“I think I can hear ’em, sir. Now then, you two, give up. It’ll be the worse for you if you don’t.”
Don’s hand tightened on his companion’s wrist, and they stood fast, for Ramsden was stopping in a bent attitude, listening.
There was nothing to be heard but the whisperings and gurglings, and then they saw him draw his cutlass and come on.
Jem’s muscles gave another jerk, but he suffered himself to be drawn farther and farther into the cave, till they must have been quite two hundred yards from the mouth; and now, for the first time, the almost straight line which it had formed, changed, and they lost sight of the entrance, but could see the shadow of their enemy cast upon the glistening wall of the place, down which the water seemed to drip, giving it the look of glass.
All at once Don, as he crept back, felt his left foot, instead of encountering the smooth rock floor, go down, and as he quickly withdrew it and felt nearer to him, it was to touch the edge of what seemed a great crack crossing the floor diagonally.
As he paused, he felt that it might be a “fault” of a few inches in width or depth, or a vast chasm going right down into the bowels of the mountain!
“There’s a hole here,” he whispered to Jem. “Hold my hand.”
Jem gripped him firmly, and he reached out with one leg, and felt over the side outward and downward; and, just as he was coming to the conclusion that the place was terribly deep, and a shudder at the danger was running through him, he found that he could touch bottom.
He was in the act of recovering himself, so as to try how wide the crack or fault might be, when a peculiar strangling sensation attacked him, and he felt that he was falling.
The next thing he felt was Jem’s lips to his ear, and feeling his whisper,—