The White Waterfall

by James Francis Dwyer

the note wasidentical with the spot to which we were fighting our way.

  We were bruised and bleeding when we reached the foot of the blackcliffs whose perpendicular walls towered above us. We were almostcertain that the light had been flashed from a point immediately abovethe spot where we came face to face with the barrier, but the scaling ofthe black barricade was a proposition that seemed incapable of solutionas we rushed along the base.

  "This is the spot," gasped Holman. "This big tree cluster was just tothe right of the place where the light was flashed."

  "That's so," I remarked, "but how are we to get up to the point wherethe signal came from?"

  We raced madly up and down the front of the strange black wall, huntingeagerly for a place that offered the slightest foothold by which wecould climb to the terraces that we could see far above, but the searchwas a futile one. The tremendous mountain of ebony rock appeared to havebeen driven up out of the earth during some volcanic disturbance, and aswe stumbled blindly along we thought it would be easier to scale theoutside wall of a New York skyscraper than the slippery sides of theobstruction in our path.

  It was Holman who found a key to the situation. The big clump of maupei,or Pacific chestnut, that we had taken as a landmark when we wererunning through the moonlit night, grew close to the barrier, and thelimbs of several of the trees scraped the sides of the basalt columns asthe faint night breeze moved them backward and forward.

  "There's a ledge up there," whispered the youngster. "Look! It's aboutfifty feet from the ground. If we could climb a tree we might be able toreach it from one of the limbs."

  He had hardly outlined the proposition before we were swarming up thetrunk, Holman in the lead by right of discovery, and the nimble Kaipi inthe rear. Higher and higher the youngster climbed into the thick greenfoliage. He reached the topmost branches, and selecting one that ledtoward the rocky wall, he straddled it and worked his way slowlyforward.

  Kaipi and I clung to the fork of the limb and waited, and as I watchedHolman the wisdom of our actions was assailed by a cold doubt. We hadleft the two girls entirely unprotected, and if Leith reached the campbefore we returned, and heard from the chattering Professor the story ofthe finding of the scrap of paper, it would be reasonable to supposethat he would consider the moment had arrived for the perpetration ofany deviltry he had planned.

  But Holman's actions interrupted my mental criticism of the wisdom ofour plans. The youngster had reached the extreme end of the limb, and hewas clawing madly at the rock to obtain a footing. He succeeded after afive minutes' struggle, and he sent a breathless whisper back to ourperch.

  "There's a ledge here," he murmured. "I think we can climb up from it.Hurry along, and I'll give you a hand."

  I needed a hand when I reached the end of that leafy seesaw. I was muchheavier than the boy, and the limb could hardly support my weight when Ineared the end. Holman reached out his hand at a moment when I thoughtthat a drop through the air would be my reward for attempting aerialexhibitions, and the next moment I was beside him on a little projectionthat barely gave us a footing.

  "It's easy climbing just above us," whispered Holman. "Wait till we getKaipi."

  The Fijian came along the limb with the agility of a trapeze artist, andwhen he reached the ledge we stared up at the dizzy heights that roseabove our little resting place. Small jutting projections, likegargoyles, stuck out from the wall, and we looked at them hungrily.

  "If we had only brought the rope!" cried the boy. "Say, Verslun, putyour face against the rock and I'll climb on to your shoulders."

  I did so, and the youngster climbed up cautiously. For a long time hestood there, peering around in an effort to discover a path by which wecould go upward and onward, but at last he stepped off, and I looked upto find him clinging to the wall like a huge beetle. A pack of fatclouds that had harried the moon during the earlier part of the eveningnow closed in upon her, and we were in complete darkness. The threshinglimb of the maupei tree that was within a yard or two of the spot whereKaipi and I stood waiting disappeared in the night, and the scratchingof Holman's shoes high above our heads came down to us through theintense silence and proved that he was holding his position withdifficulty.

  A small piece of shale hit me on the shoulder after a long wait, and Iturned my face upward.

  "Verslun!" breathed the strained voice of the youngster. "Are youthere?"

  "Well?" I asked.

  "H'sh!" he murmured. "We are right near the spot, Verslun. If Kaipiclimbs up on your shoulders to this place I think the two of us couldpull you up. Are you willing?"

  "Come on, Kaipi," I whispered, and the Fijian climbed nimbly upon me andmoved up into the void above.

  "Now, Verslun," muttered Holman. "Reach up till we get a grip of yourwrists. Are you ready? Well, try hard, man! Think of those two helplessgirls and dig your toes in!"

  I didn't need any reminder concerning the position of the two sistersas I stood on tiptoe and scratched with my fingers at the crumblingledge upon which Holman and the Fijian crouched. The predicament ofEdith Herndon, and not fears for my own safety, made me scratch madlyfor a foothold as I swung above the shelf I left. Kaipi and Holmantugged till every muscle in my arms shrieked out against the way theywere being handled. But I was going up. I "chinned" the crumbling layerof rock upon which my fingers had a perilous grip, laid my chest acrossthe shelf and wriggled into safety.

  "That's good," whispered Holman. "Don't puff so hard, man! We're tooclose to take any chances."

  I got upon my hands and knees and followed him along the narrow pathway.Over a thousand obstructions we crawled like three rock snakes, tillfinally the boy halted and turned toward me.

  "See the streak of light through that split in the rock?" he whispered."Look in front of you! Well, they're inside."

  The split in the rock to which Holman had pointed was a perpendicularcrevice about four feet in length, but possessing only a width of sixinches. It separated two rock masses that were fully eighteen inchesthick, and as we wriggled noiselessly toward it we saw that it gave us aglimpse of the interior of a huge cavern, the part of which that wasjust inside our point of observation being illuminated by a swingingship's lamp which hung by a rope that dropped from the vaulted dome.

  The lamp swung directly in front of the crevice through which we peeredbreathlessly, and for a few seconds it was the only object that wasvisible. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the light, and we foundthat a pair of brown legs were moving slowly along the floor past ourspyhole. A body, gorgeously decorated in mats of green and crimsonparrot feathers, followed the legs, and then came a head that was hiddenbehind a mask of sennet daubed thickly with coral lime and ochre till itappeared a ghastly nightmare.

  The horror moved upon its stomach, and, viewing it as we did through thenarrow cranny, it appeared as if the film of a biograph was being slowlydragged before our eyes. Another pair of legs followed the masked head,another body, and another mask that was even more fear-inspiring thanthe first. And the procession continued. Three, four, five, andsix--each succeeding one being arrayed in a mask of more ghastlyappearance than those which had preceded him. The sixth was followed bythe first, who had wriggled clear around the circle of light thrown bythe lamp, and in perfect silence the infernal snaky circle movedbackward round and round, the faint light shining on bare legs, onbodies from which the parrot mats were thrust aside by the contortions,and upon the masks that were weirdly fantastic and Mephistophelian.

  They had circled the floor about ten times when Holman tugged my coatand I wriggled back from the crevice.

  "What's up?" My lips were dry as I put the question.

  "Kaipi."

  "Where is he?"

  "Cleared out. Those human serpents scared him. Go softly, man! We mustget him before he attempts to go down that cliff or he'll break histhick head."

  We caught up to the deserter on the ledge to which Holman and the Fijianhad dragged me a short time before, and the youngster abused thefrightened
native as he endeavoured to turn him back.

  "No, no!" shrieked the Fijian. "Me no see dance like that. Me die if Istay."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "It is 'tivo'--death dance," gasped Kaipi. "Wizard men dance it.Something going happen, damn bad."

  "But they can't get you," cried Holman, "Come back and watch them. Somaand Leith will be there directly, and you'll get your revenge."

  But Kaipi would have nothing more of the performance in the rockychamber. The repulsive masks and the backward wriggling of the six uponthe floor had upset his fighting stomach for the time being, and wecould not induce him to return.

  "Well, you wait here," ordered