All this conversation had occurred, of course, at intervals, whenever the boys found the heart to put their hopes and plans into words. It seemed to them that they had already spent hours in the desperate situation in which they found themselves. The periods of silence, however, had been briefer than they thought, and the time between the departure of Sam and that moment was not much more than half an hour.
“There are two heads now!” Jimmie said, after a time, “and they’re coming out! Hold your light steady when they reach the center of the room. I can’t afford to miss my aim.”
“Is your arm steady?” almost whispered Carl.
“Never better!” answered Jimmie.
Four powerful, hungry, jaguars, instead of two, crept out of the opening! Jimmie tried to cheer his companion with the whispered hope that there might possibly be bullets enough for them all, and raised his weapon. Two shots came in quick succession, and two jaguars crumpled down on the floor. Nothing daunted, the other brutes came on, and Jimmie seized Carl’s automatic. The only question now was this:
How many bullets did the gun hold?
CHAPTER XVI.
BESIEGED IN THE TEMPLE.
As Sam watched the shadow cast by the moonlight on the marble slab at the entrance, his prisoner turned sharply about and lifted a hand as if to shield himself from attack.
“A savage!” he exclaimed in a terrified whisper.
It seemed to Sam Weller at that moment that no word had ever sounded more musically in his ears. The expression told him that a third element had entered into the situation. He believed from recent experiences that the savages who had been seen at the edge of the forest were not exactly friendly to the two white men. Whether or not they would come to his assistance was an open question, but at least there was a chance of their creating a diversion in his favor.