CHAPTER XV.

A QUESTION OF MARKSMANSHIP.

“Door?” repeated Carl, in reply to his chum’s exclamation. “There’s no door here!”

“But there is!” insisted Jimmie. “I heard the rattle of iron against granite only a moment ago!”

As the boy spoke he turned his flashlight back to the narrow passage and then, catching his chum by the arm, pointed with a hand which was not altogether steady to an iron grating which had swung or dropped from some point unknown into a position which effectually barred their return to the outer air! The bars of the gate, for it was little else, were not brown and rusty but bright and apparently new.

“That’s a new feature of the establishment,” Jimmie asserted. “That gate hasn’t been long exposed to this damp air!”

“I don’t care how long it hasn’t been here!” Carl said, rather crossly. “What I want to know is how long is it going to remain there?”

“I hope it will let us out before dinner time,” suggested Jimmie.

“Away, you and your appetite!” exclaimed Carl. “I suppose you think this is some sort of a joke. You make me tired!”

“And the fact that we couldn’t get out if we wanted to,” Jimmie grinned, “makes me hungry!”

“Cut it out!” cried Carl. “The thing for us to do now is to find some way of getting by that man-made obstruction.”

“Man-made is all right!” agreed Jimmie. “It is perfectly clear, now, isn’t it, that the supernatural had nothing to do with the demonstrations we have seen here!”

“I thought you understood that before!” cried Carl, impatiently.

Jimmie, who stood nearest to the gate, now laid a hand upon one of the upright bars and brought his whole strength to bear. The obstruction rattled slightly but remained firm.

“Can’t move it!” the boy said. “We may have to tear the wall down!”

“And the man who swung the gate into position?” questioned Carl. “What do you think he’ll be doing while we’re pulling down that heap of stones? You’ve got to think of something better than that, my son!”

“Anyway,” Jimmie said, hopefully, “Sam is on the outside, and he’ll soon find out that we’ve been caught in a trap.”

“I don’t want to pose as a prophet of evil, or anything like that,” Carl went on, “but it’s just possible that he may have been caught in a trap, too. Anyway, it’s up to us to go ahead and get out, if we can, without any reference to assistance from the outside.”

“Go ahead, then!” Jimmie exclaimed. “I’m in with anything you propose!”

The boys now exerted their united strength on the bars of the gate, but all to no purpose. So far as they could determine, the iron contrivance had been dropped down from above into grooves in the stone-work on either side. The bars were an inch or more in thickness, and firmly enclosed in parallel beams of small size which crossed them at regular intervals.

Seeing the condition of affairs, Jimmie suggested:

“Perhaps we can push it up!”

“Anything is worth trying!” replied Carl.

But the gate was too firmly in place to be moved, even a fraction of an inch, by their joint efforts.

“Now, see here,” Jimmie said, after a short and almost painful silence, “there’s no knowing how long we may be held in this confounded old dungeon. We’ll need light as long as we’re here, so I suggest that we use only one flashlight at a time.”

“That will help some!” answered Carl, extinguishing his electric.

Jimmie threw his light along the walls of the chamber and over the floor. There appeared to be no break of any kind in the white marble which shut in the apartment, except at one point in a distant corner, where a slab had been removed.

“Perhaps,” suggested Carl, “the hole in the corner is exactly the thing we’re looking for.”

“It strikes me,” said Jimmie, “that one of us saw a light in that corner not long ago. I don’t remember whether you called my attention to it, or whether I saw it first, but I remember that we talked about a light in the apartment as we looked in.”

“Perhaps we’d better watch the hole a few minutes before moving over to it,” suggested Carl. “The place it leads to may hold a group of savages, or a couple of renegades, sent on here to make trouble for casual visitors.”

“Casual visitors!” repeated Jimmie. “That doesn’t go with me! You know, and I know, that this stage was set for our personal benefit! How the Redfern bunch got the men in here so quickly, or how they got the information into this topsy-turvy old country, is another question.”

“I presume you are right,” Carl agreed. “In some particulars,” the boy went on, “this seems to me to be a situation somewhat similar to our experiences in the California mountains.”

“Right you are!” cried Jimmie.

The circle of light from the electric illuminated the corner where the break in the wall had been observed only faintly. Determined to discover everything possible regarding what might be an exit from the apartment, Jimmie kept his light fixed steadily on that corner.

In a couple of minutes Carl caught the boy by the arm and pointed along the finger of light.

“Hold it steadier now,” he said. “I saw a movement there just now.”

“What kind of a movement?” asked the other.

“Looked like a ball of fire.”

“It may be the cat!” suggested Jimmie.

“Quit your foolishness!” advised Carl impatiently. “This is a serious situation, and there’s no time for any grandstanding!”

“A ball of fire!” repeated Jimmie scornfully. “What would a ball of fire be doing there?”

“What would a blue ball of fire be doing on the roof?” asked Carl, reprovingly. “Yet we saw one there, didn’t we?”

Although Jimmie was inclined to treat the situation as lightly as possible, he knew very well that the peril was considerable. Like a good many other boys in a trying situation, he was usually inclined to keep his unpleasant mental processes to himself. He now engaged in what seemed to Carl to be trivial conversation, yet the desperate situation was no less firmly impressed upon his mind.

The boys waited for some moments before speaking again, listening and watching for the reappearance of the object which had attracted their attention.

“There!” Carl cried in a moment. “Move your light a little to the left. I’m sure I saw a flash of color pass the opening.”

“I saw that too!” Jimmie agreed. “Now what do you think it can be?”

In a moment there was no longer doubt regarding the presence at the opening which was being watched so closely. The deep vocal vibrations which had been noticed from the other chamber seemed to shake the very wall against which the boy stood. As before, it was followed in a moment by the piercing, lifting cry which on the first occasion had suggested the appeal of a woman in agony or terror.

The boys stood motionless, grasping each other by the hand, and so each seeking the sympathy and support of the other, until the weird sound died out.

“And that,” said Jimmie in a moment, “is no ghost!”

“Ghost?” repeated Carl scornfully. “You may as well talk about a ghost making that gate and setting it against us!”

“Anyway,” Jimmie replied, “the wail left an odor of sulphur in the air!”

“Yes,” answered Carl, “and the sulphur you speak of is a sulphur which comes from the dens of wild beasts! Now do you know what we’re up against?”

“Mountain lions!” exclaimed Jimmie.

“Jaguars!” answered Carl.

“I hope they’re locked in!” suggested Jimmie.

“Can you see anything that looks like a grate before that opening?” asked Carl. “I’m sure I can’t.”

“Nothing doing in that direction!” was the reply.

At regular intervals, now, a great, lithe, crouching body could be seen moving back and forth at the opening, and now and then a cat-like head was pushed into the room! At such times the eyes of the animal, whatever it was, shone like balls of red fire in the reflection of the electric light. Although naturally resourceful and courageous, the two boys actually abandoned hope of ever getting out of the place alive!

“I wonder how many wild animals there are in there?” asked Carl in a moment. “It seems to me that I have seen two separate figures.”

“There may be a dozen for all we know,” Jimmie returned. “Gee!” he exclaimed, reverting to his habit of concealing serious thoughts by lightly spoken words, “Daniel in the lion’s den had nothing on us!”

“How many shots have you in your automatic?” asked Carl, drawing his own from his pocket. “We’ll have to do some shooting, probably.”

“Why, I have a full clip of cartridges,” Jimmie answered.

“But have you?” insisted Carl.

“Why, surely, I have!” returned Jimmie. “Don’t you remember we filled our guns night before last and never——”

“I thought so!” exclaimed Carl, ruefully. “We put in fresh clips night before last, and exploded eight or nine cartridges apiece on the return trip to Quito. Now, how many bullets do you think you have available? One or two?”

“I don’t know!” replied Jimmie, and there was almost a sob in his voice as he spoke. “I presume I have only one.”

“Perhaps the electric light may keep the brutes away,” said Carl hopefully. “You know wild animals are afraid of fire.”

“Yes, it may,” replied Jimmie, “but it strikes me that our little torches will soon become insufficient protectors. Those are jaguars out there, I suppose you know. And they creep up to camp-fires and steal savage children almost out of their mothers’ arms!”

“Where do you suppose Sam is by this time?” asked Carl, in a moment, as the cat-like head appeared for the fourth or fifth time at the opening.

“I’m afraid Sam couldn’t get in here in time to do us any good even if he stood in the corridor outside!” was the reply. “Whatever is done, we’ve got to do ourselves.”

“And that brings us down to a case of shooting!” Carl declared.

“It’s only a question of time,” Jimmie went on, “when the jaguars will become hungry enough to attack us. When they get into the opening, full under the light of the electric, we’ll shoot.”

“I’ll hold the light,” Carl argued, “and you do the shooting. You’re a better marksman than I am, you know! When your last cartridge is gone, I’ll hand you my gun and you can empty that. If there’s only two animals and you are lucky with your aim, we may escape with our lives so far as this one danger is concerned. How we are to make our escape after that is another matter.”

“If there are more than two jaguars,” Jimmie answered, “or if I’m unlucky enough to injure one without inflicting a fatal wound, it will be good-bye to the good old flying machines.”

“That’s about the size of it!” Carl agreed.

All this conversation had occurred, of course, at intervals, whenever the boys found the heart to put their hopes and plans into words. It seemed to them that they had already spent hours in the desperate situation in which they found themselves. The periods of silence, however, had been briefer than they thought, and the time between the departure of Sam and that moment was not much more than half an hour.

“There are two heads now!” Jimmie said, after a time, “and they’re coming out! Hold your light steady when they reach the center of the room. I can’t afford to miss my aim.”

“Is your arm steady?” almost whispered Carl.

“Never better!” answered Jimmie.

Four powerful, hungry, jaguars, instead of two, crept out of the opening! Jimmie tried to cheer his companion with the whispered hope that there might possibly be bullets enough for them all, and raised his weapon. Two shots came in quick succession, and two jaguars crumpled down on the floor. Nothing daunted, the other brutes came on, and Jimmie seized Carl’s automatic. The only question now was this:

How many bullets did the gun hold?