"It will be a desperate race," put in Captain Akers.
"And one in which the stakes are life or death," was Nat's comment.
The canoe was cut loose so that they could make better progress, and the boat fairly hissed over the water. But the natives of these islands where there are no horses are prodigiously swift runners. They saw, to their dismay, that fast as they rowed the natives ashore were as swift, or perhaps a shade faster.
At last the entrance of the gloomy gorge loomed in front of them. Its sides towered steeply, showing a thin strip of sky at the summit. Through this narrow passage they must pass to win freedom.
The hearts of all beat faster as the boat entered the shadows of the defile. Nat's breath came thickly and his heart beat fast. Joe and Ding-dong showed, too, by their white, set faces, that they felt the strain painfully. Captain Akers sat in the stern with a composed face. He had looked on danger too often to tremble now. Cal was as unconcerned as ever, outwardly, but a certain nervous twitching of his facial muscles showed that even his iron nerve was shaken.
And small wonder. A stone—not a very large one, either—pitched from the top of the defile would inevitably have sunk the boat. The impetus gained in its three-hundred-foot fall would have given it a crushing force twenty times superior to its own weight.
They had rowed perhaps a hundred feet into the defile when Joe, who was gazing up at the sharply defined edges, gave a cry and pointed.
Outlined against the sky far above them was a brown-skinned figure. It was joined by another and another. They gazed down at the boat, gesticulating furiously.
"It's all off," groaned Cal tragically.
"We must keep on going and trust to Providence," decided Captain Akers. "It would mean death anyway if we turned back now."