“Back again, then,” cried Syd. “There’s either a monkey or a man in hiding somewhere about the place, and we’ve got to find him.”
“Ought to have said it” thought Syd, as he started back, shouting to the men to take lines a little nearer to him, while he too altered his course, making straight now for the cleft rock which rose like the citadel of the place.
As he climbed along he found rift after rift, some so close that he could not get his hand down, others so wide and deep that he hesitated at the task of leaping over them, wondering what would be the result if he slipped and fell. The fact grew upon him as he went on, that small as the place looked from the ship’s deck, there was plenty of room for an enemy or fifty enemies to hide; but he became more certain that the natural pier was the only place where an enemy could land; the two men having confirmed the opinion formed when Lieutenant Dallas rowed round.
“Strikes me,” said Syd to himself, as he kept on peering down into chasm after chasm, “that if we want to catch our friend we shall have to set a trap for him.”
He climbed on and came to another eerie-looking place, more forbidding than any he had yet seen. It was only a jagged crack of a couple of feet across, but it sloped outward directly, so that a vast hollow was formed, and when he shouted down it there was a deep reverberating sound which died away in a whisper.
Boy nature is boy nature all the world over, and Syd could not resist the prompting which led him to drag a great piece of stone to the edge of the crack and push it in.
He shrank back, startled at the effect of what he had done, for no sooner had the stone disappeared than it seemed to strike on the side and rebound, to strike again and then again and again, raising an echoing, booming roar, which ended as suddenly as it had begun.
“I can’t go down a place like that,” he said, impatiently, as he shrank away; and then he stood staring, for the noise began again. But not below ground, for it was as if the rock had come crashing out in front of him a hundred and fifty feet away, to be followed by a hurried shouting; and on climbing a block of stone to his right, he made out one of his men looking out for him, and waving his hand and shouting—“Back! Back!”
Something was wrong. Perhaps it was an attack; and he clambered higher so as to attract the attention of the other man, who also shouted and waved his hand before pointing at the citadel in front.
“Something must be wrong,” thought Syd, and he hurried panting on, to get in sight of the end of the chasm at last, but he could see nothing, only that the spars rigged up crane-fashion were not there.