The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Lost Liner

“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.