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.
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 fingers encountered it. With my right hand clubbing my revolver, I reached my left out cautiously, and once again my fingers came in contact with the bare limb. The fear left me at that moment. I was back at the spot where I had fired at an unseen foe some fifteen minutes before, and the body near me was the victim of my lucky bullet.
Carefully I felt the dead man. He wore a large feather cloak and a tall headdress, and I concluded that he was one of the wriggling brutes whose performance we had watched in the cave. In the dust, beside the body, my fingers found his revolver, and the fact that he had been armed at the moment his party came unexpectedly upon us was more proof, if proof were needed, that Leith's tactics were anything but straightforward.
Securing the revolver, I started to crawl away, but a sudden inspiration came to me. I stripped the parrot-feather mat and the headdress from the corpse and donned them over my own clothing. In the darkness recognition was made through the fingers, and as there were eight enemies in the cavern and only one friend, I considered that the danger I ran of receiving a bullet from Holman was more than counterbalanced by the protection that the dancer's costume would give me if I ran against the groping hands of Leith or his gang.
After a wearisome crawl I touched the wall of the cavern, and standing upright I debated for a moment whether I should move to the right or the left. I had no definite idea as to the position of the opening through which we had entered the place, and I dreaded the weary circuit of the cavern which I would be compelled to make if I turned in the wrong direction. It was possible that the corridor was within a few yards of me, and if I turned away from it I might get lost in other passages leading to the long gallery where the dance of death had taken place.
I decided to move to the right, and with one hand upon the cold wall I stumbled forward. If Holman was still a prisoner, Edith Herndon and her sister were entirely unprotected, and my tormenting imagination made me throw prudence to the winds. I had to reach the camp before Leith or any of his evil bodyguard arrived, and, becoming reckless of the terrors of the dark, I ran blindly in my desperate desire to find the path into the open air.
I cannoned into a man who was standing with his back to the wall of the cave, and before I could lift my arm his fingers had gripped my throat. For a second we struggled, then he released his grip and murmured some words in a dialect that I did not understand. His hand had touched the parrot-feather mat that I had drawn about my shoulders, and he was convinced that I was one of his own companions.
Still holding my shoulder he pushed me a pace or two forward, and instinctively I knew that I was in the corridor. The faintest tremor disturbed the heavy air, and a wild surge of joy rushed through my being. The place of skulls had brought a terror upon me that swept away my reason, but the knowledge that I was on the way to the open, where I could fill my lungs with God's pure air, acted as a powerful restorative.
As my guide's fingers slipped from my shoulder, I stood still and listened. His heavy breathing was distinctly audible, and with a prayer to Providence to guide my right hand, I brought the butt of the heavy revolver down through the darkness. It must have caught him squarely upon the crown, for he dropped without a groan.
"Holman!" I shrieked. "Where are you, Holman? The passage is here! This way, quick!"
A revolver cracked within two feet of me, and the bullet ripped through the tall headdress. I crouched quickly and ran along the corridor. There was no answering cry from Holman, and although it was possible that he would not disclose his whereabouts by replying to my yell, I decided that I could do little to help him in the impenetrable darkness. Besides, Edith Herndon and her sister were in danger, and the dawn was coming rapidly. Throwing off the parrot-feather mat, which had served me to such good purpose, I raced headlong toward the opening. A few bats, returning early to their sleeping quarters, banged against my face, but the way was otherwise clear, and with a cry of joy I rushed through the mouth of the passage into the calm, clear night.
