"Get your cartridges ready; we must fight for all we're worth," cried Brown.
Almost as he spoke there was a rush of flying feet and a roar of voices at the entrance.
"Fire like blazes!" ordered Morton, setting an example, which was followed by the others, until the white smoke nearly filled the cavern. Madly and fanatically the natives dashed up the narrow passage; but with four breech-loaders playing on them, the terrible, unknown lightning and deafening thunder smiting their foremost down, two and three at a time, the attempt was hopeless; they fell back, and for a moment or two there was silence.
"Top! Top! Look out!" suddenly screamed Billy, and none too soon.
Clambering up the cliff the blacks were on the plateau forming the roof of the cave, and were forcing their way down through the many cracks and fissures. Hastily abandoning their position, the whites had scant time to escape into the open air over the bodies of those they had shot down. Here, to their astonishment, they found themselves unopposed by the cannibals, who had all made for the top of the cliff to gain entrance into the cave.
"What's up, Brown?" cried Morton; "you look like a ghost! Are you hit?"
"No, I don't think so, but I feel queer, and you look sick. For Heaven's sake come over to the rocks, quick!"
An awful feeling of nausea and giddiness suddenly and strangely attacked them all. Reeling to the rocks in front of the cavern they threw themselves down in what shade they could find, utterly regardless of their enemies.
The air was pulsating with fiery heat, the reports from the crater followed each other with scarce any interval, and the earth seemed rocking beneath them. From the mouth of the cavern issued a melancholy wail, the death-chant over the dead white man.
By a great effort Morton rallied himself, for it suddenly flashed across him what was going to happen.