As far as appearances went, they were leaving him alone now. But Jack knew that appearances are too often deceitful. The outer cave looked perfectly empty. Neither sign nor sound of human presence was given. Saya Chone and the Strangler had gone away, leaping down from the mouth of the outer cave to the ravine. But Jack was certain that the unwounded Kachins were still lurking in the cave out of his sight, and he had no intention whatever of creeping out and engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with the iron-limbed little mountaineers. Fully half an hour passed in this profound silence. Jack kept the sharpest look-out, but could catch no sign to show that his lair was still watched.
"If they can wait," thought Jack, "so can I. I'll not stir an inch from my cover, however silent they may be."
At that instant he caught a sharp, low cry of surprise behind him. He whirled round swiftly, for in his intentness he had actually forgotten the two Panthays, his fellow-prisoners. With a gasp of relief, Jack found that it was the elder Panthay who had called out. The two men had been crouching in a corner of the inner cave, and had given no sign of their presence while Jack struggled with his foes. Now one was calling out, and both were pointing upwards.
Jack took a step back from the mouth of the tunnel and looked aloft. The rift in the rock forty feet above, which lighted the cave, was obscured and darkened. In a moment he saw that the gap was filled with a human body, and that a Panthay was peering down upon them.
"What's this game?" thought Jack. "They've climbed up to that hole, but unless I obligingly stand under it, and let them drop a stone on my head, I don't see what they get by it."
Little did the heroic lad dream of the fearful use to which his enemies meant to put the rift in the rock high above him.