! Now it's up the wall!--mind your hand, Dr.
Petrie!"

The lamp was turned, and, since it shone fully into my face,
temporarily blinded me.

"On the roof over your head, Barton!"--this from Nayland Smith. "What
can we kill it with?"

Now my sight was restored to me, and looking back along the passage,
I saw, clinging to an irregularity in the moldy wall, the most
gigantic scorpion I had ever set eyes upon! It was fully as large as
my open hand.

Kennedy and Nayland Smith were stealthily retracing their steps, the
former keeping the light directed upon the hideous insect, which now
began running about with that horrible, febrile activity characteristic
of the species. Suddenly came a sharp, staccato report.... Sir Lionel
had scored a hit with his Browning pistol.

In waves of sound, the report went booming along the passage. The lamp,
as I have said, was turned in order to shine back upon us, rendering
the tunnel ahead a mere black mouth--a veritable inferno, held by
inhuman guards. Into that black cavern I stared, gloomily fascinated
by the onward rolling sound storm; into that blackness I looked ...
to feel my scalp tingle horrifically, to know the crowning horror of
the horrible journey.

The blackness was spangled with watching, diamond eyes!--with tiny
insect eyes that moved; upon the floor, upon the walls, upon the
ceiling! A choking cry rose to my lips.

"Smith! Barton! for God's sake, look! The place is _alive_ with
scorpions!"

Around we all came, panic plucking at our hearts, around swept the
beam of the big lamp; and there, retreating before the light, went a
veritable army of venomous creatures! I counted no fewer than three of
the giant red centipedes whose poisonous touch, called "the zayat kiss,"
is certain death; several species of scorpion were represented; and
some kind of bloated, unwieldy spider, so gross of body that its short,
hairy legs could scarce support it, crawled, hideous, almost at my feet.

What other monstrosities of the insect kingdom were included in that
obscene host I know not; my skin tingled from head to feet; I
experienced a sensation as if a million venomous things already clung
to me--unclean things bred in the malarial jungles of Burma, in the
corpse-tainted mud of China's rivers, in the fever spots of that
darkest East from which Fu-Manchu recruited his shadow army.

I was perilously near to losing my nerve when the crisp, incisive
tones of Nayland Smith's voice ca