her head and said quietly--

"Now, Lance, I am better, and feel able to listen to the worst you can
tell me. I will not ask you to give me your candid opinion of our
position, because I know it is--it _must_ be the same as my own. But
what do you propose that we should do?"

"Well," said Lance, as cheerily as he could, "the first thing I intend
to do is to light a match and take a glance at our surroundings. It was
stupid of me that I did not think of doing so before."

He drew a box of matches from his pocket--being a smoker he was never by
any chance without them--and the next moment a sharp rasping noise was
heard, and a tiny flame appeared. The light, however, was too feeble to
penetrate that Egyptian darkness; they saw nothing but each other's
faces; hers pale, with wide-open, horror-stricken eyes; and his, with
contracted brow and firmly compressed lips, indicative of an
unconquerable determination to struggle to the last against this
dreadful fate which menaced them.

"This will not do," said he; "we must improvise a better torch than
this."

He fumbled once more in his pockets, and presently found a sheet or two
of paper on which he remembered jotting down some notes relative to
matters connected with the construction of the battery. These he folded
very carefully; so loosely as to burn well, yet tightly enough to burn
slowly and so give them an opportunity for at least a momentary glance
round them. Then he struck another match, applied it to one of the tiny
torches, and raised the light aloft.

As he did so, Blanche uttered a piercing shriek, and seizing him by the
arm, dragged him back against the rocky wall of the passage. Then,
pointing before her, she gasped--

"Look, Lance; look!"

Lance looked in the direction toward which she pointed, and grew faint
and sick as he saw that they had been standing on the very verge of a
precipice. A stone, dislodged by Blanche's hasty movement had rolled
over the edge, and they now heard it bounding with a loud echoing clang
down the face of the rock, down, down, down, the sound, loud at first,
growing fainter and fainter, until at last a dull muffled splash told
that it had reached water more than a hundred fathoms below.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

BLANCHE AND HER LOVER HAVE TO SWIM FOR IT.

"Stand close against the wall, Blanche, and do not move," commanded
Evelin, as the paper torch burnt down and went out. "Now," he
continued, "I am about to light u