gs, who offered
to stop and help skin the snakes.

"You don't mean it, do you, Billy?" whispered Smith. "Thought you was
too skeered?"

"So I am, mate; but I want to be long o' you to see their games. It's
unnatural like to be doin' dooty aboard a wessel as ain't in the water."

"But you won't touch one of they sarpents?"

"Well, I don't want to, mate; but it's all in yer day's work, yer know.
I thought you said it was only one in two halves?"

"So I did, mate--so I did--and so it ought to ha' been, 'cording to my
ideas, and the way I let go at it with a haxe. But there, one never
knows, and it was in the dark now, warn't it?"

"Seventeen feet, five inches," said Oliver, just then, as he wound up
his measuring tape, "and sixteen feet, four--extreme lengths," as Panton
entered the sizes in Oliver's notebook for him.

"Hark at that now!" said Billy Wriggs in a hoarse whisper. "Why, I
should ha' said as they was a hundred foot long apiece at least."

"And, arter all, they ain't much bigger than a couple o' worms."

Five minutes later the two men were hard at work skinning the reptiles;
the example set by Oliver in handling them shaming both into mastering
the repugnance they felt, and first one skin and then the other was
stretched over the limb of a tree to dry; while the bodies were dragged
to the cavernous chasm, and tossed down "to cook," as Smith put it.

Meanwhile Drew had been busy examining the trees and plants around; and
Panton had been fascinated, as it were, by the place, picking up
fragments of stone and sulphur-incrusted lava--when he was not listening
to a low hissing, gurgling sound, which told plainly enough that
volcanic action was still in progress, somewhere in the depths below.

"There!" cried Oliver. "I'm ready. Where next?"

"Are you fit to go on?" asked Drew.

"Fit? Yes. Let's get to a pool and have a wash, and then I'm ready for
anything."

"Some water over yonder, sir," said Smith, pointing to where the sun
flashed from a spot beyond the trees.

"Then let's get to it," said Oliver. "What do you say to exploring
onward toward the mist bank?"

"I say yes, and let's go through it," cried Panton. "I want to look at
the mountain. What's the matter, Smith? See anything?"

The man held up his hand.

"Hinjun, sir," he whispered.

"Eh! Where?" cried Drew, cocking his piece.

"Just yonder, sir, past that lot of blocks like an old stone yard; I see
one o' their heads pee