Standish!  Yes, and no doubt Standish’s sister too!  The girl whose eyes had made him feel as if he were on holy ground—­the girl whom he had been so irritatingly unable to get out of his mind!

With an angry shake of the head Gavin dismissed Claire from his thoughts.  And his newborn hate concentrated on her brother who had betrayed to death his rescuer.  Obsessed with the fierce craving to stand face to face with the blonde-bearded giant he banished his lethargy of hopelessness and cast about for means of escape. out of this seemingly inescapable snare.

First, the key must be found.  Then the door must be reached and opened.  In the way of both enterprises writhed a half dozen or more deadly snakes.  And to the problem of winning past them alive and getting to his enemy.  Gavin Brice bent his trained faculties.

The box whereon he sat was covered with loose boards nailed down only at one end, a long strip of thin iron or copper binding the one unopened edge.  So much his groping fingers told him.  Moving to one corner of the box top he pushed aside a board and plunged his hand into the interior.  It was as he had hoped.  According to custom when the box had been emptied the jute and shredded paper stuffing of its contents had been thrust back into it for future use.

Feverishly, Gavin began to pull forth great handfuls of paper and of excelsior.  These he piled onto the box top.  Then, exerting all his skilled strength, he tugged at the narrow iron strip which bound, lengthwise, one side of the box.

This task was by no means easy, for the nails were long.  And the iron’s sharp edges cut cruelly into the tugging fingers.  But, inch by inch, he tore it free.  And at the end of three minutes he was strengthening and testing a willowy five-foot strip of metal.  Laying this across his knees and fishing up another double handful of the packing paper and jute he groped in his pockets with bleeding fingertips for a match.

He found but one.  Holding it tenderly he scraped its surface against his nail—­a trick he had picked up in the army.  The sulphur snapped and ignited, the wooden sliver burning freely in that windless air.

Giving it a good start, he touched the point of flame to the piled jute and paper in front of him.  It caught in an instant.  Still holding the lighted match, he repeated this ticklish process time after time, tossing handfuls of the blazing stuff down onto the floor at his side.

In two minutes more he had a gayly-flaming pile of inflammable material burning high there.  Its gleam lightened every inch of the gloomy room.  It brought out into hideous clearness the writhing dark bodies of the crawling moccasins, even to the patches of white at their lips which gave them their sinister name of “cottonmouths.”  Fat and short and horrible to look upon, they were, as they slithered and twisted here and there along the bright-lit floor or coiled and hissed at sight of the flame and of the fast plying hand and arm of the captive just above them.