CHAPTER XXIII
THE WIZARDS' SEAT
As we stumbled toward the spot from which came the sounds of running water, the incidents of the preceding ten days seemed to be dropping into their places within my brain like the pieces of a picture puzzle that has suddenly become plain to the eye of the child who is putting it together. I understood! My brain seemed bursting within my skull. It appeared to me that God, in his own way, had made me a blind instrument to do his work. The big Maori on the wharf at Levuka knew of the hell upon the Isle of Tears. The Maori had warned Toni, the little Fijian, but fear of what might happen to any one possessing the knowledge had made Toni deny that he was the companion of the Maori when he was questioned before and after he had reached The Waif. In a burst of confidence he had confessed the truth to me on the afternoon after I had saved him from being washed overboard, but the confession had been made in the presence of Soma, and, as Kaipi asserted, it had cost Toni his life. Leith, alias Black Fernando, had ordered the big Kanaka to put the possessor of such important information out of the way.
I repeated over and over again the words which the Maori had addressed to his woolly headed pupil on that hot day at Levuka. They raced madly round in my mind, as if exultant because I had found the reason why they persisted in storing themselves in the cells of my brain. The soul within me had known that the knowledge would be wanted!
"How many paces?" asked the Professor.
"Sixty!" I roared; and then, seized with temporary insanity, I chanted the song of the Maori at the top of my voice:
"Sixty paces to the left,
Sixty paces to the left,
That's the way to heaven,
That's the way to heaven,
That's the way to heaven out
Of Black Fernando's hell."
"And here's the waterfall!" cried Holman, "Go easy now! It must be flowing into some hole, and we don't want to fall into an abyss just as Verslun has discovered the way out."
We advanced cautiously toward the spot where, as Edith had said, the water sparkled like fireflies in the darkness. It was an eerie place. We knew that the water was there by the sound it made flowing over the rocks, but, except for the tiny sparks of phosphorescent light that seemed to fly out from it, we could not see it. The spectacle thrilled us. A million sparks of light seemed to rise from the bed of feldspar over which the water leaped, and the peculiar quality of the rock gave to it the weird brilliancy which held us spellbound as we advanced with extreme caution. It wasn't white by any means, but in those inky depths it would not require a great effort of the imagination to call it white. The faint luminous flashes were the only particles of light that we had seen since Leith had thrown the half-extinguished torch into the hole that morning, and we could hardly turn our eyes from the novelty.
The water fell into an opening in the rocky floor, and gurgled away into depths that made us shiver as the distant tinkle came up to us as we crept forward on hands and knees. We were all thirsty at that moment, but we wished to put the directions of the Maori to an immediate test, and we were satisfied to let our longing for a cool drink stay with us till we could prove whether the strangely luminous waterfall before us was the one about which the two natives chanted the strange song.
"They said to the left, didn't they?" asked Holman.
"Yes," I answered. I hardly recognized my own voice as I jerked out the word. I couldn't see the faces of the girls, but I understood what skyscrapers of hope they had built upon the announcement I had made when Edith had told of her discovery. Now, as we moved around the hole in the floor, I understood what a tremendous shock it would be to them if we discovered that there was no connection between the falling water and the chant.
"I suppose the left side will be the one upon our left hand when facing the fall?" said Holman.
"I suppose so," I stammered. "Let us move up close to the side of the water."
We edged along till we could touch the flashing stream that dropped from some point high up in the immense roof of the place, and then we started to step the distance, the Professor chattering along behind us, while the two girls brought up the rear.
Holman chanted the numbers aloud, and a cold sweat broke out upon me as he counted. A fear of my own sanity came upon me. I thought that this connection between the song and the luminous water might have been suggested by a brain that had suddenly lost its balance under the torture of the preceding three days.
"Fifty-six! Fifty-seven! Fifty-eight!——"
It was Holman's voice, but to my reeling brain the sound came from the roof and thundered in my ears like a brazen bell.
"Fifty-nine! Sixty!"
We stopped together, and the suppressed sobs of Barbara Herndon were the only sounds that broke the little stillness that followed. There was no way out! The darkness, so it seemed to us, was thicker than ever!
"Nothing doing," muttered Holman. "I counted right, didn't I?"
"I think so," I answered huskily.
"Sixty paces exactly, and here's the wall alongside us."
My fingers groped along the moist rock. I felt stunned. Now that the test had been made it seemed insanity to connect a chant that I heard at Levuka with a waterfall in a cavern on the Isle of Tears. But why had Toni been killed? Why had Leith exhibited such curiosity about the song when he heard me relating the incident to the two sisters on board the yacht?
My fingers came to a crevice in the wall as the question presented a bold front to the doubt that had gripped me. The fissure was some four feet wide, and my exclamation made Holman put a question.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Nothing," I answered. Wrecked hopes had made me cautious. Still I felt certain that I had remembered those words for some purpose. I recalled how they had puzzled me on that hot day, and how I had questioned Holman concerning "Pilgrim's Progress" when he had roused me from my sleep.
"Well, if there's nothing here I'm going back to get a drink," said Holman.
"Hold on!" I stammered, as I uncoiled the piece of spare rope from my shoulders; "I want you a minute. There's a split in this rock, and I'm going to explore it. Take the end of this rope and hang on."
"Hadn't I better go with you?" he asked.
"Not this trip," I answered. "I've just got a feeling that I'd like to see where it leads to. Hold tight!"
I stepped cautiously into the narrow passage and immediately found that it narrowed to such an extent that I had to turn sideways to squeeze through. The floor sloped upward, and as the rock was damp and slippery, I dropped upon my knees so that I could climb more rapidly. The place seemed a narrow chute. My knees were skinned from the rough bottom, but I scratched desperately to obtain a footing. Hope was still alive. The Maori had said that the road to heaven was sixty paces from the White Waterfall, and if an all-seeing Providence had guided Edith to the waterfall, it was surely decreed that we would make our escape from the clutches of the devil who had us at his mercy.
"We will surely escape," I muttered, as I scratched and clawed in an effort to drag myself up the slippery path. "We will escape! I know it! We will escape! I know—"
The muttered words died upon my lips. The crevice turned and then broadened suddenly, and a blinding flash of light forced me to fling myself face downward upon the rock. For a moment I lay there, wondering stupidly whether something had happened to my eyes or whether I had come suddenly into the light of day. I had seen light—the light of what?
Slowly I lifted my head, and the truth came to me with stunning force. It was God's own sunlight that I had seen! The chute ended within three paces of the spot where I lay, and immediately opposite the opening through which I looked was a patch of vermilion rock that blazed gloriously as the rays of the afternoon sun struck full upon it. I knew that rock! It had thrilled me as I looked at it on the afternoon when Leith had introduced us to the greatest natural wonder of the Pacific. I was at the end of a passage that opened into the Vermilion Pit!
From where I lay I could not see the top of the crater. When the passage had suddenly broadened, the roof came down upon it, so that the opening through which I looked at the opposite side of the great pit was about ten feet wide but not more than two feet in height. An overhanging lip of rock prevented me from looking up, but I understood that I was lower than the slippery Ledge of Death that we had crossed to reach the Valley of Echoes. It seemed years since we had crossed that path, yet it was less than a week.
I thought of the others waiting in the darkness, and I turned and slid down the chute up which I had scrambled. The path to liberty was not yet plain, but there was fresh air and sunlight at the top of the chute, and one could see the faces of those they loved. Bumping and bounding over the jagged rocks I went at a terrific speed to the bottom of the slide, and, scrambling through the opening, I shouted the news to the four who waited there.
"It opens into the Vermilion Pit!" I gasped. "I can't see how we can climb out, but there's hope—there's hope!"
I was foolish in making the last statement, but the sight of the glorious sunbeams, striking down into the abyss, had made me blind to the difficulties that were yet to be faced! And the Maori's chant must surely be true! Now that it had brought us to the light, I could not but believe that it would bring us to liberty.
The slippery chute brought a suggestion from Holman. He advised that the two girls and the Professor remain at the bottom while he and I took one end of the rope to the top so that we could haul them up the wet track that I had scaled with difficulty.
"We won't be five minutes!" I cried. "Stay where you are till we signal."
I didn't think, as Holman and I crawled to the top of that place, what an eventful five minutes that would be. But the big things of life are crammed into minutes, and Time was bringing the most thrilling one of our lives toward us as we scrambled up the chute. Our adventures upon the Isle of Tears were to have a climax that fitted them.
Holman stopped as I had done and thrust his face down upon the rock as his eyes caught a glimpse of the glittering wall of the crater that came suddenly into view. The rays of the sun blazing down upon the stained sides of the mysterious pit made the veins of colour appear like brilliant snakes. The patch that was framed by the walls of the opening through which we gazed was a wild riot of scintillating, blinding colours that dazzled our eyes as we stared at them.
For a minute Holman breathed hungrily of the hot air, then he attempted to discover our exact position in the crater.
"We must be somewhere near the top," he declared. "Don't you remember that the colour of the walls darkened rapidly below the Ledge of Death?"
"I remember," I answered. "We must be nearly on a level with the Ledge."
"If we could look out from under this projecting piece of rock," muttered the youngster.
"It's risky."
"I'll make a try, Verslun. Hold my legs. I'm going to hang out of this burrow and take a peep around to get our bearings."
I gripped his legs, and turning upon his back he pushed himself slowly out over the edge of the passage till he was able to look up in front of the piece of rock that projected like the peak of a cap above the opening.
Clinging to this peak with his two hands, the upper part of his body being out over the abyss, he stared upward, and as I watched his face I noticed the look of joy and amazement that spread across it.
"What is it, Holman?" I cried. "Are we saved? Tell me!"
He slid hurriedly back to safety and pounded the rock above his head with his bare fists.
"Do you know what this is?" he yelled. "Do you know?"
I tried to utter the words that came to my tongue, but I could not. I could see the joy in the youngster's eyes, but I was afraid to speak.
"It is the Ledge of Death!" he shouted. "There is only six inches of rock above us!"
"Then we're saved!" I cried.
"Sure! If you put the rope around me I can crawl up on it, and once there I can haul up the others. Do you know what Soma told the Professor about the bad men falling into this infernal pit?"
I nodded my head. I was unable to speak at that moment.
"Well, the Wizards of the Centipede fixed that! Don't you see? This was their seat! They leaned out of this place as I leaned out just now, and they gripped the ankles of any poor devil they had a grouch against. It was devilish——"
I put my hand across his mouth and he became instantly mute. We held our breath and listened intently. From above us came the faint sound of footsteps and a cold perspiration broke out upon us. Some one was walking slowly along the Ledge of Death!
The sounds ceased when the unknown was immediately above our heads, and a guilty look came upon Holman's face. The man on the Ledge had probably heard the youngster's voice, and he was puzzled to know where the sounds had come from.
We sat without moving a muscle. The silence convinced us that the unknown was listening. We knew that he hadn't climbed from the Ledge to the top of the crater. The scratching of his shoes against the rock would have come to our ears. He was waiting—waiting to discover from what direction the voice had come that caused him to pause and listen.
The minutes passed like slow-dragging years. The man above wore shoes and the two men who wore shoes, outside our own party, were Leith and the one-eyed man. Somehow we felt that Maru and Kaipi had settled with One Eye, so there was only one person on the Isle of Tears who could possibly be listening.
Ten minutes passed, then Holman pointed to his own legs. I understood the sign and gripped his ankles. My head was bursting with the terror inspired by the thought that our escape might be cut off after the miraculous manner in which the way out had been shown to us.
Without noise, yet with incredible swiftness, the youngster turned upon his back and wriggled forward till his head and shoulders were again out over the pit. His body was tense, every muscle showing as he stiffened himself. Into my mind flashed a picture of the bloodthirsty Wizards of the Centipede stretching out in exactly the same manner centuries before a white man sailed into the Pacific!
The silence seemed to sap my strength. I watched Holman with eyes that were half-blinded by the perspiration that rolled down my forehead. There was no movement upon the ledge, and the fingers of the youngster were reaching slowly—slowly upward.
It was a yell of horror that shattered the awful quiet—a yell that went up through the hot air like the shriek of a lost soul. It swirled around and around like a lariat of brass. It was a terrible yell. It wrenched my inmost being till the very spirit seemed to go out of me for an instant, and I returned to consciousness to find myself struggling to hold Holman from being dragged into the depths below.
It was the youngster's voice that seemed to bring me back to a knowledge of the surroundings. In an instant's pause in the torrent of blasphemy his words came to me clear and distinct.
"Hold me tight, Verslun!" he cried. "Hold me tight, man! I have him!"
I shut my eyes to escape the fascination of the depths, and I gripped Holman's ankles till my nails burrowed into his flesh. I felt his body heave with a tremendous effort, then another yell, shorter but more terrifying than the first, told me that the struggle was over.
I dragged Holman back to safety, and, stretched side by side upon the rock, we listened. Down in the pit—miles, leagues away, something was falling!
The youngster pulled himself together after the silence had settled upon the place like a film.
"Let's tie the rope and get the girls up here," he said quietly, "In a while—in a little while—I can crawl on to the ledge and pull them up with a rope."
