If you feel that
you have run the enemy to earth, stop and fire as a signal."

"Ay, ay, sir," they cried together. "But what's the enemy like, sir?"

"Find him and see," said Syd, sharply. "Now off."

The men separated at once, and the toilsome job began, with the sun
beating down with tropical power, but the brisk wind reducing the ardour
to bearing point.

"Nice job this," thought the boy, as leaving the cleft centre of the
rock a little to his left, he began his arduous clamber. "Why, it's as
bad as being an ant in a loaf-sugar basin. Given myself the hardest
job."

But he persevered, searching diligently every rift, and amongst great
blocks of stone over which he afterwards clambered, seeking the highest
point so as to get a sight of one or the other of his two men, who were
as active as he; but they all reached the edge of the rock at the point
furthest from where they had landed without making any discovery.

"Well," cried Syd, wiping the great drops of perspiration from his brow,
"found anything?"

"Lots of holes, sir," said one.

"Cracks big enough to hold a ship's crew, sir," said the other.

"Back again, then," cried Syd. "There's either a monkey or a man in
hiding somewhere about the place, and we've got to find him."

"Ought to have said _it_" thought Syd, as he started back, shouting to
the men to take lines a little nearer to him, while he too altered his
course, making straight now for the cleft rock which rose like the
citadel of the place.

As he climbed along he found rift after rift, some so close that he
could not get his hand down, others so wide and deep that he hesitated
at the task of leaping over them, wondering what would be the result if
he slipped and fell. The fact grew upon him as he went on, that small
as the place looked from the ship's deck, there was plenty of room for
an enemy or fifty enemies to hide; but he became more certain that the
natural pier was the only place where an enemy could land; the two men
having confirmed the opinion formed when Lieutenant Dallas rowed round.

"Strikes me," said Syd to himself, as he kept on peering down into chasm
after chasm, "that if we want to catch our friend we shall have to set a
trap for him."

He climbed on and came to another eerie-looking place, more forbidding
than any he had yet seen. It was only a jagged crack of a couple of
feet across, but it sloped outward directly, so that a vast hollow was
formed, and when