At length we reached what may be called the bottom; here the tunnel gave another turn and the pitch became a gentle slope. And there we found it, the rock-fragment, weighing perhaps two hundred pounds, that the angel had dislodged in her descent—which doubtless had been a hurried, a wild one.
"Thank heaven," I exclaimed, "she didn't come down with it!"
"Amen," said Milton.
Then a sudden thought struck me, a thought so unworthy that I did not voice it aloud. But to myself I said: "It is possible that we may find ourselves, before we get out of this, wishing that she had."
If a human being, one of the very best of human beings even, were to voice his uttermost, his inmost thoughts, what a shameful, terrible monster they would call him—or her!
And the demon. Where was her demon?
I could give no adequate description of those hours that succeeded. Steadily we continued the descent—now gentle, now steep, rugged and difficult. Sometimes the way became very narrow—indeed, at one point we had to squeeze our way through, so closely did the walls approach each other—then, again, it would open out, and we would find ourselves in a veritable chamber. And, in one of these, a lofty place, the vaulted roof a hundred feet or more above our heads, we made a strange discovery—a skeleton, quasi-human and with wings.
"Are we," I cried, "entering Dante's Inferno itself?"
A faint smile touched the face of Rhodes.
"Don't you," he asked, "know what this is?"
"It must be the bones of a demon."
"Precisely. Grandfather Scranton, you'll remember, wounded that monster, up there by the Tamahnowis Rocks. Undoubtedly the bullet reached a vital spot, and these are the creature's bones."
"But," I objected, "these are human bones—a human skeleton with wings. According to Scranton, there was nothing at all human about the appearance of that thing which he called a demon."
"I admit," said Rhodes, "that this skeleton, at the first glance, has an appearance remarkably human—if, that is, one can forget the wings. The skull, I believe, more than anything else, contributes to that effect; and yet, at a second glance, even that loses its human semblance. For look at those terrible teeth. Whoever saw a human being with teeth like those? And look at the large scapulæ and the small hips and the dwarfish, though strong, nether limbs. Batlike, Bill, strikingly so.. And those feet: they are talons, Bill. And see that medial ridge on the sternum, for the attachment of the great pectoral muscles."
"A bat-man, then?" I queried.
"I should say a bat-ape."
"Or an ape-bat."
"Whichever you prefer," smiled Milton.
"Well," I added, "at any rate, we have a fair idea now of what a demon is like."
Little wonder, forsooth, that old Sklokoyum had declared the thing was a demon from the white man's Inferno. And this creature so dreadful—well, the angel had it for a companion. When Rhodes saw her, she was, of course, without that terrible attendant: undoubtedly the next time, though—how long would it be?—she would not be alone.
"Oh, well," I consoled myself, "we have our revolvers."
