"No. I'll get it!" Stoddard gritted his teeth, continued. "There! I think my hand is free!" He struggled. "Yes. Now wait!"
Replacing his cigarette lighter in his pocket, he drew his blistered wrist from its smouldering bonds and struggled feverishly now to undo the lashes about his feet.
Five minutes of that and suddenly he flung them off and stood up.
"Now! Now then, Professor. I'll have you loose in a jiffy!"
Bending over his fettered companion, he worked with frantic haste to untie the rawhide bonds.
Another five minutes and they were both free.
Professor Prescott stood up and stretched.
"Thank God for small favors!" he exclaimed. "But you, Jack? You must be burned cruelly.
"Forget it!" Stoddard was already wrapping a handkerchief around his wrist. "Now let's see about getting out of here. These little rats all seem to be asleep, and Lord knows where that maniac Krassnov is. Perhaps we can make it. At any rate, we'll give them a run for their money!"
Silently, stealthily, they left that glittering chamber and proceeded down the cavern toward what seemed to be the entrance, guided by their remembrance of the way they had come.
A hundred yards or more they made, seeing no sign of their captors, when suddenly a musical gong rang out.
"We've stepped on one of Krassnov's infernal signals!" cried Stoddard, above the din. "Now there'll be hell to pay!"
And "hell to pay" there was, almost instantly--for before they had taken ten more steps, the cavern ahead was full of small, ghostly figures, jabbering in their shrill voices.
Indifferent now of what he did, their lives at stake, Stoddard blazed away with his automatic, sweeping it from side to side of the stony walls as he fired.
As the shots crashed out, the jabbers turned to shrieks of terror. Several of the pigmies fell. The rest broke their ranks and shrank into the shadows.
"Run!" yelled Stoddard, slipping a new clip into his pistol.
The professor needed no invitation. Gathering his long legs he sped after the younger man, and together they burst from the mouth of the cavern.
Outside, in the dazzle of moonlight, they paused for an instant.
"This way!" called Stoddard, racing toward that splintered arena.
They gained it and lunged across it to the shelving slope that reached upward to the narrow, perilous ridge whence they had come.