"COME DOWN!" Charles shouted as the humming noise increased and the great cable wire over their heads began to vibrate. Mary turned, saw his face and dashed across the platform. She pulled at Dickie's ankle till he overbalanced and fell backwards on to her. Somehow he sensed her fear as they scrambled together down the ladder as the cave was filled with a fearful screeching, and the daylight faded as a mighty shape rattled and screamed through the look-out window and rushed over their heads into the gloom at the back of the cave.

As the impetus of the car was checked by the incline of the cable the din lessened and Mary whispered shakily:

"Did you see, twin?"

"Yes, I did. It was a ghost ridin' on that truck thing like a big pail."

"Whose ghost, twin?"

"Well... I thought it was Tom's... Poor Tom!" Then suddenly he called with a note of panic in his voice: "Tom! Tom! Where are you?"

And as the cable car glided slowly now back towards them, there came from the twilight the signal of the Lone Piners - the mournful but unmistakable cry of the peewit. And this was followed by the sharp and unhappy bark of Macbeth.

11. The Rescue

While the twins were inside the mountain and Peter under the spell of the Devil's Chair and later meeting Tom, David was getting his rescue party together.

After saying "Good-bye'' to Peter he had hurried Jenny down the Dingle and then found that she wanted to go straight down to Barton Beach. "But I don't like Seven Gates, David," she had said when he protested. "None of us like it, and I think I'd better go straight home now and get my row over."

But David had insisted. "Another quarter of an hour won't make any difference, and, anyway, you're a Lone Piner now, and you've got to do what I say. If the twins aren't there, it will be your job to go down to Barton as a messenger, I expect. If they are there, then I shall go back for Peter, and you can go home, anyway. Do be sensible, Jenny. You want to help, don't you?"

Jenny gulped and looked up at him striding along by her side.

"Yes, I do, David," she said. "I s'pose I'll do as you say," and she shut her eyes as they hurried into the dark wood.

Mrs. Sterling was waiting at the top gate, and when she saw David's anxious face she hurried to meet them, while Uncle Micah, a lonely, menacing figure, stood in the yard fingering his beard. Jenny gasped when she saw him, but David gripped her arm and led her forward. He told his story quickly and clearly, without trying to shift the blame.

"So you see," he finished, "although we've no clues except Macbeth and Dickie's conker, I believe there's a cave in the mountain, and that's where they are."