asoned quickly. If I left him in the middle of the thorny tangle
that encompassed us, it would be utterly impossible for me to find him
again, and he would probably perish from thirst. If I rushed away I
would be leaving him to certain death, and although our prospects of
leaving the island alive did not look too bright at that moment, I
considered that I would be making his demise a certainty by leaving him
in the maze.

I stopped, gripped him round the waist, and with a great effort managed
to lift him upon my shoulder. Holman's actions did not help me as I
struggled beneath him. He kicked like a madman when he understood what
I intended to do, but I held him in spite of his protests.

"Leave me here!" he screamed. "Go ahead by yourself, Verslun! What's the
use of taking me?"

"You're coming, so you can stop kicking," I muttered. "Take your fingers
out of my eyes."

But Holman's struggles ceased then, and his head fell backward. The pain
of his leg had made the plucky youngster swoon away, and with a prayer
upon my lips I sprang again at the bulwark of vicious creepers.

I have a very vague recollection of the remainder of that trip. 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.

At last, half insane with anxiety for the safety of the girls and our
own struggles, we staggered blindly into the patch of cleared land upon
which the camp had been pitched on the previous evening. It was
impossible to mistake the site. The embers of the big fire were still
smoking and we stared with sweat-blinded eyes at the place where the
girls' tent had been standing when we rushed off with Kaipi to
investigate the light in the hills. But there was no trace of the girls
or the Professor. Leith had got ahead of us, and the big brute had
rushed the crazy scientist and his two daughters toward the hills that
stood up black and defiant above the sea of green vegetation.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XV

A DAY OF SKIRMISHING

We lay for a few moments upon the soft grass, then Holman crawled on
hand and knees to the little spring of cold water and bathed the wound
upon his temple and his injured leg. The water revived him, and aft