“You answered that with your revolver, Nick!” chuckled the curator. “No man can drop forty feet to that talus and live. Of course they may bring up more ropes, in time, but my idea is that all that’s left of them, with perhaps a party of fighting men from this village ahead, are now hot-footing it for some pass that they know of to the north. We’ll be on Red Mountain and giving them the laugh while they are looking for us up near the lagoon--and let’s hope they fall in with a war party of the Outanatas while they are about it! Here comes the rain, men,” he broke off. “We’ll make camp and cook something and get a bit of sleep until the moon comes up.” They chose a spot well hidden in the jungle and the tent flies were spread on poles. A monumental feed was cooked, between Nicky’s alcohol burner and a small fire well hidden in the rocks under the tents, while the rain came down in its usual torrential downpour. Then they all turned in for some much-needed sleep. By nine o’clock the rain had stopped and a faint light over the jungle promised moonlight through the thinning clouds. The party was roused out and they broke camp, Nicky and Sadok, who were stiff and sore, being rubbed down with arnica by the curator before setting out. With the tent flies wrapped around them, the three whites set out through the wet jungle, with Sadok and Baderoon, whose naked skins seemed to revel in the raindrops, leading on ahead. In an hour they had reached the banks of a small, swift stream, the headwaters of some river that emptied into the sea fifty miles away. Alligators, water snakes, and giant frogs plopped into its eddying depths as they came up. The splash and gurgle of waterfalls came from up the slope. Pushing along carefully, on the lookout for pythons and snakes of lesser degree, they climbed up along its banks. Steeper and more rocky became the gorge through which it defiled. Then rocky ledges of black basalt hemmed them in on both sides, and out of the gap cascaded a foaming waterfall. In the weird moonlight, with the black shadows almost solid to the touch, it seemed to Nicky and Dwight that that was the most perilous climb they had ever ventured upon. Baderoon was quaking with fear and hanging back reluctantly, for he was no hill man, but the curator and the intrepid Sadok led on upward, pioneering out the way and hauling them up the steeper ledges by a tent fly let down for a rope. Higher and higher they climbed, the jungle falling away below almost vertically, while towering above them rose the walls of the gorge for thousands of feet. It seemed good to be at last buried deep in the cleft, with visions of the awful fate that would befall them below, if any slipped, hid mercifully from sight.