The White Waterfall

by James Francis Dwyer

"The devil!" I muttered. "The fiendish brute!"

A chuckle came from a boulder beside the track, and Holman's cheery voice set my pulses beating.

"You frightened the dickens out of me, Verslun," he cried. "I thought you were one of the evil legion. Gee! I'm glad to see you."

"How did you get out?" I gasped as we rushed on together. "I thought I left you in the cavern."

"It was a good job you didn't," he retorted. "There was a husky nigger at the outside entrance of the passage, and he gave me the fight of my life. Get off this track; they might be after us at any moment."

"Do you think that Leith has made for the camp?" I asked.

"I suppose he has. We must move as fast as we can, Verslun. If he reaches there before us we'll deserve any fate that will come to us. We shouldn't have left them."

The utterance of the conviction that had come to both of us brought a silence, and we rushed across the boulder-strewn ground that we had crossed earlier in the night. We felt certain that Leith knew of a surer and safer path back to the camp, but it was useless for us to hunt for a new trail at that moment. We would have to find our way down the nearly perpendicular wall up which we had climbed after leaving the crevice through which we had viewed the death dance, and, to me at least, the recollections of that path brought feelings that were by no means pleasant. But Leith was making toward the camp, and the horrible thoughts aroused by the spectacle which we had witnessed in the early night muzzled the thrills which the dangers of the climb sent through our bodies. The dance had terrified the Fijian by arousing thoughts of the deeds that would happen in its wake, and Kaipi's terror became a gauge for us to measure its dread significance.

We reached the cliffs and ran up and down the ledge in a vain search for the spot where we had clawed our way to the top. Not that we thought the finding of the place would solve the problem of the descent. It was hard to conceive of a more difficult way than the one by which we had come, and as if he had suddenly come to the conclusion that any other path would be preferable, Holman dropped upon his knees and lowered himself upon a ledge that was immediately below.

"Come on, Verslun!" he cried, in a choked voice that was altogether different from his cheery tones. "If there is no path we must roll down. There's the first flush of the dawn!"