Failure meant death but, as Billy had put it, they were due to die anyhow it seemed and they owed it to themselves to make as brave an effort as possible to escape such a fate.
At last they heard a fumbling at the door and the man who had brought them the drugged food entered the cell. He scrutinized them with a grunt of satisfaction and going up to each one shook him by the shoulder to see if they were only asleep or really insensible. Apparently he was satisfied from their inertness that the drug had worked, for he muttered to himself rapidly in the unknown tongue as he concluded his examination.
Then he turned to pick up the earthen dishes, stooping over with his back to Billy Barnes as he did so.
It was Billy's move!
Like a flash the young reporter—who had earned an enviable record on the gridiron and crew at Columbia University—was on the savage's back while Lathrop rushed at the fellow as he straightened up and gave him a low tackle. As Billy leaped he had dug his fingers into the fellow's windpipe to choke any outcry, and when Lathrop seized him by the legs he toppled over like a felled ox without uttering a sound. Billy rolled from under him as he fell backward and the man's head struck the stone floor with a terrific crash.
He was knocked insensible by the fall. The moment to escape had arrived!
Rapidly the boys tore a strip off Billy's shirt and formed it into a gag. With other strips they tied the insensible man's hands behind his back and manacled his legs.
"He won't come to for quite a while after the crack he got," remarked Billy; "but in case he does, he won't be able to attract attention for a long time."
Then, as cautiously as though stepping on eggs, they tiptoed out into the passage—after extinguishing the torch—and the next minute were startled to be suddenly halted by a form that ran right into them in the blackness.
The next minute, however, their anxiety was relieved. It was Umbashi who had collided with them and accompanying him was Aga, the man who killed the rogue elephant. It appeared that the two had agreed to divide the fetishes their captives were to give them in return for their freedom. And Aga at once, with a stone knife, cut off two generous locks of Lathrop's hair.