est.

But that impenetrable night produced a depression that we could not
shake off. Imagination sprang ahead of the moment and pictured our final
struggles. We fought with the nightmares that entered our minds, and
conversation languished. We couldn't speak while the mental canvases
were being rapidly coloured with scenes depicting our end in the
darkness and the silence, where a grim fate would even deny one a last
look at a dearly loved face. A silence came upon us that had the same
effect as intense cold. Each in his own frozen husk of despair plodded
forward with the idea that the others were so engrossed in their own
thoughts that they were not inclined to answer when addressed. The
darkness so completely isolated each person that after some hours of
silence it required a tremendous effort to thoroughly convince the mind
that one was walking with living people and not with phantoms.

It was after one of these intervals of silence that Barbara Herndon made
a discovery that chilled our blood. She made some commonplace remark to
her sister and received no reply. She repeated the observation, but it
brought no comment. The happening seemed to drag the rest of us from the
strange torpor, and we stopped. We sensed that Barbara Herndon was
feeling her way toward her sister, and presently the younger girl gave a
shriek of alarm that stirred a million echoes in that place of terror.

"Edith!" she shrieked. "Edith! Edith! Where are you?"

Holman and I clawed fiercely upon the rope, moving toward each other in
an effort to find a quick solution for the mystery. We collided
violently as we reached the spot where the rope had circled Edith
Herndon's waist, and we stood, stunned and speechless, as we fingered
the cord. In some manner, probably severed by a knifelike projection of
rock, the loop which I had knotted around her body had been cut through,
and the rope had fallen unnoticed from the waist of the weary girl!

"Great God!" I cried. "Where did we lose her? What way did we come?"

The questions were ridiculous. The numbing influence of the place had
made us walk for an hour or so in complete silence, and it was
impossible to say when she had lost her position in the line. And now,
as we moved round and round, endeavouring to peer into the blackness, we
lost all sense of direction. Each had a different notion about the way
we had come. While we were moving forward, our combined efforts to walk
straight ahead made it