“By the way, what happened to your apparatus the last time we exchanged signals?” asked Cummings, recalling the night that Jack played his memorable trick and cut off the current by which Jarrold was working his flash lamp.
“I don’t know, but I suspect that young jackanapes back there of having something to do with it,” was the reply.
“Well, you won’t be bothered with him now,” said Cummings.
“No; by the time he gets out of the Lion’s Mouth the Tropic Queen will be far out at sea,” chuckled Jarrold.
“How did you ever come to locate the Lion’s Mouth, as you call it?” asked Cummings with some curiosity.
“Many years ago, when I was in Jamaica for—well, never mind what purpose—an old voodoo negro showed me the place. It forms part of the ruins of an old Spanish castle, and there is a legend that the old Don who once owned it kept lions in it for his amusement. Any one he didn’t like, he’d let the lions make a meal of. Nice old gentleman, wasn’t he?”
Cummings joined in Jarrold’s laugh at his own grim humor.
The road began to grow rougher and Jarrold had all he could do to keep the machine in the track. He had no more opportunity to talk. Rocky walls shot up on one side of the thoroughfare, and on the other a steep precipice tumbled sheer down to the sea, which broke in roaring masses of spray at its foot.
It was a scene of gloomy magnificence in which the modern car with its red trimmings and snorting engine seemed strangely out of place. At length they came to a spot where a ravine ran back from the sea, splitting the towering rock masses and spanned by a narrow bridge.
Jarrold turned the car aside and ran it some distance back into a track that wound along one side of the deep cleft, at the bottom of which the sea boiled and roared.