ituation required.
Pablo, indeed, was so lost in wonder at finding the broken idol, and the
dead body of the Priest Captain, and a door open in the solid wall, that
what little remained of his wits disappeared entirely; so that we had
almost to carry him--while El Sabio most intelligently followed
him--into the treasure-chamber, and there we left the two together while
we returned for Rayburn. And as we lifted the stretcher our hearts
bounded, for at that instant there was a tremendous crash at the
grating; whereby we knew that those without had brought to bear against
it some sort of a battering-ram that they might beat it in.

"It's a close call," Young said between his teeth; and added, as we
rested the stretcher inside the passage while we closed behind us the
sliding door: "If you're off your base, Professor, an' they do know th'
trick o' this thing, it may be all day with us yet--but it's a comfort
t' know that even if they do finish us we'll everlastin'ly salt 'em
first with our guns."

We heard another great crash behind us, but faintly now that the sliding
door was closed, as we went on ward into the treasure-chamber; and here
we heard the like sound again, more clearly, through the slits cut in
the wall. As gently as our haste, and the awkwardness of that narrow
way would permit, we lifted Rayburn from the stretcher, and so carried
him down the short flight of stairs beneath the upraised statue to the
little chamber that there was hollowed in the rock. Here we laid him
upon the stretcher again; and then, without any ceremony whatever, we
bundled Pablo and El Sabio down the hole. It was a smaller aperture,
even, than that through which we had come forth from the Cave of the
Dead, and how El Sabio was able to condense himself sufficiently to get
through it will remain a puzzle to me to my dying day.

All this while we could hear plainly, through the slits in the wall, the
crashing blows which every minute or so were delivered against the
grating, together with a shrill roar of shouts and yells; and we knew
that before this vigorous assault the grating must give way within a
very brief period, and so let in the whole yelping pack. If I were right
in my belief that the Priest Captain alone know of the secret outlet to
the oratory, we still would be safe enough, and could make some
preliminary examination of the cave before we closed the way behind us
irrevocably by letting the statue fall back into its place; bu