purer and it was easier to breathe.

It was a terrible position, for the blacks, encouraged by their success,
piled on more and more brushwood and the great fronds of fern, which
grew in abundance on the sides of the little ravine, and as the green
boughs and leaves were thrown on they hissed and spluttered and sent
forth volumes of smoke, which choked and blinded us till the fuel began
to blaze, when it roared into the cave and brought with it a quantity of
hot but still breathable air.

"Keep a good heart, my lads," said the doctor. "No, no, Penny! Are you
mad? Lie down! lie down! Don't you know that while the air high up is
suffocating, that low down can be breathed?"

"No, I couldn't tell," said Jack Penny dolefully, as he first knelt down
and then laid his head close to the ground. "I didn't know things were
going to be so bad as this or I shouldn't have come. I don't want to
have my dog burned to death."

Gyp seemed to understand him, for he uttered a low whine and laid his
nose in his master's hand.

"Burned to death!" said the doctor in a tone full of angry excitement.
"Of course not. Nobody is going to be burned to death."

Through the dim choking mist I could see that there was a wild and
anxious look in the doctor's countenance as he kept going near the mouth
of the cave, and then hurrying back blinded and in agony.

We had all been in turn to the narrow rift at the end through which we
had been able to see the sky and the waving leaves of the trees, but now
all was dark with the smoke that rolled out. This had seemed to be a
means of escape, but the difficulty was to ascend the flat chimney-like
place, and when the top was reached we feared that it would only be for
each one who climbed out to make himself a mark for the savages' arrows.

Hence, then, we had not made the slightest attempt to climb it. Now,
however, our position was so desperate that Jimmy's proposal was
listened to with eagerness.

"Place too much big hot," he said. "Chokum-chokum like um wallaby. Go
up."

He caught hold of the doctor's scarf of light network, a contrivance
which did duty for bag, hammock, or rope in turn, and the wearer rapidly
twisted it from about his waist.

"Now, Mas' Jack Penny, tan' here," he cried; and Jack was placed just
beneath the hole.

Jack Penny understood what was required of him, and placing his hands
against the edge of the rift he stood firm, while Jimmy took the end of
the doctor