CHAPTER XXV – SAM, A TRUE FRIEND
Sam saw Jarrold get up and leave his table suddenly. The boy was on his feet in a minute and on his trail. Jarrold walked off quickly as if in a hurry. But Sam trailed him through the lobby. In front of the hotel stood an automobile, in the tonneau of which sat Jarrold’s pretty niece.
Sam got behind a pillar of the Spanish portico and strained his ears to hear what the two were saying, as Jarrold paused with his foot on the running board. A chauffeur, who had apparently driven his car from some garage, stood beside it waiting respectfully.
The listening boy could not hear much. But he saw the girl clasp her hands as if pleading with her uncle not to do some contemplated act, and he heard Jarrold grate out harshly:
“Shut up, I tell you. What do you know about it?”
Then Jarrold turned to the chauffeur.
“You can go, my man. I’ll drive myself,” he said, and then he jumped in and drove off at a fast pace, while Sam stood helplessly on the portico. Jarrold had escaped his surveillance and it appeared, from the scrap of conversation that he had overheard, that mischief was in the wind.
Even had he had the money to hire another car, it would have been too late. Sam felt vaguely that he had been outgeneraled. He went back to the hotel to wait for his chum. But lunch time came, and no Jack.
Sam began to get worried. Still, Jack might have been detained on the ship. Partly to keep from worrying and partly to occupy his time, Sam set out to walk to the ship.
He found old Schultz, the quartermaster, superintending the getting out of the cargo.
“Seen Ready about, Schultz?” he asked, going up to the old man.
“Sure I seen idt him,” was the reply.
“Where is he?”
“How shouldt I know? I vos busy votching dese plack peggars vurk. Aber, if I don’d vatch, dey all go py scheebs alretty. Yah.”
“But he came to the ship some time ago.”
“Ach! Don’d I know idt dot? Budt he leftd again, oh, an hour ago. Some fool call him up py delephones undt tell him he is vanted. Dot is pig lie. Nobotty vants him on der ship, so he go. Dot is all I know.”
Sam looked dismayed. If Jack had left the ship to return to the hotel an hour before, then he should have reached there ages ago. He was not likely to linger, either, considering how anxious he was to observe Jarrold’s movements. What could be the explanation? Was he hurt or injured, or was some plot in execution against him?
But Jack had no enemies in the world so far as Sam knew, and certainly he had none in Kingston, where he was an utter stranger. Was it possible that Jarrold – but no, that sinister personage had been quietly seated at a table in the hotel garden till the time he drove off with his niece.
Feeling puzzled and depressed, Sam went ashore once more and called up the hospitals, in the belief that his chum might have been injured. But nobody even remotely resembling Jack had been seen there. Nor did his search in other quarters result any more favorably. At length Sam went back to the hotel in the vain hope that Jack might have been delayed in some way, and that they had passed each other.
But no trace of his chum did he find there, either. The lad made a miserable pretext of eating lunch and then set out on his search again. By this time he was absolutely certain that harm of some sort had come to Jack.
As he was leaving the hotel gates, he almost collided with a figure just coming in. He greeted the newcomer with a cry of joy. In the mood he was in, Sam longed for someone in whom to confide his fears about Jack.
“Why, what is the matter?” demanded the other as Sam exclaimed,
“I am glad I met you. I’m in great trouble. It’s about Jack. He left here to go to the ship. He was summoned there by telephone. But on his arrival at the dock, he found that the message was either a mistake or a wilful hoax.”
“So?” said the aviator softly. “Go on, my young friend.”
“That much I found out by inquiry at the ship after I tired of waiting for him to return.”
“Yes, and then?”
Sam noticed something most peculiar about the aviator’s manner, but he was in no mood just then to criticize it.
“Well, that’s about all. He just hasn’t shown up and I can’t find any trace of him.”
“That is more than strange,” said De Garros in a serious voice, “when I tell you that I myself saw him not more than two hours ago.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“Where.”
De Garros looked embarrassed. He laid a kindly hand on the shoulder of the anxious lad beside him.
“I hated to believe my own eyes and I hate to tell you what I saw,” he said seriously, “but I saw your chum and my friend being helped out of a low dram shop in the negro quarter into a cab. He was – I hate to say it, but I must – tipsy.”
Sam started back from the Frenchman with flaming cheeks and angry eyes.
“It’s a lie, I don’t care who says it! – It’s a lie!” he burst out angrily.
CHAPTER XXVI – A WICKED PLAN
How Cummings came to be acting as the rascally Jarrold’s agent is easily explained. After he was discharged from the Tropic Queen at Jack’s behest, he had drifted about seeking any sort of a job. In this way he discovered that a yacht called the Endymion was being fitted out for a mysterious voyage.
There were several things about the Endymion and her crew that had prevented other wireless operators from accepting a berth on her.
No information was forthcoming as to the nature of her cruise or its destination or even who the owner was.
But Cummings was not particular. He met Jarrold on board and after an interview with the master rogue, in which he bound himself to ask no questions but obey orders, he found himself signed on as the yacht’s wireless man.
The Endymion, as we know, was a much faster boat than the Tropic Queen, and had arrived in Kingston, after her mysterious maneuvering on the voyage south, a day ahead of the liner, slipping in almost unnoticed and docking at a remote pier. As soon as the Tropic Queen docked, Jarrold, to whom alone these arrangements were known, hastened to the Endymion. He found Cummings and assigned to him the job of getting Jack Ready into his power. Cummings would have obeyed Jarrold anyhow, but the work given him held an added relish, for it afforded him an opportunity to take revenge on the lad whom he hated with a malicious envy.
As the auto sped along the road, passing few people and those, country negroes driving donkeys laden with produce for the Kingston market, Cummings related with great glee to Jarrold the manner in which he had tricked Jack into taking the drugged drink.
“I’ll take good care of you for putting the job through as you did,” Jarrold assured the treacherous youth. “With that young meddler out of the way, I’ll accomplish what I set out to do before the Tropic Queen reaches Panama.”
“Do you still intend to transfer to the Endymion as soon as you have the papers in your possession?” asked Cummings.
“Yes. I shall signal you by the red flash.”
“By the way, what happened to your apparatus the last time we exchanged signals?” asked Cummings, recalling the night that Jack played his memorable trick and cut off the current by which Jarrold was working his flash lamp.
“I don’t know, but I suspect that young jackanapes back there of having something to do with it,” was the reply.
“Well, you won’t be bothered with him now,” said Cummings.
“No; by the time he gets out of the Lion’s Mouth the Tropic Queen will be far out at sea,” chuckled Jarrold.
“How did you ever come to locate the Lion’s Mouth, as you call it?” asked Cummings with some curiosity.
“Many years ago, when I was in Jamaica for – well, never mind what purpose – an old voodoo negro showed me the place. It forms part of the ruins of an old Spanish castle, and there is a legend that the old Don who once owned it kept lions in it for his amusement. Any one he didn’t like, he’d let the lions make a meal of. Nice old gentleman, wasn’t he?”
Cummings joined in Jarrold’s laugh at his own grim humor.
The road began to grow rougher and Jarrold had all he could do to keep the machine in the track. He had no more opportunity to talk. Rocky walls shot up on one side of the thoroughfare, and on the other a steep precipice tumbled sheer down to the sea, which broke in roaring masses of spray at its foot.
It was a scene of gloomy magnificence in which the modern car with its red trimmings and snorting engine seemed strangely out of place. At length they came to a spot where a ravine ran back from the sea, splitting the towering rock masses and spanned by a narrow bridge.
Jarrold turned the car aside and ran it some distance back into a track that wound along one side of the deep cleft, at the bottom of which the sea boiled and roared.
Cummings peered over somewhat fearfully into the dark depths.
“The sea pours into that ravine, and then at high water empties into a hole in the earth that penetrates nobody knows how deeply into the bowels of the island,” said Jarrold.
“Has nobody ever explored it?” asked Cummings, unconsciously sinking his voice.
“Yes, some explorers fitted up a boat once and announced that they were going to enter the ravine, and thence penetrate into the unexplored cavern where the waters disappear,” was the reply.
“And what did they find?” asked Cummings.
“Well, they never came back to tell,” rejoined Jarrold, with grim jocularity.
He brought the car to a sudden stop. A sheer wall of rock shot up before them. It was the end of the giant cleft in the earth. There were steps cut in the forbidding acclivity and on a platform far above were traces of ruined buildings.
“That’s what is left of the old Don’s castle, up there yonder,” said Jarrold, pointing.
“And the Lion’s Mouth is up there?” asked Cummings.
Jarrold nodded.
“That’s the place,” he said.
CHAPTER XXVII – IN THE LION’S MOUTH
Jack came to himself lying on a rocky couch. For a few moments his brain refused to work. He did not comprehend where he was or what had happened. He felt stiff and sore and his head ached intolerably.
Then memory came back with a rush. He recalled the darkened hut where he had drunk the supposedly innocent cola and then, but very vaguely, the sensation of being placed in a rig and experiencing a desire to call for help without being able to raise his voice.
But where was he now?
He looked about him. He lay at the bottom of a steep walled pit, apparently hewn by man or nature out of the solid rock. The walls shot up sheer and smooth to a height of at least thirty feet. The bottom of this pit was about forty or fifty feet in circumference.
Beside him was a big canteen of water and some food. He noticed something around his shoulders, something that passed under his armpits. It was a rope about forty feet long. So, then, he had been lowered into this pit by somebody. But by whom?
His mind reverted to Cummings. Jack was tolerably certain now that he had been drugged by his crafty enemy, but he could not bring himself to believe that Cummings’ mind had plotted the bold stroke by which he had been marooned in this pit. Some master wit had contrived that.
Jack’s head swam as he began to sense the full horror of his situation. He did not even know how long he had been there. He looked at his watch. The hands pointed to three o’clock. He had wound the watch in the morning, so it was clear that it was the same day as the one on which he had entered Mother Jenny’s place with Cummings.
He rose dizzily to his feet and, steadying himself with one hand against the rock walls, looked about him with greater minuteness. Far above was the blue dome of the sky and at the top of those walls lay freedom. But he might as well have been in China for all the good it did him. He was cut off from his friends as effectually as if on the other side of the globe.
Naturally, too, he had not the slightest idea on what part of the island the pit was located. There was nothing to indicate where it was. Jack was not a lad who easily lost heart, but his present position was almost unbearable.
Unless rescuers came to his aid, and it seemed hardly likely that anyone could penetrate to such a place without a guide, he was doomed to a miserable death. He flung himself down on the rocky floor of the pit in an agony of despair. His despondency lasted for some minutes, and then, resolutely pulling himself together, Jack sprang to his feet.
“I won’t give up! I won’t!” he said, gritting his teeth. “There must be some way out of this.”
He took a pull at the canteen and ate some of the bread and meat. Then he began a systematic tour of exploration of his place of captivity. It was so nearly perfectly circular in form that he was sure that human hands had fashioned it.
In places in the walls were fastened iron rings that had mouldered away with the ages till they were as thin as wire. In ancient days, though Jack did not know it, the cruel old Don’s victims were tied to these, to be devoured by the lions from which the pit took its name.
In one place a creeper hung temptingly down. But its extremity dangled fully four feet above the boy’s head, and although Jack could have climbed on it to freedom had he been able to gain it, he knew that such a feat was out of the question.
All at once, though, he saw something that sent the blood of hope singing through his veins.
On the side of the pit opposite to that on which he found himself on his first awakening from his coma, was a big fissure in the wall. A ragged rent, it ran from top to bottom of the rock wall like a scar on a duelist’s face.
It was apparently the work of an earthquake; perhaps the one that had devastated Kingston had caused it. At any rate, there it was, and to Jack, in his desperate condition, it offered a chance of escape.
True, for all he knew, he might, by entering it, be embarking upon worse perils than the ones he now faced, but at any rate it was an avenue to possible liberty and he determined to take full advantage of it.
In his pocket Jack had plenty of matches and the small electric torch that he used in making examinations of the more intricate parts of the wireless apparatus. He stuffed all the bread and meat he could inside his coat, slung the canteen over his shoulder and was ready to start on an adventure that would end he knew not how, but which he had sternly made up his mind to attempt.
As a last thought he coiled up the rope by which he had been lowered into the pit and laid it over his arm. Then he plunged into the deep fissure. For some distance it was open to the sky above, but after some time it closed in and became a tunnel.
At this point, Jack hesitated. The darkness beyond appalled even his stout heart. He knew not what lay within, what perils might face him. For several moments he stood there hesitant; but finally he took heart of grace and, gripping his electric torch, plunged into the black mouth of the tunnel.
CHAPTER XXVIII – A CLIMB FOR LIFE
The passage, for such it was, through which Jack was now advancing, was swept by a wind of such violence that at times it almost lifted the boy from his feet.
But this Jack regarded as a good omen. He knew that there must be some opening in this bore of nature’s making to cause the great draught. He was glad he had his electric torch. No other light could have remained burning in the fierce gale.
The walls were of black rock, and the electric torch gleaming on them was flashed back in spangled radiance from some sort of ore it contained. In places, the tunnel contracted till it was only possible for the boy to progress by bending double. Again it broadened out till he could only touch the roof with his finger tips.
Suddenly he heard ahead of him a roaring sound like a water fall. Pressing on with a beating heart, lest he should find his further progress barred, Jack found himself facing a fair sized chamber, from the roof of which a cascade was falling. The boy guessed that he must be beneath the bed of some river and that the water was pouring into the cavern from a fissure in the rocky roof.
It was a beautiful sight, but he had no time to stop and admire it. He must push on. He left the cavern and the singing waterfall behind him, and once more battled with the mighty wind that swept through the bore.
The walls began to grow damp now and it was almost as cold as if a heavy frost had fallen. Jack shuddered and drew his coat close around him. He tried to calculate how far he had come, but the bore had made so many twistings and windings that he found it impossible to estimate.
His limbs felt tired and his eyes ached, but he kept on stubbornly.
“I’ve started this thing and I’m going to see it through,” he said doggedly to himself.
And now the passage began to grow narrower. Jack felt the walls closing in on him as if with intent to crush out his life. The passage began to slope steeply and it was hard to keep a footing on the wet floor.
All at once the boy stumbled and slipped. He almost fell headlong, but recovered himself with an effort. In front of him he could hear a mighty roaring sound. The wind, too, was stronger and seemed damper than it had further back. It smelled as if impregnated with salt.
Jack gave another stumble on the uneven floor. This time he did not recover himself, but pitched headlong. And then —
He was in the water. It filled his ears, drowning all sounds. He rose to the surface battling desperately, all senses dormant but the frantic desire to live.
He dashed the water from his eyes. He spat it from his mouth. It was salt and must come from the sea. Wave after wave swept toward him and under each of them he dived.
He soon realized that his fight for life was well-nigh hopeless, but he struggled as men will when death stares them in the face, for life is never sweeter than when it seems to be slipping from our grasp.
Weaker and weaker he felt himself growing. A sort of lethargy crept over him. He didn’t care much longer. His limbs were numbed and chilled. The waves swept down on him, each gleefully following its predecessor, as if they were determined to end Jack’s life in this cavern of the seas.
At last he felt himself uplifted on the crest of a gigantic comber and carried helplessly into the maw of that black gullet.
“It’s the end,” he thought.
But still the instinct of life was strong in his battered body. His outflung hand caught a projecting scrap of rock in a drowning grip and clung there, despite the efforts of the wave to tear him loose. It was more blind instinct than human reason that sustained him as the wave swept on into the dark cavern, thundering against its sides like a train passing through a tunnel.
He found himself hanging to the side of a jagged crack that slanted across the rock high up on the side of the cavern. Into it he managed to jam himself, and then he hung there, too exhausted to move hand or foot, waiting for the next wave to tear him from his precarious hold.
How long he hung there he never knew. Wave after wave came racing by, reaching up watery fingers to tear him from his haven. But he had jammed himself too securely into the providential rift in the rock to be easily dislodged.
Hope began to dawn in his mind once more, despite his position. He mentally cast up what had occurred since that disastrous tumble in the passage. It was plain enough that the bore in the rock opened on this cavern where the salt seas swept and raved. The cave, then, must be connected with the sea. Jack’s reasoning was right. By an extraordinary chance, he was in the cave which Jarrold had told Cummings existed far under the ruins of the old Don’s castle.
The boy had lost his rope and his electric torch and he was soaked through and through. But the canteen of water still hung round his neck. Safe for the time being, he began to cast about for some means of extricating himself from his position, but his heart sank as he realized the full hopelessness of his predicament.
CHAPTER XXIX – FREEDOM ONCE MORE
The necessity for action became imperative. If he stayed cramped and wet in that position much longer, there was grave danger that he would lose the power of locomotion altogether. He could not tell how far up the crack ascended, and, of course, since he had lost his torch he had no means of lighting up the gloom, for his matches, like the bread and meat with which he had stuffed his pockets, were soaked through.
He began to climb, moving painfully forward perhaps an inch at a time. For about fifteen feet he crawled, clinging with fingers and toes. It was heart-breaking work and anyone with a less stout heart than Jack Ready would have given it up and lain down to die where they were.
But Jack was made of sterner stuff. He wormed his way forward, and found suddenly that the crack widened. Then he struck his head violently against the cavern roof.
The crack continued to widen, though, till it was possible for him to crawl into it. But the jagged edges of rock cut and tore his hands and face unmercifully.
Once within the crack, he lay still, panting. It hardly seemed worth while to go further, after all. Would it not be better to die there in the darkness without further effort? There was not the remotest probability that he was nearing a way out of the cavern, and to follow the crack further was labor lost.
Thus he meditated as he stretched himself out to rest. But when he had recovered his breath, love of life reasserted itself.
He would keep on. At any rate, one thing was certain: he could never get back now. Death lay behind him in all its grimness. Ahead, at least, there was the unknown with a fighting chance – one chance in a thousand – in his favor.
Desperately, then, he struggled on, writhing between the narrow walls. He felt as if the whole weight of a mountain was upon him, crushing his ribs, driving the breath out of his body. The darkness was so dense that it could be felt enveloping him like a velvety pall of blackness.
Again and again he thought himself stuck fast, doomed to an eternal grave in the secret bowels of the earth. But every time he managed to wiggle through the tight place and gain another that was not quite so constricted.
But it was heart-breaking work at best. Then all at once the crack widened very noticeably. Cautiously he drew himself to his feet. He judged that he was standing on a shoulder or ledge of rock, but of course, in the inky darkness, he had no means of knowing.
It was at least good to be able to stand up and feel no longer the crushing of the rock walls, like those of a living tomb.
After a little he began to move along, taking care, however, to keep close to the wall, for he did not know how wide the ledge, as he judged it, might be. For perhaps a hundred yards he progressed thus. Always before he took a step he reached out with one foot before him, fearing to encounter vacancy.
Suddenly he found he was on the edge of a void, and shrank back, clinging to the wall with the desperation of fear. It was some seconds before he dared to move again. He could feel the sweat rolling off him, the cold, pricking sweat of fright.
By a supreme effort he mastered himself. He found a loose bit of rock at his feet. Cautiously he cast it into the darkness in front of him. There was a long silence, and then, as if from miles away, came a tiny tinkle.
Jack shuddered.
He had narrowly escaped pitching head first into a bottomless abyss. He carefully retraced his way down the ledge. Suddenly his feeling fingers discovered another crack. This one ran vertically upward like a chimney, almost, at least so far as he could determine by the sense of touch.
A wild hope surged over him. This crack perhaps ran up to the surface of the earth! Recalling an old school-boy trick, he “spreadeagled” himself into the crack. He reached out his hands to either side of the “chimney” and lifted himself a little.
Then he wedged his toes in either side. Thus he painstakingly mounted, praying within himself that the walls of this natural shaft might not widen and make further progress impossible.
It was terribly slow work, though. Time and again he was on the point of giving up, but always the tough spirit of his indomitable old sea-faring ancestors kept him at his task.
Foot by foot he toiled upward, till he estimated he had climbed some thirty feet. And then suddenly: Light! The blessed light of day! High above it was, but unmistakably the light of the outside world was streaming into this hideous subterranean chamber. It gleamed down into the shaft he was painfully ascending, shining like a blessed beacon of hope. It appeared to filter through some sort of net-work of greenery.
Wild with hope, he climbed on till at last he burst his way through a canopy of creepers and vines that obscured the mouth of the natural shaft. He clambered out beneath the blessed sky. As he fell exhausted, prone on the rocks, he heard a cry.
It was his own name!
But for the life of him he could not answer. He could only lie there without thought or motion.