Then, for a few minutes more, I lost sight of them entirely.
When they emerged again to view, on the Floor of the Strangers, they had left their horses, and, headed by Frank in his white jacket, were creeping cautiously, unperceived, under cover of the broken masses of lava, round the sharp corner of the jutting platform. My heart bounded as I saw them approach. There was still some chance, then, of saving Kea!
Had she been my own sister I could not have felt the suspense more awful.
As we gazed below we saw, to our dismay, that the lake of fire was still tossing and rolling with wild wreathing billows, and that it had risen visibly several feet in the last few minutes.
While we still looked, the moon's face began slowly to darken. The eclipse had commenced. We had only a quarter of an hour yet to the period of totality.
In a few short words, I explained to Frank and the sailors he had brought with him the entire situation in all its gravity. I told them all I had seen and heard; and their own eyes confirmed my report: for there stood Kea full in view, round the corner of the pinnacle, beyond the open chasm, in her white dress, with her hands clasped in inarticulate prayer, and her pale face turned up appealingly towards the cold moonlight. She had but a quarter of an hour left to live. Yet near as we were to her, it would have taken us more than fifty minutes to ride round the crater by the outer rim to the only practicable path on the other side of the chasm.
"What are we to do?" I cried, in my horror, though in a low voice, for it was necessary above all things not to arouse the Hawaiians' quick attention.
"We must cross the chasm somehow," the eldest officer of the party answered at once. "We can't let the poor girl be sacrificed before our very eyes."
"If we only had a rope, and could once get it fastened on the other side, we might sling ourselves across, hand over hand," Frank suggested eagerly.
"We have rope, lots of it, on my saddle over yonder," the officer answered. "But we can't get it fastened. If only the chasm were narrow enough to leap! But it's quite impossible. No athlete on earth could ever jump it."