Like all his tribe, Bosin had a pretty penchant for annexing any chance article that happened to take his fancy, without regard to ordinary rights of property.
“Prigging again, eh?” said Don, as he gently disengaged the monkey's booty from his grasp. “What have you got this time?”
To his astonishment he saw that he held in his hands the lascar's cord, and—surely he was not mistaken?—the fellow to that half of Jack's handkerchief in which his letter had been wrapped up when despatched from the village per monkey post.
Bosin's mysterious disappearance, then, was explained. In quitting his dead master's side so unaccountably he had had a purpose in view—a monkeyish, unreasoning purpose, doubtless, but none the less a purpose—which was none other than to track the lascar to his lair and regain possession of the cord. Not that he knew in the least the value to Don of the yard of twisted hemp, or the significance of the scrap of crumpled, bloodstained cambric he was at such pains to filch. With only blind instinct for his guide, he had been guided better than he knew; for while the cord proved the Elephant Rock to be the hiding-place of the lascar, the handkerchief proved, or seemed to prove, that Jack was still alive and that the lascar's hiding-place was his prison.
Don's heart leapt at the discovery.
Perhaps Jack, unable for some reason to scribble even so much as a word, had entrusted the handkerchief to the monkey's care, knowing that the sight of it would assure his chum of his safety, if it did no more. Or perhaps Bosin had carried it off while Jack slept?
A thousand conjectures flashed through Don's brain, but he thrust them hastily aside, since mere conjecture could not release his chum; and calling to the blacks to follow, he sprang up the steps with a lighter heart. The monkey swung himself down from his perch and took the lead, as if instinctively divining the object of their quest; chattering gleefully when the trio pressed close upon his heels—impatiently when they lagged behind.
The steps surmounted, they discovered an offshoot from the main tunnel, from which point of division the latter dwindled straight away into a mere dot of light in the distance. In the main tunnel itself the light was faint enough; but as they advanced it increased in brilliancy till presently—the distance being actually much less than the unbroken perspective of chiselled rock made it appear—they emerged suddenly into the broad light of day, streaming down through an oblong cleft or gash cut deep into the solid heart of the Rock.
The light itself was more welcome than what it revealed.
Directly across their path, at their very feet indeed, extended a yawning chasm, of depth unknown—but, as the first glance served to show, of such breadth as to effectually bar their further progress.