“Garth!” he cried. “Hilton! Where are you, old chap?” But there was no answer, save the echoes which seemed to mock; even the wolf-like howls had ceased, and Seymour appeared to be the only living thing in the whole ghostly underworld.
Anxiously he searched the ground around, but not a trace could he find of his comrade. For over an hour he sought diligently, eagerly, yet all his efforts were vain. It seemed as though the earth had opened and swallowed the unfortunate inventor. Mervyn’s accident had seemed terrible enough, but Garth’s disappearance eclipsed even that. It was so appallingly mysterious!
Not a sound had Seymour heard but the wolf cries, yet his friend had been snatched almost from under his nose, and that without the baronet catching even a glimpse of his abductors.
“It’s maddening!” he burst forth at length. “Something must have carried him off. He cannot have disappeared into thin air! I’ll fetch Silas, and between the pair of us we may pick up some sort of a trail.”
So ruminating, with his mind still exercised with the baffling problem, he turned, climbed the ridge, and retraced his steps through the jungle.
Suddenly he stopped, thinking he heard a footstep behind him; but nothing could he see moving, and, telling himself that the disappearance of his friend had shaken his nerve and made him fanciful, he pressed on once more.
Three minutes later he pulled up again, and this time he knew there was no mistake. Something was dogging his steps, moving when he moved, and stopping when he came to a halt!
For an instant a wild, unreasoning fear swept over him, urging him to break into a run, but, with an exclamation of disgust at his own weakness, he shook it off, and moved forward again, cool, determined, and watchful.
But once more behind him came those ghostly footsteps.
Roused to a fury by the grim persistency of the thing which was tracking him, Seymour faced round with a jerk, and fired point-blank into the fungi behind him. As the report of the rifle rang out, a fearful death-scream awoke the echoes of the underworld, a scream so full of diabolical rage and impotent fury that the usually iron-nerved baronet trembled like a child as he heard it.