James Francis Dwyer

“ But youth and courage won the day. Slowly, inch by inch, he lifted himself, the lips of the two girls moving in dumb prayer; then we lost sight of him as he drew his legs up on to the ledge, and we knew that we were safe!
The youngster secured the rope to a projection on the shelf above, and the Professor, nervous but game, was the next to make the perilous journey. It was blood-curdling to watch the old man swaying over the depths while Holman, lying flat upon his stomach, gripped him beneath the arms and dragged the poor old scientist to safety. ”

“ Our revolvers had been lost from our pockets during the mad rush through the night—Leith had been too intent on kicking us to order his guard to search us for arms—and now we had nothing but our bare hands with which to do combat with a pair of dancers. But we thought we could do a lot with bare hands when we glanced at the spot where the stone centipede had crashed back to its bed, A vision of that devilish carving standing above one in the moonlight was enough to stimulate a person to herculean tasks when he understood that failure would bring him again under its ghastly shadow. ”

“ Holman's breath came hot upon my cheek. There was no necessity for speech. I knew that he intended to seize the first opportunity to attack, and that opportunity was at hand. Behind the bobbing lamp that was approaching us by an irregular trail, as if Soma was winding in and out amidst stone supports similar to the one that sheltered us, was the brute who held us in his grip, and after the events we had witnessed it seemed impossible to reconcile his actions with anything that smacked of decency or honesty. ”

“ Kaipi was joyful because the murdered Toni had been revenged, and Maru was in the seventh heaven of delight because Barbara had informed him that he could go to San Francisco with the party as a reward for his devotion. As for Holman and myself, we forgot the loneliness of the place in our joy. The same trees peered at us, the same cablelike vines gripped our legs, and the same weird rock masses blocked our paths, but love was in our hearts, and morbid thoughts were chased away. ”

“ An occasional bat fluttered past us, but outside the flapping of the wings not a sound disturbed the stillness of the place. The silence of the outside was intensified a hundredfold. In the open, one heard the crooning of the trees as the soft winds from the Pacific played with their heavy foliage, but in the natural passage through which we crawled in search of Leith the air felt as if it had not been disturbed for centuries. It was heavy and thick, possessing a faint odour that seemed to rise from the dust beneath our feet. ”

“ You are a scoundrel! Where are my daughters?"
Holman, creeping a few inches in front, had drawn his revolver. The blood pounded madly; through my brain. We were within a few yards of Leith, and even as we moved snakily forward, the heavy bass voice of the scoundrel came to our ears.
"You stupid old fool!" he growled. "You can demand all day and all night if it does you any good. Do you know who I am?"
"I know you are a ruffian!" snapped the Professor. "I know you are a rogue who has no respect for his word and honour. I know you are a coward who insults women!" ”

“ Kaipi climbed a tall tree in the vain hope of catching sight of Leith's party as it crossed the small cleared spaces in the middle of the impenetrable growth, but nothing except the green plain of bushy tops and parasitical creepers was visible. As we waited beneath the tree the "ticking" of a wood bug sounded like hammer blows in the tremendous quietude, while the bursting of a pod reminded one of the beginning of a Fourth of July celebration. We had lost all trace of Leith, and now, immediately in front, rose the cliffs, and we saw a menace on their dark, forbidding front. ”

“ Leith walked with the Professor, who appeared to be in a state of joy bordering upon hysteria, while Holman and I in the rear tried to assist the two girls over the roughest sections of the road. I thought as we scrambled through impenetrable scrub and crawled over rocky piles that it was the strangest expedition that had ever set forth. If Leith was the wicked devil that we suspected him to be, four persons were risking their lives to gratify the whim of a half-crazy scientist who was dying for notoriety. ”

“ The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the wind like the whips of invisible devils.
"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.
"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as The Waif took a header. "We've weathered the worst of it and we're still sound. ”

“ If Leith had placed him there to keep watch till he had reached a safe position, the watcher evidently considered that the time was up. He hopped to another ledge with the agility of a goat, and Holman groaned.
Maru noticed the retreat, and quickened his movements. Dropping cautiously from ledge to ledge he crept upon the other with the swiftness of a leopard creeping upon its prey. One Eye's deafness left him at the mercy of the shadow in his rear. Swiftly taking cover whenever the white man's head moved to the right or the left, the native decreased the distance, and we rose to our knees. ”

“ It was hard to conceive of a more difficult way than the one by which we had come, and as if he had suddenly come to the conclusion that any other path would be preferable, Holman dropped upon his knees and lowered himself upon a ledge that was immediately below.
"Come on, Verslun!" he cried, in a choked voice that was altogether different from his cheery tones. "If there is no path we must roll down. ”

“ I was back upon Levuka wharf, lying under the copra bag where Holman had found me, and for a moment I could not speak as the subconscious mind flung a score of half-forgotten incidents into my conscious area.
"It is the White Waterfall!" I yelled. "It is the White Waterfall that the Maori sang of on the wharf at Levuka! He was warning Toni, and Toni was killed by Soma because he knew! It is the way out! We're saved! We're saved! It is on the road to heaven out of Black Fernando's hell!" ”

“ The unsentimental savage could not imagine that the unstrung lover wanted the ring as a keepsake of the girl who had won his heart on board The Waif.
"Caesar's Ghost! Why doesn't he hurry?" cried Holman. "That madman looks as if he's going to change his camping ground!"
It looked as if the witless one was really going to move, and Maru had still some fifty yards to cover before he would be directly above the other's head. Our nerves were in such a state that we felt inclined to scream out to the patient stalker. ”

“ Every horror that the happenings of the previous forty-eight hours had germinated within my brain sprang into lusty being as my mind trembled upon the abyss of insanity, and Edith Herndon was the person that the legion of horrors threatened.
I came to my proper senses to find that our towing trinity had called a halt. Holman was repeating a question over and over again, and I endeavoured to moisten my dry throat so that I could answer.
"Where are we?" he groaned. "Where are we? Are you dead, Verslun? Open your eyes and take a look around; my peepers are bunged up." ”

“ So that we would be well out of the sphere of the companions of the man who carried the greenstone blade, we worked our way for about one hundred yards through the leafy maze before attempting to search for it, and that search proved a long and tiresome one. It is impossible to describe the network of wanton vegetation through which we struggled during the hot afternoon. Every kind of shrub and tree was woven into an ungodly tangle by the crawling, leaping vines that shut out the sky and made it impossible to see a person standing only a few feet away. ”

“ It was Holman who found a key to the situation. The big clump of maupei, or Pacific chestnut, that we had taken as a landmark when we were running through the moonlit night, grew close to the barrier, and the limbs of several of the trees scraped the sides of the basalt columns as the faint night breeze moved them backward and forward.
"There's a ledge up there," whispered the youngster. "Look! It's about fifty feet from the ground. If we could climb a tree we might be able to reach it from one of the limbs." ”

“ The crude knives that I had seen throughout the islands were not to be compared to the wonderfully polished blade that had been intended to free either Holman or myself from all earthly cares, while the metalwork showed a craftmanship that made one wonder how many centuries had elapsed since the Polynesian artist who had fashioned the weapon had been laid in the Cavern of Skulls. The sinnet work and the parquetry of split bamboo, which comprise the highest handicraft of the present-day islander, could hardly be classed with the exceedingly beautiful work upon the blade. ”

“ Once, goaded into fury by Leith's attempts to hurry the girls when Holman was assisting them over a particularly rough stretch, I turned upon the old scientist who was puffing along with the natives in the lead.
The half-insane ancient heard my outburst to the end, staring at me through the thick lenses of his glasses as if I was some new kind of a bug whose appearance he wished to implant firmly within his mind.
"Science calls for sacrifices," he squeaked. ”

“ In my subconscious mind I have memories of an insane struggle with a jungle that was alive, of a fight with thorny creepers that pursued us. I became convinced that those vines were alive, because the same thorns that we had passed hours before rose up again in our path and waved the scraps of bloody clothing that they had torn from Holman and myself. ”

“ There's an awful likeness to a wolf pack about storm waves. When you see them all foam-lathered stretching out like a pack in full cry, or watch them leaping up as if they were trying to see whether the unfortunate ship had been torn down by one of their band, you begin to credit them with some sort of intelligence.
The Waif was no poppycock yacht, built to dodge about the Solent and run for Cowes if the wind blew a capful. She had been built to hold her own with the hardest slamming seas that ever chased a shattered hull, and it was lucky for us that she was. ”

“ Holman gripped my arm and put a question.
"Gave you a shock, eh?"
"Why, they're skulls!" I breathed hoarsely.
"Yes, hundreds of 'em," he said. "The place is chock full of them. This island must have been the burying ground of all the adjoining groups, and it's the atmosphere of the place that keeps the niggers away from it. Leith has been wise to that. The present generation of islanders know nothing of the things that happened here hundreds of years back, but they've got an inborn horror of the place, and they keep away." ”

“ And time was precious when we thought of the agony which Edith and Barbara Herndon were suffering.
In his temper Holman forgot that the prisoner was deaf, and he shouted a question at him. "What the devil is wrong?" he screamed. "Damn you, will—"
Maru interrupted with a cry of astonishment. The wall at the end of the passage appeared to slide away, and, standing directly in front of us, his big frame outlined against a fire of brushwood that blazed behind him, was Leith!
Holman gave a yell of rage and sprang forward, and Leith turned and sped into the gloom. ”

“ The dangers were hidden by the darkness, and my imagination was too stunned by the happenings of the night to make any endeavour to torture my nerves by picturing them.
But the reappearance of the moon brought an opportunity to my eyes, and I wondered if we could negotiate the goat track which the youngster was scrambling over. I turned my face to the wall and crawled timorously in the rear. Higher and higher we went with bleeding fingers and knees, but at last Holman reached the top, and I dragged myself up beside him.
"Get up!" he cried savagely. "We must kill the devil before morning." ”

“ We caught up to the deserter on the ledge to which Holman and the Fijian had dragged me a short time before, and the youngster abused the frightened native as he endeavoured to turn him back.
"No, no!" shrieked the Fijian. "Me no see dance like that. Me die if I stay."
"Why?" I asked.
"It is 'tivo'—death dance," gasped Kaipi. "Wizard men dance it. Something going happen, damn bad."
"But they can't get you," cried Holman, "Come back and watch them. Soma and Leith will be there directly, and you'll get your revenge." ”

“ Traders in the lonely spots of the Pacific have gone insane through becoming convinced that the mountains and the trees were watching their movements, and the trees and rocks upon the Isle of Tears struck me as possessing a watchfulness that smacked of the supernatural. I thought of the story which the sailor told in the café chantant at Papeete just then, and I was inclined to give it more credence than I had at the moment he narrated it.
But I tried to rally Holman so that he would cheer up Edith Herndon and her sister.
"You're like an old woman," I growled. ”

“ I thought of the others waiting in the darkness, and I turned and slid down the chute up which I had scrambled. The path to liberty was not yet plain, but there was fresh air and sunlight at the top of the chute, and one could see the faces of those they loved. Bumping and bounding over the jagged rocks I went at a terrific speed to the bottom of the slide, and, scrambling through the opening, I shouted the news to the four who waited there.
"It opens into the Vermilion Pit!" I gasped. "I can't see how we can climb out, but there's hope—there's hope!" ”

“ We knew that he hadn't climbed from the Ledge to the top of the crater. The scratching of his shoes against the rock would have come to our ears. He was waiting—waiting to discover from what direction the voice had come that caused him to pause and listen.
The minutes passed like slow-dragging years. The man above wore shoes and the two men who wore shoes, outside our own party, were Leith and the one-eyed man. Somehow we felt that Maru and Kaipi had settled with One Eye, so there was only one person on the Isle of Tears who could possibly be listening. ”