pents with a regularity that was
stupefying. In an unbroken line they would move forward, flatten
themselves upon the floor, then, with a unanimity that was remarkable,
they would wriggle backward, to repeat the same movement over again.

Holman pulled me away at last, and we retired to a point that made it
possible for us to converse in low whispers without being heard.

"What will we do?" he gasped. "I can't stay there any longer! I want to
get inside to the devil! I don't want to shoot him; I want to throttle
him with my two hands!"

"But the entrance to the cavern is from somewhere on the other side of
the hill," I remonstrated, as the young fellow raved about our
helplessness.

"We must get there!"

"Don't lose your head about it," I remarked. "Keep cool and we'll win
out in the long run."

It was useless to speak of patience to that boy at the moment. He clawed
desperately at the slippery wall in an endeavour to find a path that
would lead us to the opening on the other side by which Leith had made
his entry, but the attempt appeared to be madness. A dozen times the
youngster scrambled up rough portions that offered a slight footing, but
each time he slipped back bruised and battered. He would listen to no
arguments. The desire to get to the mouth of the cavern, and kill Leith
before the morning, had produced an insanity, and we crawled and climbed
along the face of those basalt cliffs in a manner that chilled my
spinal marrow. Holman possessed the courage of a maniac. His imagination
was blinded to the dangers that lay alongside the crumbling shelves of
rock, and I scrambled behind him wondering dimly what would happen to
Edith and her sister if an unkind fate flung us from the ledge into the
darkness from which the soft croon of the chestnut clumps came up like a
warning against our foolhardiness.

Holman paused at the end of a wearisome climb, and he drew himself
upright. At that moment the cloud-harried moon dragged herself from
beneath the pack, and the young fellow gave a cry of joy.

"We can do it from here, Verslun," he cried. "I see a path to the top.
Come along, man!"

"What about Kaipi?" I gasped. "We'll never find our way back here."

"Let him sit there," he snorted. "Hurry or the moon will be under the
clouds before we cross the cliff."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII

TOMBS OF SILENCE

For my own part I found no great liking for the moonlight. Up to that
moment I had followed bli