only one of the men," said Oliver, and, putting his hand to his
mouth, he was about to answer, but Panton checked him.

"Will it bring down another fall?" he whispered.

"No, no. There can be little fear of that now," said Oliver. "All the
loose dusty stuff must have come down," and he hailed loudly; but his
cry had, apparently, no effect, for it was not answered.

"Come on," said Panton, after a few moments' pause in the awful silence,
which seemed to be far more terrible now, after the fall; and in the
gathering darkness they started off, with the edge of the forest on
their right to guide them. But the first part of their journey was not
easy, for they had to climb and struggle through the ash and cinders,
which had fallen, for a space of quite a couple of hundred yards before
they were upon firm ground.

Then, as they stopped for a few moments to regain their breath, there
was the mournful, despairing _Ahoy_! again, but though they answered
several times over, there was no response till they had tramped on
amidst increasing difficulties for quite a quarter of an hour--that
which had been comparatively easy in broad daylight, growing more and
more painful and toilsome as the darkness deepened.

Then, all at once, after a response to the mournful _Ahoy_, there came a
hail in quite a different tone.

"Ahoy! Where away?"

"All right! Where are you?" cried Oliver.

"Here you are, sir. Here you are," came from not a hundred yards away,
and directly after they met Wriggs.

"It's you, then, who has been hailing," cried Oliver. "Why didn't you
answer when we shouted?"

"Did yer shout, sir? Never heerd yer till just now. Thought I should
never hear no one again. Got lost and skeered. But I've found you at
last."

"Found us, yes, of course. What made you leave Smith and come after
us?"

"Didn't, sir. He left me and lost hisself, and I couldn't find him. It
was soon after we'd lit a fire. He went off to get some more wood and
there was an end of him."

"What, Smith gone?"

"Yes, sir. He's swallowed up in some hole or another, or else eat up by
wild beasts. I couldn't find him nowhere, and I couldn't stand it alone
there among them sarpents."

"Serpents? What, near our camp?" said Drew, who began to think of their
adventure in the cabin.

"Yes, sir," said Wriggs, who was all of a tremble from exertion and
dread. "I stood it as long as I could, with 'em hissing all round me,
and then I fel