CHAPTER XVI.—DON SETS A DEATH-TRAP FOR THE LASCAR.
To be sure, skirting the end wall on the extreme left was a ledge along which the agile monkey made his way to the opposite side of the pit with little or no difficulty; but, as for following him, by that road at least, why, the thing was an utter impossibility. The ledge was a mere thread. Scarce a handbreadth of rock lay between the smooth-cut upper wall and the perpendicular face of the pit.
“Blow me!” muttered Don, unconsciously echoing the phrase he had so often heard on the captains lips, “if this ain't the purtiest go as ever I see!” Which assertion was purely figurative; for as he was only too well aware it was “no go” at all, so far as the pit was concerned.
Peering over the brink of the chasm he found it to be partially filled with water, between which and the spot where he stood intervened perhaps thirty feet of sheer wall. An uninviting pool it looked, lying as green and putrescent within its sunken basin as if the bones of unnumbered dead men were rotting in its depths. The very sunshine that fell in great golden blotch upon its surface seemed to shrink from its foul touch.
But what struck Don as the strangest feature of this noisome pool was the constant agitation of its waters. To what was it due? What were those black, glistening objects floating here and there upon its surface? And those others, ranged along the half-submerged ledge on the far side? A small fragment of stone chanced to lie near him. He picked it up and aimed it at one of these curious objects. To his astonishment the black mass slowly shifted its position and plunged with a wallowing splash into the pool. Puggles, who had been looking on with mouth agape, raised a shout.
“Him corkadile, sa'b! Me sometimes bery often seeing um in riber. Him plenty appetite got!”
“Ugh, the monsters!” muttered his master, watching with a sort of horrible fascination the movements of the hulking reptiles, which lifted their ugly, square snouts towards him as if scenting prey. “Here's a pretty kettle of fish! Crossing this hole is hound to be a tough job at the best—but, as if that wasn't enough, these brutes must turn up and add danger to difficulty. Plenty appetite? I should think so, indeed, in such a hole as this! However, crocodile or no crocodile, it's got to be crossed.”
Until now he had rather wondered, to tell the truth, why it was that not a single native had crossed their path. He had expected to find the passage guarded. The pit, not to say the crocodiles, shed a flood of light—not very cheering light, he was forced to admit—upon this point. No doubt the natives considered themselves in little danger from intrusion, so long as they were guarded by a dozen feet of sheer pit, with a dozen brace or so of healthy crocodiles at the bottom of it.
And probably they were right so far as concerned intruders of their own colour and pluck; but Don was made of sturdier stuff than native clay. Beyond the crocodile pit lay his chum, a prisoner. Cross it he must, and would. Therefore, to borrow the expressive phrase of an American humorist, he “rose to the emergency and caved the emergency's head in.”
Was the pit too wide to leap? Spanning it with his eye, he estimated its width at a dozen feet; certainly not less. A tremendous leap that, and fraught with fearful risk. And even should he be able to take it, what of Spottie and Puggles? They would never dare face it. And what, too, of the muskets and cutlasses?
Suddenly he descried, just where the continuation of the tunnel pierced the wall on the far side of the pit, an object that inspired him with fresh hope and determination. True, it was nothing more than a plank, but once that plank was in his hands, he could, perhaps, bridge the pit.
A dozen feet at the very least! Could he clear it? To jump short of the opposite ledge, to reach it, even, and then slip, meant certain and horrible death at the jaws of the crocodiles. Should he venture? Jack had ventured much for him. He slipped off his shoes—his stockinged feet would afford a surer foothold—and quietly bade the blacks stand aside. Sauntering carelessly into the tunnel—that by which they had approached the pit—a distance of forty paces or so, he turned, drew a deep breath, threw all his lithe strength into the short run, his whole soul into the leap, and—— Would he clear it?
No—yes! A horrified shriek from the blacks, and he was over, the pit a scant handbreadth behind him.
Dragging the plank from its place of partial concealment, he was delighted to find a short piece of rope attached to it. Good; it would facilitate the bridging of the chasm. Standing on the brink, he coiled the rope—not without a misgiving that it was too short for his purpose—and, calling to Spottie to catch the end, threw it out over the pit sailor-fashion. It fell short.
“Stop!” cried he. “This will make it right;” and drawing the lascar's cord from his pocket, he knotted it to the rope. This time Spottie succeeded in grasping the end; and so, with the aid of the lascar's cord, the plank was drawn across. Its length was such that it bridged the pit from wall to wall, with a foot of spring-way to spare at either end.
At the time Don thought nothing of this apparently trivial incident; yet, had he but known it, with that cord he had laid a death-trap for the-captain's murderer.