here," ordered Holman. "We're going back, but we'll
return in a few hours and pick you up. Don't move from this ledge."

Kaipi would promise anything if he was not forced to witness the
performance, and we left him huddled up in the darkness, and returned to
the spyhole in the wall.

The "tivo," as the Fijian called it, was still in progress. Without
noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth
floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic
effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them
wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each
circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the
twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and
slower they moved past the crevice, till at last all movement ceased,
and, apparently lifeless, they lay face downward upon the floor.

I thought of the two girls at the lonely camp as we sat watching, and I
knew well that Holman's thoughts were turned in the same direction. We
had seen nothing of Leith, but an intuition that would not be put aside
connected Leith with the strange ceremony that was in progress within
the cavern, and we were chained to the spot.

I have no idea how long the six figures remained motionless upon the
floor. It may have been an hour, it may have been two. The mystery of
the performance we were witnessing seemed to drag us into a world where
minutes and hours did not exist. We were dumfounded by the confirmation
of our suspicions and the peculiarly devilish exhibition, and I shook
off the lethargy with an effort as Holman prodded me with his finger and
pointed at a spot beyond the body of the dancer who lay immediately in
front of the spyhole.

Looking in the direction Holman pointed I saw that another light was
approaching through the gloom of the cavern. It bobbed toward us slowly,
a tiny pin point that came nearer and nearer as the bearer walked in the
direction of the six. The distance it was away from the dancers, which
was evident from the time that elapsed from the moment we saw it till it
was close up, convinced us that the cavern was of an enormous length,
and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up
before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot
which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he
shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew