“It’s easy climbing just above us,” whispered Holman.  “Wait till we get Kaipi.”

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

“If we had only brought the rope!” cried the boy.  “Say, Verslun, put your 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 he stood there, peering around in an effort to discover a path by which we could go upward and onward, but at last he stepped off, and I looked up to find him clinging to the wall like a huge beetle.  A pack of fat clouds that had harried the moon during the earlier part of the evening now closed in upon her, and we were in complete darkness.  The threshing limb of the maupei tree that was within a yard or two of the spot where Kaipi and I stood waiting disappeared in the night, and the scratching of Holman’s shoes high above our heads came down to us through the intense silence and proved that he was holding his position with difficulty.

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

“Verslun!” breathed the strained voice of the youngster.  “Are you there?”

“Well?” I asked.

“H’sh!” he murmured.  “We are right near the spot, Verslun.  If Kaipi climbs up on your shoulders to this place I think the two of us could pull you up.  Are you willing?”

“Come on, Kaipi,” I whispered, and the Fijian climbed nimbly upon me and moved up into the void above.

“Now, Verslun,” muttered Holman.  “Reach up till we get a grip of your wrists.  Are you ready?  Well, try hard, man!  Think of those two helpless girls and dig your toes in!”

I didn’t need any reminder concerning the position of the two sisters as I stood on tiptoe and scratched with my fingers at the crumbling ledge upon which Holman and the Fijian crouched.  The predicament of Edith Herndon, and not fears for my own safety, made me scratch madly for a foothold as I swung above the shelf I left.  Kaipi and Holman tugged till every muscle in my arms shrieked out against the way they were being handled.  But I was going up.  I “chinned” the crumbling layer of rock upon which my fingers had a perilous grip, laid my chest across the shelf and wriggled into safety.

“That’s good,” whispered Holman.  “Don’t puff so hard, man!  We’re too close 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, till finally 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.”