id, but
he saw that the effect on his companions was most extraordinary.

They sprang to their feet, and, braving all the terrors of Saya
Chone, whose name had appeared so dreadful to them, they darted for
the tunnel, brushed swiftly by Jack, and were gone. The English lad
watched them eagerly. He saw them fly down the outer cave, leap wildly
into the ravine, and disappear. A minute later he saw them cross his
field of view as they climbed the opposite bank. They were going like
the wind, and there seemed not the slightest attempt made to stop
them, nor was the faintest sound of pursuit to be heard.

"All the same," murmured Jack to himself, "I don't think I shall
follow you, my nimble friends. It's pretty certain you've been allowed
to go in peace in the hopes of drawing me out as well. I hardly fancy
I should be permitted to pass so quietly. Well, I'm thankful the poor
beggars have got away in safety. But what scared them so frightfully?
They went like rabbits bolting from a hole when the ferrets have been
put in. There seems nothing very terrifying about this heap of
rubbish."

But was there not? was there not? Ten seconds later Jack was ready to
take his words back, and acknowledge that heap of rubbish to be a very
terrible and awful weapon in the hands of his enemies. Something
flashed above him, and he glanced up to see a flaming torch hurled
through the rift. It did not, however, fall into the heap of light
inflammable materials awaiting it. It struck against a projecting
point of rock, was turned aside, and fell almost at Jack's feet. He
stamped the flame out swiftly with his boot.

But his breath came fast and short, and his brave face paled as he saw
the frightful cunning of this master-trick. He had luckily quenched
one torch, but he could not be sure of quenching the next and the
next. One of them had but to fall into the mass of reeds, canes, dry
grass, and withered brushwood, to cause a swift, fierce flame to run
through the whole mass.

This, then, it was which the Panthays had learned from their fellow
who looked down from the rift. The Englishman was to be roasted out,
and they were warned of the fearful fate about to befall him. Before
this vision of horrors they had fled, the greater fear conquering the
less.

Jack stood looking up at the rift with blanched face, and teeth set
like a steel-trap. His heart gave another jerk within him. A second
torch flashed through the rift. But this time the