Naturally, too, he had not the slightest idea on what part of the island the pit was located. There was nothing to indicate where it was. Jack was not a lad who easily lost heart, but his present position was almost unbearable.
Unless rescuers came to his aid, and it seemed hardly likely that anyone could penetrate to such a place without a guide, he was doomed to a miserable death. He flung himself down on the rocky floor of the pit in an agony of despair. His despondency lasted for some minutes, and then, resolutely pulling himself together, Jack sprang to his feet.
“I won’t give up! I won’t!” he said, gritting his teeth. “There must be some way out of this.”
He took a pull at the canteen and ate some of the bread and meat. Then he began a systematic tour of exploration of his place of captivity. It was so nearly perfectly circular in form that he was sure that human hands had fashioned it.
In places in the walls were fastened iron rings that had mouldered away with the ages till they were as thin as wire. In ancient days, though Jack did not know it, the cruel old Don’s victims were tied to these, to be devoured by the lions from which the pit took its name.
In one place a creeper hung temptingly down. But its extremity dangled fully four feet above the boy’s head, and although Jack could have climbed on it to freedom had he been able to gain it, he knew that such a feat was out of the question.
All at once, though, he saw something that sent the blood of hope singing through his veins.
On the side of the pit opposite to that on which he found himself on his first awakening from his coma, was a big fissure in the wall. A ragged rent, it ran from top to bottom of the rock wall like a scar on a duelist’s face.
It was apparently the work of an earthquake; perhaps the one that had devastated Kingston had caused it. At any rate, there it was, and to Jack, in his desperate condition, it offered a chance of escape.
True, for all he knew, he might, by entering it, be embarking upon worse perils than the ones he now faced, but at any rate it was an avenue to possible liberty and he determined to take full advantage of it.