Indeed, 'twas the stimulus of their hatred flogged me back to self-control. At a corner in the passage, with a glimmer of light beyond advertising its emergence upon some opening, I gripped Peter and bade him stop.
"We must fight them back," I panted. "They do not expect—we shall gain time."
He crouched next me, our bodies blocking the way, and the leaders of the pursuers, rounding the turn at a run, crashed full upon our knives. We flung the two corpses into the mob that pelted after them, slashing and hacking with knives and hatchets in the half-light of the torches, until we had reared a barricade that gave us an opportunity to resume our flight with a trifling lead—for men hesitated to cross the battered heap we had left behind us. Yet we were no more than a dozen paces in the lead when we broke from the passage into a courtyard deep in the cleft of the cliff. In front and overhead towered the peculiar bulging rock formation which protected Homolobi from assault from above. The cliff-top mushroomed out so that it overhung the Breast, and leaning against its base was a double ladder from which Kachina and Tawannears waved us on.
I could not see what use it was to climb to some rock-lodge where we would be picked off in daylight by archers on the temple roof, but there was no time for argument with that yelping horde on our track. Peter and I raced across the court, and rattled up the hidebound rungs as fast as we could go. There were men on the lower rungs already when we stepped upon a narrow shelf where the girl and Tawannears awaited us.
"Come," she said nervously in Spanish, and plucked the Seneca by the hand.
"Waidt," shrilled Peter solemnly, and he seized the ladder-ends in his huge paws, swayed them tentatively and gave a shove.
The ladder teetered erect on end, poised as if to drop back against the cliff—and went over backward, spilling its load of priests to an accompaniment of fearful screams.
"Now we got a better chance, eh?" commented the Dutchman.
Kachina chuckled with amusement. She had adopted our side unreservedly. The death of these people who had lately almost worshiped her distressed her no more than the slaying of the Awataba in the pass.
"That was a good blow for the fat one," she remarked. "They will set up the ladder again, but we shall have more time, and that means everything."