“If—­if we could find the place and block the devil and all his gang inside,” gasped Holman.

“That’s too good a thing to entertain,” I spluttered.

“We might, Verslun!  We might!” he cried.  “I’ve got a feeling that we’ve been picked to put that devil out of existence.  That’s why I’m taking a chance in leaving the girls back there at the camp.  I believe I’m going to kill him, but whether it is to-night or some other time I don’t know.”

“The sooner the better,” I stammered.  “From what Kaipi said about that dance, something out of the way is going to happen, and I’ve got a hunch that the something will happen to us.”

Holman remained silent, and we raced on, moving down the slope at an angle that we judged would bring us somewhere near the entrance.  At moments my brain assured me that it was a mad proceeding, but something of the certainty with which the youngster looked upon himself as the Fate-appointed destroyer of Leith came to me as I raced beside him, and I put aside the fears for Edith Herndon’s safety that besieged me as I ran.  The last doubt about Leith’s treachery had been chased away by the dance we had witnessed, and I felt assured that the man was a monster, a vile thing, who, for some purpose that I could not allow myself to ponder over, had brought the foolish old scientist and his daughters into a place of terrors.  Treachery had been apparent from the start.  It was only the confidence of the old antiquarian that had blinded our eyes to a score of incidents that should have convinced us that the brute had some ulterior motive in view.  During that mad race through the night the big sallow-faced giant appeared to us as a devil, a fiend that was connected with some sort of horrible practices that had continued to exist in this remote islet long after all trace of such things had been lost in those islands that were visited by traders and missionaries.  Kaipi connected the dance with death, and the same conclusion had come to us before we had heard the words of the frightened Fijian.

Holman slackened speed, and we dodged through a mass of boulders that we judged were in a direct line with the crevice through which we had witnessed the happenings in the cave.

“We should be near the place if there is an entrance to it on this side,” he muttered.  “This pile of rocks looks from—­oh, Gee! here’s a path!”

It was a path, sure enough.  It wound in and out among the rocks, a narrow beaten trail, singularly white against the black surroundings.

Holman stopped and took up a handful of the dust.  “They coat it with coral lime to make it plain in the darkness,” he growled.  “Come on, Verslun, the wriggly batch must be straight ahead.”

I pulled the army Colt from my pocket and ran softly abreast of the youngster.  The corrosive terror of the earlier part of the evening had fled then, and my nerves had taken up a sort of dare-devil attitude toward all happenings that the future might hold in store.  Besides, the more I thought of Leith, the greater his villainy appeared to be, and to save Edith Herndon from the slightest contact with the ugly ruffian was a task that would give the greatest coward in the world the courage of a warrior.