The White Waterfall

by James Francis Dwyer

Kaipi would promise anything if he was not forced to witness the performance, and we left him huddled up in the darkness, and returned to the spyhole in the wall.

The "tivo," as the Fijian called it, was still in progress. Without noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and slower they moved past the crevice, till at last all movement ceased, and, apparently lifeless, they lay face downward upon the floor.

I thought of the two girls at the lonely camp as we sat watching, and I knew well that Holman's thoughts were turned in the same direction. We had seen nothing of Leith, but an intuition that would not be put aside connected Leith with the strange ceremony that was in progress within the cavern, and we were chained to the spot.

I have no idea how long the six figures remained motionless upon the floor. It may have been an hour, it may have been two. The mystery of the performance we were witnessing seemed to drag us into a world where minutes and hours did not exist. We were dumfounded by the confirmation of our suspicions and the peculiarly devilish exhibition, and I shook off the lethargy with an effort as Holman prodded me with his finger and pointed at a spot beyond the body of the dancer who lay immediately in front of the spyhole.

Looking in the direction Holman pointed I saw that another light was approaching through the gloom of the cavern. It bobbed toward us slowly, a tiny pin point that came nearer and nearer as the bearer walked in the direction of the six. The distance it was away from the dancers, which was evident from the time that elapsed from the moment we saw it till it was close up, convinced us that the cavern was of an enormous length, and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew that he believed that the treacherous brute was one of the three that were approaching behind the bobbing lamp.

The bodies of the dancers, or at least the parts that we could see, became tense and rigid. A soft hiss went round the circle, and once again the wriggling movement started. But this time the six went forward instead of backward. They broke out of the circular formation, and in a long glistening line moved up the cavern toward the three approaching. The lamp halted, then it was raised high in the air as the crawling half dozen approached, and Holman gave a curious little gurgle as the light fell upon the three newcomers. Wrapped in parrot feathers and a white mask, the lamp bearer stood revealed as Soma. Immediately behind him was a tall white man in the same outlandish garb, while the last of the three, barearmed and barelegged, and wearing an immense headdress of plumes, was Leith!

The snaky six circled the three at a respectful distance, then, again breaking into a single file formation, they turned toward the end of the cave nearest our spyhole, and behind the length of creeping bodies, Soma, the tall white who had only one eye, and Leith came slowly.

Holman's breath came faster as the procession approached. The exhibition chilled us. There was a devilish suggestiveness in the proceeding. In some indescribable manner it brought up mental pictures that were nauseating, and it required something of an effort to watch the performance. The mystery of the silent night, the thoughts of the danger which threatened the two girls, and the glimpses of the astounding performance within the cavern brought a dazed mental condition that made us doubt our sanity.

I felt Holman's hand reach out across my shoulder as the procession moved down upon us, and instinctively I understood the movement. The cold barrel of a revolver had slipped by my face, and I gripped his wrist and forced the hand downward. The manner in which Soma and the one-eyed man walked in front of the big brute made it impossible to shoot with telling effect, and Leith was the person we desired to kill at that moment. The others seemed to be but creatures of his will, and he stood up in our minds as a devil whose existence was a menace to everything that was pure and clean.

The three newcomers moved to the side of the cavern, so that nothing except their bare feet were visible, and backward and forward in front of those feet moved the human serpents with a regularity that was stupefying. In an unbroken line they would move forward, flatten themselves upon the floor, then, with a unanimity that was remarkable, they would wriggle backward, to repeat the same movement over again.