NOISELESSLY ON HIS STOCKING SOLES TIP-TOED AFTER THE GERMAN.
Leaving him where he lay, the two men summoned Lafoa to join them, and led him to the tunnel. Groping over the grating, Hoole discovered the wooden bolt with which it was fastened, quietly removed the cover, and signed to Lafoa to go in.
There was another moment of tense anxiety. Grunts, ejaculations, the stir of movement, were heard from the depths of the tunnel. Something fell with a sharp crack--a pick which one of the men had displaced. At the mouth of the tunnel it sounded like a pistol shot, and Hoole and Trentham swung round and looked apprehensively towards the beach. All was still, there. No doubt the wash of the sea was loud enough to smother the single sharp sound at a distance.
It was evident that Lafoa had intelligently grasped his instructions, for the natives, as they filed out, though their movements were quick and urgent, made scarcely a sound. In a long string they followed Trentham to the spot where the rope dangled over the wall of the ledge. Trentham found that his hands were trembling as he slid the rope over the shoulders of the first man. If only he could have multiplied the rope! Each ascent would take at least half a minute. How many men were there? What might not happen before they were all in safety above? One by one he looped them, saw them rise, caught the descending rope. Hoole, who had counted them out, came up to them and whispered 'Thirty-four.' More than a quarter of an hour must elapse before the last man had ascended, and some of those at the end of the line were showing signs of restlessness, grunting, sighing, clicking with their tongues. Moment by moment Trentham expected some of them to whoop with excitement. 'Make all fella no talkee!' he whispered to Lafoa, and the man went along the line muttering fierce threats.
The thirty-fourth man had gone. Lafoa followed him, then Hoole. Not a sound had been heard from below but the murmur of the sea and the muffled voices of the men in the sheds. With intense relief, and the feeling that fortune could hardly betray them now, Trentham looped himself and signalled to be hoisted. He was barely half way to the top when a sharp clatter above made his blood run cold. Crack followed crack, then for a second there were a number of dull thuds, and finally, a tremendous crash on the ledge below, waking echoes around the cove. One of the natives, in climbing among the boulders, had displaced a large rock.
The doors of the sheds were burst open. Lights shone across the cove. Men came rushing out, calling to one another, to the sentry above, to the men on the Raider. 'Faster! Faster!' Trentham cried inwardly, as he was jerked upward. He was just over the edge when a blinding light swept across the face of the cliff. The searchlight's beams fell full upon Trentham's white-clad form. Slipping out of the loop, he scrambled on hands and knees up the sloping ascent towards the boulders. Below him there was a sputtering rattle, and he felt himself splashed with earth and stones as the rain of machine-gun bullets pecked at the cliff. Something hot stung his leg; he crawled faster; in another moment his shoulders were grasped by sinewy hands, and Grinson and Hoole between them lugged him over the brink and behind the protecting boulders.
'Thanks be for all mercies!' panted Grinson. 'And as for that clumsy lubber that kicked down the rock----'
'Shoo!' whistled Hoole, 'it's time, sure, to cut and run!'
CHAPTER XIII