It did come, too. The coolie flung up his arms and fell over the edge of the precipice. But Chick held on grimly till the man had wriggled back to safety. That was what he had laid himself out to do.
It was all over in two or three seconds. But it seemed more than a minute before they heard the reverberating crash as the load he had carried reached the bottom of the cañon.
The sound sent a chilly feeling to Chick’s heart that nothing in the way of any ordinary danger could have done.
“I reckon we’ll use ropes,” decided Nick Carter, who saw that his assistant had actually turned a little pale. “We won’t take any more chances.”
Two long lines of rope were knotted together and a loop turn taken around the waist of each man in the party.
Nick Carter took the lead, while Jai Singh was in the middle, they being the heaviest members of the party, and Chick at the rear end. Captain trotted along behind. He was sure-footed enough not to require ropes to keep him out of trouble.
“What’s that big cave ahead of us, Jai Singh?” asked Nick Carter, when they had proceeded in this manner for two miles or more.
“It is the first sign that we are getting near Bolongu,” was the reply. “We should stop before we go into it. What there is inside it is not for me to say. We must see.”
“That sounds rather pleasantly mysterious,” remarked Jefferson Arnold.
The Hindu did not reply, but kept his eyes fixed on Nick, to see what the detective meant to do.