It seemed ages before we met her. The sounds puzzled us, but at last we
gripped her hands, and the Professor and Barbara, hysterical with joy,
sobbed their thanks into the gloom.
"I don't know how the rope became undone," cried Edith. "I didn't find
out that I had become separated from the rest of you till I attempted to
draw your attention to the waterfall."
"To the what?" I questioned.
"To the waterfall," repeated the girl. "Did you pass it? It is a
beautiful little waterfall, and the water flows over a white limestone
rock that makes it sparkle like so many fireflies in the dark."
I cannot explain what happened to me at that moment. Some veil within my
mind was torn away by the few words that the girl had uttered. I was
back upon Levuka wharf, lying under the copra bag where Holman had found
me, and for a moment I could not speak as the subconscious mind flung a
score of half-forgotten incidents into my conscious area.
_"It is the White Waterfall!"_ I yelled. "It is the White Waterfall
that the Maori sang of on the wharf at Levuka! He was warning Toni, and
Toni was killed by Soma because he knew! It is the way out! We're saved!
We're saved! It is on the road to heaven out of Black Fernando's hell!"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXIII
THE WIZARDS' SEAT
As we stumbled toward the spot from which came the sounds of running
water, the incidents of the preceding ten days seemed to be dropping
into their places within my brain like the pieces of a picture puzzle
that has suddenly become plain to the eye of the child who is putting it
together.
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