“We must get there!”

“Don’t lose your head about it,” I remarked.  “Keep cool and we’ll win out in the long run.”

It was useless to speak of patience to that boy at the moment.  He clawed desperately at the slippery wall in an endeavour to find a path that would lead us to the opening on the other side by which Leith had made his entry, but the attempt appeared to be madness.  A dozen times the youngster scrambled up rough portions that offered a slight footing, but each time he slipped back bruised and battered.  He would listen to no arguments.  The desire to get to the mouth of the cavern, and kill Leith before the morning, had produced an insanity, and we crawled and climbed along the face of those basalt cliffs in a manner that chilled my spinal marrow.  Holman possessed the courage of a maniac.  His imagination was blinded to the dangers that lay alongside the crumbling shelves of rock, and I scrambled behind him wondering dimly what would happen to Edith and her sister if an unkind fate flung us from the ledge into the darkness from which the soft croon of the chestnut clumps came up like a warning against our foolhardiness.

Holman paused at the end of a wearisome climb, and he drew himself upright.  At that moment the cloud-harried moon dragged herself from beneath the pack, and the young fellow gave a cry of joy.

“We can do it from here, Verslun,” he cried.  “I see a path to the top.  Come along, man!”

“What about Kaipi?” I gasped.  “We’ll never find our way back here.”

“Let him sit there,” he snorted.  “Hurry or the moon will be under the clouds before we cross the cliff.”

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII

TOMBS OF SILENCE

For my own part I found no great liking for the moonlight.  Up to that moment I had followed blindly in the tracks of Holman, nerved somewhat by the thought that the trail he passed over would carry me.  The dangers were hidden by the darkness, and my imagination was too stunned by the happenings of the night to make any endeavour to torture my nerves by picturing them.

But the reappearance of the moon brought an opportunity to my eyes, and I wondered if we could negotiate the goat track which the youngster was scrambling over.  I turned my face to the wall and crawled timorously in the rear.  Higher and higher we went with bleeding fingers and knees, but at last Holman reached the top, and I dragged myself up beside him.

“Get up!” he cried savagely.  “We must kill the devil before morning.”

We got to our feet and started to run toward what we knew to be the direction of the cavern.  The ground sloped gradually, and we reasoned that it would continue to fall away till we reached the mouth of the cavern by which Leith had entered from the far side.  For once we had a clear run.  At that height there was little vegetation, and at a mad gait we sped across a bare stretch where the only obstacles were lumps of rock that were scattered around in great profusion.