The Dromans had drawn back some distance from the altar, and all had sunk down to a seat upon the floor, all save Drorathusa.
Our examination ended, we moved toward the little group, Milton looked at his watch.
"Midnight," said he.
As we drew near, Drorathusa suddenly raised a hand and made a significant motion toward the entrance. Those seated rose from the floor with an alacrity that astonished me. Evidently they were very anxious to quit this chamber of horrors. I was not sorry to do so myself.
"Shades of the great Ulysses," said I as we moved along in the rear, "are we going to keep up this wandering until we drop?"
"Just what I was wondering myself, Bill. I fancy, though, that our Dromans are beginning to think that a rest would not be inexpedient."
Shortly after issuing from the passage, the party came to a halt, and Drorathusa, to my profound thankfulness, announced that the time for rest and sleep had come.
"Sleep?" said I to myself. "Who can sleep in such a place and at such a time?"
From his pack, Narkus took a small silklike bundle; like the tent that Captain Amundsen left at the South Pole, one could have put it into a fair-sized pocket. The white-haired girl handed Narkus the sort of alpenstock which she carried, and, lo and presto, there was a tent for the ladies!
Rhodes and I betook ourselves off to a hollow in the wall, where we halted and disposed ourselves for rest. This disposition, however, was a very simple affair: we simply removed our packs and sat down on the floor—the softness of which by no means vied with that of swan's-down.
I drank a little water, but it seemed to augment rather than assuage my burning thirst. For a time I sat there, my aching body leaning back against the rock wall, my fevered, tortured mind revolving the grisly possibilities that confronted us. Meditation, however, only served to make our situation the more appalling. With an exclamation of despair, I lay down, longing for sleep's sweet oblivion. At this moment Narkus and the young man—whose name, by the way, was Thumbra—were seen approaching. They laid themselves down near by, their lanterns extinguished. We had shut off the electric lights, but our phosphorus-lamps, and those of the Dromans, shed their pale and ghostly light around.
Rhodes was sitting up, engaged in bringing his journal forward, as carefully and coolly as though he were in his library at home, instead of in this mysterious and fearful abode of blackness and silence, thousands of feet below the surface of the earth, far—though how far we could only guess—below the level of the sea itself.
When I closed my eyes, pictures came and went in a stream—pictures swaying, flashing, fading. The amazing, the incredible things that had happened, the things that probably were to happen—-oh, was it all only a dream?
I opened my eyes and raised myself up on an elbow. I saw Milton Rhodes bent over his book, writing, writing; I saw the recumbent forms of the two Dromans, whose heavy breathing told me that already they slept; over there was the tent, in it the beautiful, the Sibylline Drorathusa and her lovely companions—and I knew, alas, that it was not a dream!
I sank back with an inward groan and closed my eyes again. Oh, those thoughts that came thronging! If I could only go to sleep! A vision of treachery came, but it was not to trouble me now. No; Rhodes was right; our Dromans were lost. If
