I had gripped One Eye’s left arm while Holman was making the examination of the passage, and we had not proceeded more than twenty yards when he intimated that he wished to turn to the right.  We allowed him to do so, and for fully twenty minutes he followed a zigzag course that left us completely nonplussed as to the way we had come.  We could hardly count the number of the turnings.  First to the right, then to the left, then back again toward the mouth of the place, he trotted forward with nothing to guide him, yet when we checked him at certain corners to find out if there was an angle in the path, we found that he was right in every instance.

“He’s counting the number of paces he takes between the turnings,” muttered Holman.  “No man, unless he had the eyes of a cat, could find his way along this passage.  Keep a grip on him or we’ll never see daylight again.”

We guessed that we had walked for over half a mile when the guide stopped abruptly.  In the dark we endeavoured to find out what had pulled him up short, but we tried in vain.  A prick from Kaipi’s knife blade would not make him budge an inch, and we clustered together and racked our brains to find the solution.

“P’raps we’re up against something,” whispered Holman, “Feel if there’s anything in front, Verslun.”

I walked forward a pace and groped in the blackness.  My fingers touched solid rock.  It hemmed us in on all sides.  One Eye had walked us to the end of the passage, and we had come up against a blind wall.

I whispered the news to Holman, and he swore softly.  Maru’s fingers tightened on the collar of the prisoner till his breath came in short gasps.  Kaipi moved around to the side of the prisoner, but I pushed him roughly back.  The Fijian’s desire to use his knife on all occasions was somewhat irritating.

“What’ll we do?” asked Holman.

“Get back,” I answered.  “He’s either fooled us or he’s lost his way.”

Holman gripped One Eye by the neck and shook him roughly.  The youngster’s temper was up, and it looked as if we had wasted the hours we had spent in capturing the idiot alive, and the time lost in following behind him through the canon and the crooked passage.  And time was precious when we thought of the agony which Edith and Barbara Herndon were suffering.

In his temper Holman forgot that the prisoner was deaf, and he shouted a question at him.  “What the devil is wrong?” he screamed.  “Damn you, will—­”

Maru interrupted with a cry of astonishment.  The wall at the end of the passage appeared to slide away, and, standing directly in front of us, his big frame outlined against a fire of brushwood that blazed behind him, was Leith!

Holman gave a yell of rage and sprang forward, and Leith turned and sped into the gloom.  In his astonishment at finding himself confronted by the enemy when the stone door had rolled aside, Holman had forgotten that he had a revolver in his possession, and Leith had passed the brushwood fire before I yelled out to the youngster to shoot.