But Holman’s struggles ceased then, and his head fell backward.  The pain of his leg had made the plucky youngster swoon away, and with a prayer upon my lips I sprang again at the bulwark of vicious creepers.

I have a very vague recollection of the remainder of that trip.  In my subconscious mind I have memories of an insane struggle with a jungle that was alive, of a fight with thorny creepers that pursued us.  I became convinced that those vines were alive, because the same thorns that we had passed hours before rose up again in our path and waved the scraps of bloody clothing that they had torn from Holman and myself.

At last, half insane with anxiety for the safety of the girls and our own struggles, we staggered blindly into the patch of cleared land upon which the camp had been pitched on the previous evening.  It was impossible to mistake the site.  The embers of the big fire were still smoking and we stared with sweat-blinded eyes at the place where the girls’ tent had been standing when we rushed off with Kaipi to investigate the light in the hills.  But there was no trace of the girls or the Professor.  Leith had got ahead of us, and the big brute had rushed the crazy scientist and his two daughters toward the hills that stood up black and defiant above the sea of green vegetation.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XV

A DAY OF SKIRMISHING

We lay for a few moments upon the soft grass, then Holman crawled on hand and knees to the little spring of cold water and bathed the wound upon his temple and his injured leg.  The water revived him, and after a brief rest he got to his feet and stared at the festooned trees that surrounded the spot.

“I’m ready, Verslun,” he muttered.  “Which way did they go?”

I pointed to the marks made in the soft ground by the shoes of the two girls, and Holman limped forward.

“But we can’t follow this fashion,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“We’ll be shot down before we get within half a mile of them.  Leith cannot know that we have escaped from the cavern or he would have left some one here to interview us.”

“Well, we can’t do any high-class tracking in this country,” said the youngster grimly.  “If we stray six feet from the trail we are lost.  We had better trust to fortune and go ahead.”

It was impossible to do anything else.  The route by which the carriers had marched from the camping ground was perfectly clear while we followed their footsteps, but if we diverged ever so slightly the thick veils of verdure hid the path from our eyes.  To follow the party we would have to hold to the trail and take the chances of an ambush which Leith would certainly prepare for us the moment he knew we had escaped from the Cavern of Skulls.  It would be easy for him to set his one-eyed white partner to shoot us down as we staggered along the trail which Soma or one of the carriers had blazed with an axe.