over the dead and dying in the passage, and made our way to the side
gate of the palace that we found open, and over the bridge that spanned
the moat beyond, which was down. Doubtless Joshua's ruffians had used
it in their approach and retreat. Disguised in the long cloaks with
monk-like hoods that the Abati wore at night or when the weather was
cold and wet, we hurried across the great square. Here, since we could
not escape them, we mingled with the crowd that was gathered at its
farther end, all of them--men, women and children--chattering like
monkeys in the tree-tops, and pointing to the cliff at the back of the
palace, beneath which, it will be remembered, lay the underground city.

A band of soldiers rode by, thrusting their way through the people, and
in order to avoid them we thought it wise to take refuge in the shadow
of a walk of green-leaved trees which grew close at hand, for we feared
lest they might recognize Oliver by his height. Here we turned and
looked up at the cliff, to discover what it was at which every one was
staring. At that moment the full moon, which had been obscured by a
cloud, broke out, and we saw a spectacle that under the circumstances
was nothing less than terrifying.

The cliff behind the palace rose to a height of about a hundred and
fifty feet, and, as it chanced, just there a portion of it jutted out
in an oblong shape, which the Abati called the Lion Rock, although
personally, heretofore, I had never been able to see in it any great
resemblance to a lion. Now, however, it was different, for on the very
extremity of this rock, staring down at Mur, sat the head and neck of
the huge lion-faced idol of the Fung. Indeed, in that light, with the
promontory stretching away behind it, it looked as though it were
the idol itself, moved from the valley upon the farther side of the
precipice to the top of the cliff above.

"Oh! oh! oh!" groaned Japhet, "the prophecy is fulfilled--the head of
Harmac has come to sleep at Mur."

"You mean that we have sent him there," whispered Higgs. "Don't be
frightened, man; can't you understand that the power of our medicine has
blown the head off the sphinx high into the air, and landed it where it
sits now?"

"Yes," I put in, "and what we felt in the cave was the shock of its
fall."

"I don't care what brought him," replied Japhet, who seemed quite
unstrung by all that he had gone through. "All I know is that the
prophecy is fulfilled, and Harma