In the interim she had time for cool reflection. Rescue was for the present beyond question, away up in these wild hills, and she knew any attempt on her part at escape would be equally hopeless. It would be quite as futile to attempt to gain information as to the object of her abduction from her sombre captors. It suddenly struck her that her visit with Hammond to the water-sealed entrance to the Cup of Nannabijou might have had something to do with her present plight. She knew the Indians looked upon the vicinity of the Cup as forbidden ground. The priests of the mystic region might be determined to have an explanation of the trespass, or worse still, be intent on punishing the offenders. Acey Smith’s reference of the day before to an enemy whom he seemed to fear might molest her during his absence recurred to her. No doubt the superintendent had been well-intentioned when he had insisted that she leave the island with him. He might have had his own good reasons for being mysterious about it, and now she had ugly proof of a real danger he probably had in mind.
Her reflections were cut short by the sudden entrance of the party into the gloom of the tunnel, down which they carried her carefully to the point where it opened out on the rocky brink of the roaring mountain torrent. The bearers paused and let the sedan down on the four short posts that served for legs. Not one of them spoke or committed a motion. She glanced backward. Had it not been for the blinking eyes of the men behind her, they could have represented figures of bronze. Ogima Bush had disappeared.
Her eyes were momentarily blinded by a wicked green flash of light that illuminated the passageway, and with it came a deep gonglike alarum from above.
There was a vibrating, thundering sound, and with its advent the waters in the stream channel began to drop; dwindled swiftly to a mere trickle and finally disappeared entirely except for the moisture retained on the smooth-worn rock of its bed.
Amazement was still upon Josephine Stone when she heard Ogima Bush utter a guttural command at her side. He had reappeared as silently as he had dropped out of sight and now walked with a firm hand to the side of the sedan as the bearers carried it down the stone steps to the bed of the stream.
They moved only about fifty or sixty yards, around a very abrupt curve, when they came to a stop opposite another short flight of steps leading to a tunnel through the cliffs similar to the one by which they had entered the stream-bed below.
Once in the tunnel, Ogima Bush again disappeared. Josephine Stone heard the gonglike alarum, the roar of released torrents, and the waters went sweeping down the channel they had just emerged from.
Just how the stream was diverted from and returned to the portion of its course that formed a section of the passageway up into the Cup she was curious to understand. She fancied that a dam or shut-off was manipulated by some one in charge above on signals sent by means of the gong.
In the weird novelty of it all the girl almost forgot her own precarious situation; that she was the captive of a lawless Indian magician, whose cunning, wicked face was an index of the unscrupulous, ruthless soul that lay behind the black eyes whose whites showed with such savage garishness. Furthermore, for the moment, the fact that she knew nothing of whom she was to be taken before or the fate that might await her had ceased to weigh heavily upon her mind. The adventurous side of it and curiosity to know what was the object of it all engrossed her more.
With a suddenness that made her eyes wince they moved out from the semi-gloom of the tunnel to the bright sunlight of the open.