As he spoke, from somewhere came a series of tiny noises, that, though they were so faint and small, suggested rifles fired at a great distance.  Crack, crack, crack! went the infinitesimal noises.

I groped about, and finding the receiver of the field telephone, set it to my ear.  In an instant all grew plain to me.  Guns were being fired near the other end of the wire, and the transmitter was sending us the sound of them.  Very faintly but with distinctness I could hear Higgs’s high voice saying, “Look out, Sergeant, there’s another rush coming!” and Quick answering, “Shoot low, Professor; for the Lord’s sake shoot low.  You are empty, sir.  Load up, load up!  Here’s a clip of cartridges.  Don’t fire too fast.  Ah! that devil got me, but I’ve got him; he’ll never throw another spear.”

“They are being attacked!” I exclaimed.  “Quick is wounded.  Now Maqueda is talking to you.  She says, ’Oliver, come!  Joshua’s men assail me.  Oliver, come!’”

Then followed a great sound of shouting answered by more shots, and just as Orme snatched the receiver from my hand the wire went dead.  In vain he called down it in an agonized voice.  As well might he have addressed the planet Saturn.

“The wire’s cut,” he exclaimed, dashing down the receiver and seizing the lantern which Japhet had just succeeded in re-lighting; “come on, there’s murder being done,” and he sprang to the doorway, only to stagger back again from the great stone with which it was blocked.

“Good God!” he screamed, “we’re shut in.  How can we get out?  How can we get out?” and he began to run round and round the room, and even to spring at the walls like a frightened cat.  Thrice he sprang, striving to climb to the coping, for the place had no roof, each time falling back, since it was too high for him to grasp.  I caught him round the middle, and held him by main force, although he struck at me.

“Be quiet,” I said; “do you want to kill yourself?  You will be no good dead or maimed.  Let me think.”

Meanwhile Japhet was acting on his own account, for he, too, had heard the tiny, ominous sounds given out by the telephone and guessed their purport.  First he ran to the massive transom that blocked the doorway and pushed.  It was useless; not even an elephant could have stirred it.  Then he stepped back, examining it carefully.

“I think it can be climbed, Physician,” he said.  “Help me now,” and he motioned to me to take one end of the heavy table on which the batteries stood.  We dragged it to the doorway, and, seeing his purpose, Oliver jumped on to it with him.  Then at Japhet’s direction, while I supported the table to prevent its oversetting, Orme rested his forehead against the stone, making what schoolboy’s call “a back,” up which the mountaineer climbed actively until he stood upon his shoulders, and by stretching himself was able to grasp the end of the fallen transom.  Next, while I held up the lamp to give him light, he gripped the roughnesses of the hewn stone with his toes, and in a few moments was upon the coping of the wall, twenty feet or more above the floor line.