rawedge upon our tempers, and after an hour spent upon hands and kneesHolman resolutely refused to shift his ground in response to Kaipi'ssignals. I was just as tired of the wormlike attitude that we werecompelled to adopt, and I waited beside Holman while the Fijian slippedaway through the creepers after warning us by many eloquent signals thatone of the search party was creeping toward us.
Holman had a "let-'em-all-come" expression upon his face that would havebeen amusing at any other time, and kneeling with our backs to eachother we endeavoured to peer through the leafage to get a glimpse of thefoe.
We remained like that for about ten minutes; then our attention wasattracted to a point about eighteen inches to the right. The dry leaveswere pushed quietly aside, but instead of a head appearing, as weexpected, a bare brown leg was thrust through the creepers and remainedstationary.
The leg fascinated us. Kaipi had moved in the opposite direction, and wewere certain that the limb belonged to one of our enemies. The nakedsavage was worming his way upon his stomach, and the positionimmediately brought to our minds a picture of the scene in the longgallery. When it came to a game of this sort we would be hopelesslyoutclassed by a batch that, through assiduous training, slipped alongwith the ease of serpents.
Holman held his revolver in readiness and watched the leg. It wasdifficult to judge the position of the native's body, and the scarcityof ammunition made us hesitate before firing a shot. The leg was pushedfarther out of the leafy tangle, and as it came toward him a changepassed over Holman's face. He handed his revolver to me, crouched on histhighs and sprang!
There was something primitive about the action, something which causedmy heart to throb as I watched him take the pantherlike spring. On theprevious evening the youngster had expressed a desire to throttle Leith,and the same desire had gripped him when he watched the leg come throughthe vines. The devilishness of the batch made shooting a tame way ofobtaining revenge, and I possessed the same itchiness of the fingerswhich had prompted Holman to take the wild leap. There was a joy inthrottling such a brute, and I delighted in the grit of the boy.
The affair was dramatic in its swift and silent ending. The native,taken entirely unawares, had no chance against the angry antagonist whohad landed upon his back. A faint gurgle proved to me that Holman'sfingers had found the neck of the other, and in an incredible short timethe struggle was over.
We parted the bushes and examined the body. It was one of the three nudenatives that had rushed by us on the trail a few hours before, and heclasped in his right hand a long knife of New Zealand greenstone thathad been inlaid with gold in an intricate design. We had never seen sucha weapon. The crude knives that I had seen throughout the islands werenot to be compared to the wonderfully polished blade that had beenintended to free either Holman or myself from all earthly cares, whilethe metalwork showed a craftmanship that made one wonder how manycenturies had elapsed since the Polynesian artist who had fashioned theweapon had been laid in the Cavern of Skulls. The sinnet work and theparquetry of split bamboo, which comprise the highest handicraft of thepresent-day islander, could hardly be classed with the exceedinglybeautiful work upon the blade.
Holman turned up the end of the haft, pointed to a delicate design of acentipede, and then looked down at the back of the savage upon theground. The similarity of the two designs was immediately apparent, butwhile the one on the greenstone had been executed by an artist, thefigure upon the back of the dancer was a crude example of scar-tattooingthat required some imagination to puzzle out what object it was supposedto represent. As we glanced at each other the significance of theserpentlike dance, the marks upon the bodies of the dancers and on theknife and stone table, was plainly evident. The island was sacred to thecentipede, and in some way Leith had made himself a chief wizard amongstthe few savages who still performed the rites which had once made theIsle of Tears a place of particular importance to the surroundinggroups.
Holman took the long greenstone knife, and we crept quietly away in thedirection taken by Kaipi. We had one enemy less upon the island. Notcounting the carriers, we reckoned that the active opposition comprisedLeith, Soma, the one-eyed white man, and either two or three of the"tivo" dancers, and these made a formidable batch. The dancers were hugenatives, possessing all the characteristics of the Tongans, while Leith,Soma, and the one-eyed white man possessed more than ordinary strength.
"We must try to find the path," whispered Holman. "This delay will giveLeith a chance to get to the hills."
But the finding of the path was no easy matter. So that we would be wellout of the sphere of the companions of the man who carried thegreenstone blade, we worked our way for about one hundred yards throughthe leafy maze before attempting to search for it, and that searchproved a long and tiresome one. It is impossible to describe the networkof wanton vegetation through which we struggled during the hotafternoon. Every kind of shrub and tree was woven into an ungodly tangleby the crawling, leaping vines that shut out the sky and made itimpossible to see a person standing only a few feet away.
We stayed our appetites with wild guavas and yams, and moved slowlyforward in the direction that we surmised that Leith was moving in. Ourinability to find the path left us the only alternative of pushing ontoward the hills in the hope that we would intercept the party before itreached the caverns which made the basalt cliffs a secure hiding place.Once the arch villain reached the caves it would be a difficult matterto locate him, and we damned the crazy brain of the Professor as wethought of the lonely position of the Isle of Tears. If the captain of_The Waif_ was in league with Leith it would be absolutely impossible toobtain help to rescue the girls and their father, and we would bemarooned upon the island for an indefinite period.
It was within a few minutes of sunset when our despondency was suddenlyswept away. The silence of the jungle was disturbed by a shrill voicethat protested loudly against something which the owner was called uponto do, and our hearts punched our ribs with mighty blows as we crawledforward. The voice belonged to Professor Clinton Herndon of California.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STONE TABLE
Our feelings can hardly be described as we crept closer to the spot fromwhich the scientist's angry protest had gone up through the silence likea thin wire. The loneliness of that day had been appalling. I know thatEdith Herndon's quiet face was continually before my mental vision,while Holman's actions convinced me that he was suffering acutely. If wewere certain that Leith intended to do no wrong to the party, the factthat he was within speaking distance of the two girls was particularlydistressing after the knowledge we had gained in the night. With extremecaution we wormed our way forward, the Professor's piping voice actingas a verbal signpost in helping us to locate the spot where he wasengaged in holding the argument. We were close enough to hear his words,and our nerves were on the highest tension as he shrieked a defianceagainst some person near. We had only one thought as to who that personcould be. The Professor was piling charges of treachery upon the head ofa listener, and there was only one head on the Isle of Tears thatcontained enough villainy to make the charges possible!
"I will not sign the papers!" cried the scientist. "I want my liberty,sir! You are a scoundrel! Where are my daughters?"
Holman, creeping a few inches in front, had drawn his revolver. Theblood pounded madly; through my brain. We were within a few yards ofLeith, and even as we moved snakily forward, the heavy bass voice of thescoundrel came to our ears.
"You stupid old fool!" he growled. "You can demand all day and all nightif it does you any good. Do you know who I am?"
"I know you are a ruffian!" snapped the Professor. "I know you are arogue who has no respect for his word and honour. I know you are acoward who insults women!"
"Go on," mocked Leith.
"I've been a fool!" cried the old man. "I was blinded to everythingthrough my love of science. Now I know that you lied. I know you broughtme here to rob me and insult my daughters."
The sun had set, and the twilight made it d
ifficult for us to locate thetwo men. But we were close. When Leith spoke again, his voice soundedso near that I started involuntarily, while Holman, resting upon onehand, parted the branches with the barrel of the revolver which hegripped in the other.
"But you will admit when all is over that I have shown you somewonderful things," sneered Leith.
The Professor was silent a moment, as if endeavouring to fathom themeaning of the words, and we moved a few inches closer in the littleinterval.
"How?" asked the scientist.
Holman's hand that gripped the revolver remained motionless. Through arift in the leafy curtain I caught a glimpse of a bulk that was within ayard of our hiding place, and I knew that the youngster was waiting forthe brute to speak to make certain that he was covering the right man.The silence was nerve-destroying.
"Why," said Leith, speaking slowly and distinctly, "you are in the handsof the Wizards of the Centipede. I am their head, and if you are notextremely lucky you will make a sacrifice to--"
Something fell upon my head with tremendous force at that moment, but asthe blow descended Holman fired, and even as I fought to escape the gripof the strong fingers that twined themselves around my neck, I realizedwith a great wave of happiness that the bulk in front of me had pitchedforward when the shot had shattered the silence.
In a wild bedlam of oaths and shouts we fought and struggled. The "tivo"dancers had followed upon our track through the long afternoon, and thetime that we had lost in locating Leith had given them an opportunity tocome up with us. In the gloom we threshed backward and forward, but ourefforts to escape were vain. The one-eyed white man appearedmysteriously out of the shadows to help the huge natives, and in threeminutes Holman and I were tied hand and foot and stretched out near theunfortunate Professor, who, with bound limbs, was sitting up in thecentre of the grassy clearing where Leith and he had been exchangingpersonalities. There were no signs of the girls, and I wondered, as mybrain recovered from the effects of the blow, what had happened to them.
Holman's voice put a question that roused me from my half stupor.
"Did I kill him?" cried the young fellow. "Tell me!"
The question was answered by a stream of blasphemy that came from Leithhimself. The big ruffian had fallen into a bunch of ribbon-grass, butnow, with the assistance of One Eye, he got to his feet and staggeredtoward us. From the actions of his white partner, I surmised thatHolman's bullet had struck him in the left shoulder, and the surmiseproved true. The attack of the dancers had jerked the youngster's arm,and the wound was twelve inches above the point that Holman had aimedat.
With One Eye and the three dancers holding him upon his feet, and theblood dripping from the wound, he kicked us furiously, howlingunspeakable imprecations as he drove his heavy boots against our ribs.We had met the real Leith at last. The devilishness that we had sensedbehind the lustreless eyes blazed forth in full fury, and to me,familiar as I was with all the weird and wonderful curse phraseologyused by the skippers and mates of the island boats, his anathemasimpressed me as being the most blood curdling oaths that had ever cometo my ears. The man was a devil at that minute. His tremendous strengthmade the restraining efforts of the other four useless, and we were indanger of being kicked to death if a merciful interruption had notstopped him. The horrified Professor, who was sitting upright during theexhibition of brutality, lifted up his voice in protest, and his shrilldenunciations brought a cry out of the surrounding gloom.
"Father! father! Where are you, father?"
It was Edith Herndon's voice, and the note of agony in the wordsmaddened me. I drove my teeth into Leith's left leg as he stood quietfor a second near my head, and the brute used the sole of his rightboot to loosen my grip. There were no gentle ways about the devil. AsEdith's cry was repeated, he had administered a farewell kick to Holmanand me, and shouted an order in the same strange dialect which thedancer had used in addressing me in the Cavern of the Skulls when therobe of parrot feathers had saved my life. The three natives immediatelygripped us by the heels and we were dragged off into the bushes.
It seemed to me that Edith Herndon's cry was repeated again and again asthe natives dragged me at a jog trot through the undergrowth. There wasuntold anguish in the cry. It was plain that Leith had taken theunfortunate old Professor some distance from his daughters so that theycould not listen to the conversation, and the scientist's high-pitchedprotests against our maltreatment had caused the terror-stricken girlsto think that Leith was ill-using their father. I imagined that the bigruffian had rushed us away from the spot lest the two women would escapefrom Soma and run to the assistance of their father, but I know that wewere thankful that the interruption put an end to the football tacticsin which the infuriated devil was indulging.
But we had escaped from the frying pan to find ourselves in the flames.The three dancers felt that the Fates had given them a chance to avengetheir friend, and they took full advantage of the opportunity. So thateach would have a proper share in the burden, they placed us side byside, strapped our ankles together, and then, passing a rope through thestraps, the three laid hold of it and set off through the night, towingus behind with an absolute disregard for our feelings. They entered intothe fun of the thing. No Norwegian peasant ever towed home a Yule logwith a greater exhibition of joy than those savages displayed as theyhauled us through the thickets. They had a contempt for open places.They chose the most intricate paths they could find, and if a toughliana gripped Holman or me around the throat, the fiends found great funin straining upon the rope till the wire-like creepers gave way.
We suffered unbearable torture. Hour after hour we were jerked over theground. Our clothes were stripped from our backs, our faces were tornand bloody from the thorns, and our tormented flesh protested throughevery nerve against the treatment. Once Holman put a question in ahoarse whisper.
"Where are they taking us?" he asked.
"God knows," I gasped.
"It's my fault, Verslun."
"Why?" I groaned.
"I missed him! I missed him! I----"
His voice died away in a choking sob, and I imagine he swooned away. Aswe were being towed by the legs, I guessed that Holman was sufferingexcruciating pain from the limb that he had injured by the fall from themaupei tree, and the lapse into unconsciousness came as a blessedrelief. To me the rush through the jungle seemed a superlativenightmare. My mind played tricks with me. I thought that the three blackforms, leaping along in front, were a trinity of devils who were orderedto torture me for my stupidity in allowing Edith Herndon and her sisterto leave the yacht. Every creeper became a whip wielded by a mockingphantom, and I am forced to confess that I have a vivid recollection ofcrying to heaven for pardon for my criminal negligence. Every horrorthat the happenings of the previous forty-eight hours had germinatedwithin my brain sprang into lusty being as my mind trembled upon theabyss of insanity, and Edith Herndon was the person that the legion ofhorrors threatened.
I came to my proper senses to find that our towing trinity had called ahalt. Holman was repeating a question over and over again, and Iendeavoured to moisten my dry throat so that I could answer.
"Where are we?" he groaned. "Where are we? Are you dead, Verslun? Openyour eyes and take a look around; my peepers are bunged up."
I managed to open my eyes, but I could see nothing but the encompassingjungle. For a few minutes I thought that we were alone. Then I made outthe three figures crouched in front of us upon the grass. Their headswere turned away from us, and they were facing the east, where the faintluminous glow of the rising moon was just beginning to appear in thesky.
The three were motionless. They were squatting upon their hams, andtheir attitude seemed uncanny when I compared it with the mad film ofaction which my mental machinery had recorded during the precedinghours. They had stopped for some purpose, but that purpose I could notdetermine.
"Are they there?" asked Holman.
"Yes," I murmured.
"What are they doing?"
The youngster gave a grunt, turned his head till he managed to wipe themud and blood from his eyes upon my shoulder, then he peered at thesilent three. Their motionless forms fascinated him. It was hard toconnect them with the three bounding devils who had brought us on agallop that was more painful than the bareback ride which the Polishnobleman gave to the intriguing Mazeppa.
"What do you make of it?" he whispered.
"They're resting perhaps."
"Not them! They look as if they're hatching some new villainy."
Minute after minute crept by, but the three remained inactive. They tookno notice of our whispered conversation. No Hindu Yogis ever satmeditating with the absolute immovability of the three, and as ourwounds stiffened under the cold night air, we became foolishly angry atthe wait. If we had to meet death, it would please us to get it over assoon as possible.
"If I could have one more fling at them." groaned Holman. "By all that'sholy, Verslun, I feel that I could fight a million if these ropes wereoff me."
He endeavoured to get his face down to the bandages on my wrists, but wehad been strapped in such a manner that it was impossible to reach anyof the ropes with our teeth, so we lay quiet and reviewed the legion oftormenting thoughts that marched through our minds. The jungle, like thethree natives, seemed to be waiting for a happening. The silence wasmore horrible than the thunder of an earthquake. It seemed to well outfrom the silent three, till we longed with a great longing for someterrific and prolonged noise to shiver it and send battalions of echoesto chase it into the hills.
The moon peered above the
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