being attacked!" I exclaimed. "Quick is wounded. Now Maqueda
is talking to you. She says, 'Oliver, come! Joshua's men assail me.
Oliver, come!'"

Then followed a great sound of shouting answered by more shots, and just
as Orme snatched the receiver from my hand the wire went dead. In vain
he called down it in an agonized voice. As well might he have addressed
the planet Saturn.

"The wire's cut," he exclaimed, dashing down the receiver and seizing
the lantern which Japhet had just succeeded in re-lighting; "come
on, there's murder being done," and he sprang to the doorway, only to
stagger back again from the great stone with which it was blocked.

"Good God!" he screamed, "we're shut in. How can we get out? How can
we get out?" and he began to run round and round the room, and even to
spring at the walls like a frightened cat. Thrice he sprang, striving to
climb to the coping, for the place had no roof, each time falling back,
since it was too high for him to grasp. I caught him round the middle,
and held him by main force, although he struck at me.

"Be quiet," I said; "do you want to kill yourself? You will be no good
dead or maimed. Let me think."

Meanwhile Japhet was acting on his own account, for he, too, had heard
the tiny, ominous sounds given out by the telephone and guessed their
purport. First he ran to the massive transom that blocked the doorway
and pushed. It was useless; not even an elephant could have stirred it.
Then he stepped back, examining it carefully.

"I think it can be climbed, Physician," he said. "Help me now," and he
motioned to me to take one end of the heavy table on which the batteries
stood. We dragged it to the doorway, and, seeing his purpose, Oliver
jumped on to it with him. Then at Japhet's direction, while I supported
the table to prevent its oversetting, Orme rested his forehead
against the stone, making what schoolboy's call "a back," up which the
mountaineer climbed actively until he stood upon his shoulders, and
by stretching himself was able to grasp the end of the fallen transom.
Next, while I held up the lamp to give him light, he gripped the
roughnesses of the hewn stone with his toes, and in a few moments was
upon the coping of the wall, twenty feet or more above the floor line.

The rest was comparatively easy, for taking off his linen robe, Japhet
knotted it once or twice, and let it down to us. By the help of this
improvised rope, with Orme supporting me beneath, I