making certain about
the direction we were to go in the morning. He said he would not be back
before daylight."

Holman mastered his anger, and I beckoned the Professor to one side. It
was necessary to make an attempt to convince the foolish old scientist
that we were in the hands of a scoundrel, and I determined to place the
note and our suspicions before him.

I told hurriedly of the appearance of the figure upon the stone table on
the previous evening, but before I had time to tell of the note, the
doddering old imbecile interrupted.

"What's that?" he cried. "Some one else upon the island? Well, they
can't steal the honour of the discoveries. I have first claim upon
everything we find upon the place. Mr. Leith and I made that arrangement
before we left Sydney. Besides, it is Mr. Leith's island, and if other
scientists are here--

"Oh, confound it! Who said they were scientists?" roared Holman. "It's
bad luck for us that they are not. Scientists are harmless, but these
are natives or something worse."

"Leith will fix 'em!" cried the Professor, ignoring the youngster's
comment on the inoffensive nature of men of his type. "Leith will put
them off the place--"

"Stop chattering and read that!" I interrupted. "Your precious friend
sent this ahead by Soma. He dropped it and we got hold of it."

Holman struck a match and held it over the scrap of paper while the
scientist stared at it through his thick glasses.

"Well?" he queried. "What has this nonsense to do with me?"

"The five babies," snapped Holman.

"Five babies?" repeated the Professor. "I know nothing about babies!"

His small head wagged backward and forward as he made the statement, and
his evident inability to see that the reference concerned us irritated
the youngster beyond measure.

"You're the biggest baby of the five!" he roared. "You're a madman! Come
away, Verslun; it's no use arguing with him!"

The Professor gave an indignant snort, straightened his small body, as
if he contemplated an attack upon the youngster, then dashed madly back
to the fire, where we watched him bobbing his head up and down as he
spoke to the two girls. His confidence in the rascal who was possibly
luring him to his death was pitiful to see, and we recognized at that
moment that it would be useless to waste any further arguments with him.

"We've got to get out of this scrape by our own efforts," muttered
Holman. "The girls won't leave him, worse luck. If they would I'd turn
tail this minute and make an attempt to fight our way back to the
yacht."

"And I doubt if you will find a haven there," I remarked. "That bilious
captain was in a great hurry to send word to Leith that I had got safely
by his farewell bombardment. We're in for it, old man, and we might as
well realize the fact right now."

"You're not sorry I found you on that pile of pearl shell?"

"Sorry?" I cried. "I'm glad, man--I'm infernally glad."

Holman gripped my hand, and then we crawled through the bushes toward
the spot where Soma and Leith had started off on their supposed work of
exploration.

"What can we do?" I asked.

"Wait round here and pot him when he is coming back," said the youngster
cheerfully. "But we should let the girls know something, shouldn't we?
That old fool will tell them a garbled account that will frighten them
out of their wits. One of us had better go and try to quiet their
fears."

"You go then," I remarked. "I'll wait here till you come back."

Holman crept quietly toward the campfire, and I waited in the
undergrowth. The moon was rising in the east and a soft gray light wiped
out the intense blackness that had come upon the place after the short
twilight. The tops of the cliffs toward which we were journeying were
tipped by a brilliant thread of silver as the moon peeped above their
ramparts, and I crept deeper into the shadows as the full glory of the
glowing orb turned the night into day.

I had waited some thirty minutes for Holman when I noticed a movement
beneath a small bush some fifteen paces to my right. I watched the spot
without moving, and presently a dark figure crept out of the shelter and
moved cautiously toward the camp. Convinced that the visitor was Soma, I
pulled out my revolver and waited, wondering as I watched what he
intended to do.

The black figure came closer. He paused to listen to the sounds that
came from the fire, and as he lifted his head the moonlight fell across
his face, and I put the revolver back in my pocket.

"Kaipi," I murmured.

The Fijian crept quietly to the spot where I was hiding.

"I come for you," he muttered.

"Why?"

"Funny things much," he gurgled. "Light on mountain, no see from here.
Me watch it, think it something bad. Come, I'll show you."

Holman returned at that moment and I explained what Kaipi had just told
me.

"The devil!" muttered the youngster. "The note said that he would meet
them at the Long Gallery. See, the light is not visible from our camp,
and the brute never thought that one of us would be far enough from the
camp to notice it. If it's a signal we might be able to reach the spot
and see what is actually going on. If we leave things till to-morrow I'm
afraid we'll be too late."

"But the girls?" I cried.

"We'll get back," he replied. "I told them how everything is, Verslun,
and they're not afraid. Edith has an automatic pistol that she brought
from the yacht, and she'll use it if she is forced to. Come on!"

We followed Kaipi into the shadows, the Fijian picking his way with
wonderful instinct through the clumps. At about half a mile from the
camp he stopped and pointed to the cliffs.

"Me see light flash way over there," he whispered. "You wait and see."

We crouched down and waited. The minutes passed slowly, but the black
barrier away to the east gave no sign of life.

"I think Kaipi must have sighted a star," muttered Holman. "There is
nothing--"

He broke off abruptly and gripped my arm. High up in the basalt barrier,
at a spot about three quarters of a mile from where we were crouched, a
tiny flame suddenly appeared, blazed for an instant, then died away
again. Three times it flared up and as quickly died away, but at the
third disappearance Holman and I, with the vengeance-seeking Kaipi, were
struggling through the network of damp vegetation toward the spot from
which the signal had come.


[Illustration]


CHAPTER XII

THE DEVIL DANCERS

The snaky vines seemed to us to be leagued with Leith as we tried to
force our way to the spot where the tiny flash of light had appeared
amongst the rocks. The lawyer-vines gripped our ankles and flung us upon
our faces scores of times, but we scrambled to our feet and rushed on.
Kaipi had made the discovery at an opportune moment. Now that we were
certain that Leith contemplated treachery, the wait through the long
night would have maddened us. We wanted to meet him quickly, and
instinct told us that the appointment place mentioned in the note was
identical with the spot to which we were fighting our way.

We were bruised and bleeding when we reached the foot of the black
cliffs whose perpendicular walls towered above us. We were almost
certain that the light had been flashed from a point immediately above
the spot where we came face to face with the barrier, but the scaling of
the black barricade was a proposition that seemed incapable of solution
as we rushed along the base.

"This is the spot," gasped Holman. "This big tree cluster was just to
the right of the place where the light was flashed."

"That's so," I remarked, "but how are we to get up to the point where
the signal came from?"

We raced madly up and down the front of the strange black wall, hunting
eagerly for a place that offered the slightest foothold by which we
could climb to the terraces that we could see far above, but the search
was a futile one. The tremendous mountain of ebony rock appeared to have
been driven up out of the earth during some volcanic disturbance, and as
we stumbled blindly along we thought it would be easier to scale the
outside wall of a New York skyscraper than the slippery sides of the
obstruction in our path.

It was Holman who found a key to the situation. The big clump of maupei,
or Pacific chestnut, that we had taken as a landmark when we were
running through the moonlit night, grew close to the barrier, and the
limbs of several of the trees scraped the sides of the basalt columns as
the faint night breeze moved them backward and forward.

"There's a ledge up there," whispered the youngster. "Look! It's about
fifty feet from the ground. If we could climb a tree we might be able to
reach it from one of the limbs."

He had hardly outlined the proposition before we were swarming up the
trunk, Holman in the lead by right of discovery, and the nimble Kaipi in
the rear. Higher and higher the youngster climbed into the thick green
foliage. He reached the topmost branches, and selecting one that led
toward the rocky wall, he straddled it and worked his way slowly
forward.

Kaipi and I clung to the fork of the limb and waited, and as I watched
Holman the wisdom of our actions was assailed by a cold doubt. We had
left the two girls entirely unprotected, and if Leith reached the camp
before we returned, and heard from the chattering Professor the story of
the finding of the scrap of paper, it would be reasonable to suppose
that he would consider the moment had arrived for the perpetration of
any deviltry he had planned.

But Holman's actions interrupted my mental criticism of the wisdom of
our plans. The youngster had reached the extreme end of the limb, and he
was clawing madly at the rock to obtain a footing. He succeeded after a
five minutes' struggle, and he sent a breathless whisper back to our
perch.

"There's a ledge here," he murmured. "I think we can climb up from it.
Hurry along, and I'll give you a hand."

I needed a hand when I reached the end of that leafy seesaw. I was much
heavier than the boy, and the limb could hardly support my weight when I
neared the end. Holman reached out his hand at a moment when I thought
that a drop through the air would be my reward for attempting aerial
exhibitions, and the next moment I was beside him on a little projection
that barely gave us a footing.

"It's easy climbing just above us," whispered Holman. "Wait till we get
Kaipi."

The Fijian came along the limb with the agility of a trapeze artist, and
when he reached the ledge we stared up at the dizzy heights that rose
above our little resting place. Small jutting projections, like
gargoyles, stuck out from the wall, and we looked at them hungrily.

"If we had only brought the rope!" cried the boy. "Say, Verslun, put
your face against the rock and I'll climb on to your shoulders."

I did so, and the youngster climbed up cautiously. For a long time he
stood there, peering around in an effort to discover a path by which we
could go upward and onward, but at last he stepped off, and I looked up
to find him clinging to the wall like a huge beetle. A pack of fat
clouds that had harried the moon during the earlier part of the evening
now closed in upon her, and we were in complete darkness. The threshing
limb of the maupei tree that was within a yard or two of the spot where
Kaipi and I stood waiting disappeared in the night, and the scratching
of Holman's shoes high above our heads came down to us through the
intense silence and proved that he was holding his position with
difficulty.

A small piece of shale hit me on the shoulder after a long wait, and I
turned my face upward.

"Verslun!" breathed the strained voice of the youngster. "Are you
there?"

"Well?" I asked.

"H'sh!" he murmured. "We are right near the spot, Verslun. If Kaipi
climbs up on your shoulders to this place I think the two of us could
pull you up. Are you willing?"

"Come on, Kaipi," I whispered, and the Fijian climbed nimbly upon me and
moved up into the void above.

"Now, Verslun," muttered Holman. "Reach up till we get a grip of your
wrists. Are you ready? Well, try hard, man! Think of those two helpless
girls and dig your toes in!"

I didn't need any reminder concerning the position of the two sisters
as I stood on tiptoe and scratched with my fingers at the crumbling
ledge upon which Holman and the Fijian crouched. The predicament of
Edith Herndon, and not fears for my own safety, made me scratch madly
for a foothold as I swung above the shelf I left. Kaipi and Holman
tugged till every muscle in my arms shrieked out against the way they
were being handled. But I was going up. I "chinned" the crumbling layer
of rock upon which my fingers had a perilous grip, laid my chest across
the shelf and wriggled into safety.

"That's good," whispered Holman. "Don't puff so hard, man! We're too
close to take any chances."

I got upon my hands and knees and followed him along the narrow pathway.
Over a thousand obstructions we crawled like three rock snakes, till
finally the boy halted and turned toward me.

"See the streak of light through that split in the rock?" he whispered.
"Look in front of you! Well, they're inside."

The split in the rock to which Holman had pointed was a perpendicular
crevice about four feet in length, but possessing only a width of six
inches. It separated two rock masses that were fully eighteen inches
thick, and as we wriggled noiselessly toward it we saw that it gave us a
glimpse of the interior of a huge cavern, the part of which that was
just inside our point of observation being illuminated by a swinging
ship's lamp which hung by a rope that dropped from the vaulted dome.

The lamp swung directly in front of the crevice through which we peered
breathlessly, and for a few seconds it was the only object that was
visible. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the light, and we found
that a pair of brown legs were moving slowly along the floor past our
spyhole. A body, gorgeously decorated in mats of green and crimson
parrot feathers, followed the legs, and then came a head that was hidden
behind a mask of sennet daubed thickly with coral lime and ochre till it
appeared a ghastly nightmare.

The horror moved upon its stomach, and, viewing it as we did through the
narrow cranny, it appeared as if the film of a biograph was being slowly
dragged before our eyes. Another pair of legs followed the masked head,
another body, and another mask that was even more fear-inspiring than
the first. And the procession continued. Three, four, five, and
six--each succeeding one being arrayed in a mask of more ghastly
appearance than those which had preceded him. The sixth was followed by
the first, who had wriggled clear around the circle of light thrown by
the lamp, and in perfect silence the infernal snaky circle moved
backward round and round, the faint light shining on bare legs, on
bodies from which the parrot mats were thrust aside by the contortions,
and upon the masks that were weirdly fantastic and Mephistophelian.

They had circled the floor about ten times when Holman tugged my coat
and I wriggled back from the crevice.

"What's up?" My lips were dry as I put the question.

"Kaipi."

"Where is he?"

"Cleared out. Those human serpents scared him. Go softly, man! We must
get him before he attempts to go down that cliff or he'll break his
thick head."

We caught up to the deserter on the ledge to which Holman and the Fijian
had dragged me a short time before, and the youngster abused the
frightened native as he endeavoured to turn him back.

"No, no!" shrieked the Fijian. "Me no see dance like that. Me die if I
stay."

"Why?" I asked.

"It is 'tivo'--death dance," gasped Kaipi. "Wizard men dance it.
Something going happen, damn bad."

"But they can't get you," cried Holman, "Come back and watch them. Soma
and Leith will be there directly, and you'll get your revenge."

But Kaipi would have nothing more of the performance in the rocky
chamber. The repulsive masks and the backward wriggling of the six upon
the floor had upset his fighting stomach for the time being, and we
could not induce him to return.

"Well, you wait here," ordered Holman. "We're going back, but we'll
return in a few hours and pick you up. Don't move from this ledge."

Kaipi would promise anything if he was not forced to witness the
performance, and we left him huddled up in the darkness, and returned to
the spyhole in the wall.

The "tivo," as the Fijian called it, was still in progress. Without
noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth
floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic
effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them
wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each
circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the
twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and
slower they moved past the crevice, till at last all movement ceased,
and, apparently lifeless, they lay face downward upon the floor.

I thought of the two girls at the lonely camp as we sat watching, and I
knew well that Holman's thoughts were turned in the same direction. We
had seen nothing of Leith, but an intuition that would not be put aside
connected Leith with the strange ceremony that was in progress within
the cavern, and we were chained to the spot.

I have no idea how long the six figures remained motionless upon the
floor. It may have been an hour, it may have been two. The mystery of
the performance we were witnessing seemed to drag us into a world where
minutes and hours did not exist. We were dumfounded by the confirmation
of our suspicions and the peculiarly devilish exhibition, and I shook
off the lethargy with an effort as Holman prodded me with his finger and
pointed at a spot beyond the body of the dancer who lay immediately in
front of the spyhole.

Looking in the direction Holman pointed I saw that another light was
approaching through the gloom of the cavern. It bobbed toward us slowly,
a tiny pin point that came nearer and nearer as the bearer walked in the
direction of the six. The distance it was away from the dancers, which
was evident from the time that elapsed from the moment we saw it till it
was close up, convinced us that the cavern was of an enormous length,
and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up
before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot
which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he
shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew that he
believed that the treacherous brute was one of the three that were
approaching behind the bobbing lamp.

The bodies of the dancers, or at least the parts that we could see,
became tense and rigid. A soft hiss went round the circle, and once
again the wriggling movement started. But this time the six went forward
instead of backward. They broke out of the circular formation, and in a
long glistening line moved up the cavern toward the three approaching.
The lamp halted, then it was raised high in the air as the crawling half
dozen approached, and Holman gave a curious little gurgle as the light
fell upon the three newcomers. Wrapped in parrot feathers and a white
mask, the lamp bearer stood revealed as Soma. Immediately behind him was
a tall white man in the same outlandish garb, while the last of the
three, barearmed and barelegged, and wearing an immense headdress of
plumes, was Leith!

The snaky six circled the three at a respectful distance, then, again
breaking into a single file formation, they turned toward the end of the
cave nearest our spyhole, and behind the length of creeping bodies,
Soma, the tall white who had only one eye, and Leith came slowly.

Holman's breath came faster as the procession approached. The
exhibition chilled us. There was a devilish suggestiveness in the
proceeding. In some indescribable manner it brought up mental pictures
that were nauseating, and it required something of an effort to watch
the performance. The mystery of the silent night, the thoughts of the
danger which threatened the two girls, and the glimpses of the
astounding performance within the cavern brought a dazed mental
condition that made us doubt our sanity.

I felt Holman's hand reach out across my shoulder as the procession
moved down upon us, and instinctively I understood the movement. The
cold barrel of a revolver had slipped by my face, and I gripped his
wrist and forced the hand downward. The manner in which Soma and the
one-eyed man walked in front of the big brute made it impossible to
shoot with telling effect, and Leith was the person we desired to kill
at that moment. The others seemed to be but creatures of his will, and
he stood up in our minds as a devil whose existence was a menace to
everything that was pure and clean.

The three newcomers moved to the side of the cavern, so that nothing
except their bare feet were visible, and backward and forward in front
of those feet moved the human serpents with a regularity that was
stupefying. In an unbroken line they would move forward, flatten
themselves upon the floor, then, with a unanimity that was remarkable,
they would wriggle backward, to repeat the same movement over again.

Holman pulled me away at last, and we retired to a point that made it
possible for us to converse in low whispers without being heard.

"What will we do?" he gasped. "I can't stay there any longer! I want to
get inside to the devil! I don't want to shoot him; I want to throttle
him with my two hands!"

"But the entrance to the cavern is from somewhere on the other side of
the hill," I remonstrated, as the young fellow raved about our
helplessness.

"We must get there!"

"Don't lose your head about it," I remarked. "Keep cool and we'll win
out in the long run."

It was useless to speak of patience to that boy at the moment. He clawed
desperately at the slippery wall in an endeavour to find a path that
would lead us to the opening on the other side by which Leith had made
his entry, but the attempt appeared to be madness. A dozen times the
youngster scrambled up rough portions that offered a slight footing, but
each time he slipped back bruised and battered. He would listen to no
arguments. The desire to get to the mouth of the cavern, and kill Leith
before the morning, had produced an insanity, and we crawled and climbed
along the face of those basalt cliffs in a manner that chilled my
spinal marrow. Holman possessed the courage of a maniac. His imagination
was blinded to the dangers that lay alongside the crumbling shelves of
rock, and I scrambled behind him wondering dimly what would happen to
Edith and her sister if an unkind fate flung us from the ledge into the
darkness from which the soft croon of the chestnut clumps came up like a
warning against our foolhardiness.

Holman paused at the end of a wearisome climb, and he drew himself
upright. At that moment the cloud-harried moon dragged herself from
beneath the pack, and the young fellow gave a cry of joy.

"We can do it from here, Verslun," he cried. "I see a path to the top.
Come along, man!"

"What about Kaipi?" I gasped. "We'll never find our way back here."

"Let him sit there," he snorted. "Hurry or the moon will be under the
clouds before we cross the cliff."


[Illustration]


CHAPTER XIII

TOMBS OF SILENCE

For my own part I found no great liking for the moonlight. Up to that
moment I had followed blindly in the tracks of Holman, nerved somewhat
by the thought that the trail he passed over would carry me. The dangers
were hidden by the darkness, and my imagination was too stunned by the
happenings of the night to make any endeavour to torture my nerves by
picturing them.

But the reappearance of the moon brought an opportunity to my eyes, and
I wondered if we could negotiate the goat track which the youngster was
scrambling over. I turned my face to the wall and crawled timorously in
the rear. Higher and higher we went with bleeding fingers and knees, but
at last Holman reached the top, and I dragged myself up beside him.

"Get up!" he cried savagely. "We must kill the devil before morning."

We got to our feet and started to run toward what we knew to be the
direction of the cavern. The ground sloped gradually, and we reasoned
that it would continue to fall away till we reached the mouth of the
cavern by which Leith had entered from the far side. For once we had a
clear run. At that height there was little vegetation, and at a mad gait
we sped across a bare stretch where the only obstacles were lumps of
rock that were scattered around in great profusion.

"If--if we could find the place and block the devil and all his gang
inside," gasped Holman.

"That's too good a thing to entertain," I spluttered.

"We might, Verslun! We might!" he cried. "I've got a feeling that we've
been picked to put that devil out of existence. That's why I'm taking a
chance in leaving the girls back there at the camp. I believe I'm going
to kill him, but whether it is to-night or some other time I don't
know."

"The sooner the better," I stammered. "From what Kaipi said about that
dance, something out of the way is going to happen, and I've got a
hunch that the something will happen to us."

Holman remained silent, and we raced on, moving down the slope at an
angle that we judged would bring us somewhere near the entrance. At
moments my brain assured me that it was a mad proceeding, but something
of the certainty with which the youngster looked upon himself as the
Fate-appointed destroyer of Leith came to me as I raced beside him, and
I put aside the fears for Edith Herndon's safety that besieged me as I
ran. The last doubt about Leith's treachery had been chased away by the
dance we had witnessed, and I felt assured that the man was a monster, a
vile thing, who, for some purpose that I could not allow myself to
ponder over, had brought the foolish old scientist and his daughters
into a place of terrors. Treachery had been apparent from the start. It
was only the confidence of the old antiquarian that had blinded our eyes
to a score of incidents that should have convinced us that the brute had
some ulterior motive in view. During that mad race through the night the
big sallow-faced giant appeared to us as a devil, a fiend that was
connected with some sort of horrible practices that had continued to
exist in this remote islet long after all trace of such things had been
lost in those islands that were visited by traders and missionaries.
Kaipi connected the dance with death, and the same conclusion had come
to us before we had heard the words of the frightened Fijian.

Holman slackened speed, and we dodged through a mass of boulders that we
judged were in a direct line with the crevice through which we had
witnessed the happenings in the cave.

"We should be near the place if there is an entrance to it on this
side," he muttered. "This pile of rocks looks from--oh, Gee! here's a
path!"

It was a path, sure enough. It wound in and out among the rocks, a
narrow beaten trail, singularly white against the black surroundings.

Holman stopped and took up a handful of the dust. "They coat it with
coral lime to make it plain in the darkness," he growled. "Come on,
Verslun, the wriggly batch must be straight ahead."

I pulled the army Colt from my pocket and ran softly abreast of the
youngster. The corrosive terror of the earlier part of the evening had
fled then, and my nerves had taken up a sort of dare-devil attitude
toward all happenings that the future might hold in store. Besides, the
more I thought of Leith, the greater his villainy appeared to be, and to
save Edith Herndon from the slightest contact with the ugly ruffian was
a task that would give the greatest coward in the world the courage of a
warrior.

The white path wound in and out of the boulders, which became thicker
as we advanced, and suddenly it dived through a dark passage into the
side of the hill. We felt that we were at the mouth of the burrow by
which Leith and his dancers had entered, and we moved into the shadow to
reconnoitre. Leith had informed the Professor that he would not return
to the camp till the following morning, so the chances were that the
treacherous scoundrel was still assisting at the ceremonies that we had
witnessed.

"Shall we go in?" whispered Holman.

"As you like," I answered.

He moved toward the mouth of the burrow, then stopped and turned toward
me. "What time is it?"

"It's ten minutes of midnight," I replied.

"We've got six hours," he whispered. "Come along, we'll chance it."

Very cautiously we moved into the darkness of the passageway, feeling
our way along the walls that were cold and damp from the moisture which
had soaked through from the crown of the cliff. The place was not more
than five feet wide, and as I walked along on one side of the wall,
Holman, feeling his way along the other, could touch me whenever he
wished to ascertain my position. Our shoes made no sound upon the floor
of the corridor. It was covered deep with fine dust, upon which we
walked noiselessly.

An occasional bat fluttered past us, but outside the flapping of the
wings not a sound disturbed the stillness of the place. The silence of
the outside was intensified a hundredfold. In the open, one heard the
crooning of the trees as the soft winds from the Pacific played with
their heavy foliage, but in the natural passage through which we crawled
in search of Leith the air felt as if it had not been disturbed for
centuries. It was heavy and thick, possessing a faint odour that seemed
to rise from the dust beneath our feet.

We had walked about one hundred yards along the corridor when it widened
suddenly. The walls that we were following turned off at right angles,
and from the moonlight which filtered through a dozen small fissures
high up above our heads we saw that we had entered a cavern of vast
proportions. We sensed its vastness. The few streaks of moonlight that
stabbed the darkness were like so many guide-posts that enabled us to
make a mental calculation of the height and extent of the place.

We stopped and moved together instinctively. Holman put his mouth close
to my ear.

"What do you make of it?" he asked.

"It might be a cavern leading into the one that runs out to the face of
the cliff," I replied.

"But how are we to cross it?"

"I can't tell you. I'm afraid if we leave this opening that we'll get
lost."

It was rather plain that we would. The surrounding walls were as black
as the opening by which we had entered the place, and we stood with
quick-beating hearts staring out across the place through which the bars
of moonlight appeared like silver skewers.

One of these skewers fell upon a ledge of stone some few yards in front
of the spot where we were standing, and Holman stepped toward it.

"Stay where you are," he said. "If I get lost I'll whistle softly and
you can signal back to me."

He moved away and I was left standing in the opening. A bat banged
heavily against my face, and the odour from the dusty floor irritated my
nostrils so that I had difficulty in restraining myself from sneezing.

It was about twenty minutes before Holman returned. He whistled ever so
softly, and when I replied he came toward me hurriedly.

"Just walk out to that spot of moonlight," he whispered. "I'll keep
guard on the door. Feel around there and tell me what you think of it."

I did as he directed. I walked forward to the spot and felt around with
my hands. My fingers came in contact with round, smooth objects that
filled every available inch of a stone table in front of me, and with a
feeling of revulsion I hurried back to the mouth of the corridor. Holman
gripped my arm and put a question.

"Gave you a shock, eh?"

"Why, they're skulls!" I breathed hoarsely.

"Yes, hundreds of 'em," he said. "The place is chock full of them. This
island must have been the burying ground of all the adjoining groups,
and it's the atmosphere of the place that keeps the niggers away from
it. Leith has been wise to that. The present generation of islanders
know nothing of the things that happened here hundreds of years back,
but they've got an inborn horror of the place, and they keep away."

"Well, what are we to do?"

"Wait here."

"But if he doesn't come this way?"

"He must," he answered. "It's the only way out, I think. We can't go
across this wilderness, so it's safer to await developments here."

We hadn't long to wait. From a point directly opposite our position, and
at a distance that we judged to be two hundred yards away, a bobbing
light broke into the wall of darkness and moved directly toward us.
Holman gripped my arm and pulled me forward to the stone tables upon
which the skulls were laid, and side by side we crouched and waited.

It was the ship's lantern that Soma had carried in front of Leith that
was now moving upon us. Its yellow light showed the parrot-feather mat
and headdress of the big Kanaka, while the hum of voices, which drifted
across the vast space of the cavern, informed us that the dancers who
had assisted at the ceremony were returning with Leith and the one-eyed
white man.

Holman's breath came hot upon my cheek. There was no necessity for
speech. I knew that he intended to seize the first opportunity to
attack, and that opportunity was at hand. Behind the bobbing lamp that
was approaching us by an irregular trail, as if Soma was winding in and
out amidst stone supports similar to the one that sheltered us, was the
brute who held us in his grip, and after the events we had witnessed it
seemed impossible to reconcile his actions with anything that smacked of
decency or honesty.

[Illustration: "Behind the bobbing lamp was the brute who held us in
his grip."]

I attempted to drop on my knees at that minute, but the moment was
disastrous to the ambush which we had planned. As I moved my hand
forward I dislodged a skull that was evidently resting upon a shelf
somewhat higher than the one before us. With a noise that appeared
terrific in that place, the object crashed down upon the stone, and the
bobbing lantern halted about fifteen paces in front of us.

Leith broke the silence that followed. "What was that?" he asked.

"A bat," answered Soma.

"I don't think so," droned Leith. "Lift up the light."

Soma raised the lantern high above his head, and as he did so Holman
fired.

The echoes were terrific. High in the vaulted roof of the place echoes
answered each other with the sharp reports of Maxims, and the thick air
shivered.

Leith's voice roared an order. "Put out the light!"

Soma immediately crashed the lantern upon the ground, and I heard Holman
groan.

"I missed him!" he whispered. "Move along a little, Verslun; they've got
a line on our position."

We didn't move a minute too soon. Half a dozen shots broke out from the
spot where the light of the lantern had been suddenly quenched, and we
fired twice and shifted ground the moment we pulled the triggers.

But the opposition guessed the direction of our sidestep. A bullet
lifted my hat into the darkness, and, as I scrambled away, a hand
touched my thigh and was immediately taken away.

I felt Holman's body on the other side, and then, clubbing the big Colt,
I drove it down through the darkness at a point that my imagination
suggested would be the most likely place to find the head of the
stranger whose hand touched my thigh. The blow missed, and as I made a
kangaroo-like jump sideways, a spurt of flame blazed out within a yard
of my face.

I fired immediately, and the soft _plop_ of a body settling into the dry
dust upon the floor convinced me that I had settled one of our enemies.

For about ten minutes after that there was no more firing. My skin, more
than my ears, brought to my brain the information that there were others
somewhere in the thick darkness, but the little air tremors that came to
me were so faint that it was impossible to tell in which direction they
were. I had lost all trace of Holman. With extreme caution I crawled
toward what I thought to be the spot where I had left him, but my
groping fingers found only the fragments of bone that covered the dusty
floor of the charnel house.

I sat in the dust and endeavoured to make my addled brains direct me as
to the best course to pursue. The silence led me to infer that Leith and
his party, who were evidently familiar with the cave, were making for
the passage by which we had entered the place, and a cold chill passed
over me as my imagination pictured Leith, One Eye, and the oily dancers
waiting for Holman and me in the narrow corridor. To escape from the
place immediately was our only chance, and with a courage born of terror
conjured up by the thoughts of imprisonment in that place of skulls, I
started to crawl rapidly into the dark.

I had not proceeded half a dozen yards when my hand touched a bare leg,
and I drew back hastily. With madly pounding heart I crouched in the
dust, waiting for an attack, but as I waited I convinced myself that the
leg had not been drawn back when my finge

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