tion.
It surprised him. It was unaccountable. Yet there it was.

Among other creature comforts he had found in the cupboard was a bottle
of whisky. He mixed himself a modest "peg." But somehow the taste
brought back the terrible tragedy in Inglefield's hut, that, perforce,
being the last time he had drunk any, and a sort of disgust for the
spirit came over him.

So did something else--a sadden and unaccountable drowsiness, to wit.
He strove to combat it, but fruitlessly. Returning to his couch, he lay
down, and fell into a deep and heavy sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

WHAT WAS DISCLOSED.

When he awoke, John Ames found himself in the dark; not the ordinary
darkness of night, wherein objects are faintly outlined, but black,
pitchy, impenetrable gloom--an outer darkness which weighed upon mind
and spirits with a sense of living entombment.

Breathed there a mystic atmosphere in this weird place which affected
the mind? This darkness seemed to unnerve him, to start him wide awake
with a feeling of chill fear. Light! That was the first requisite.
But a hurried search in every pocket revealed that he was without the
means of procuring that requisite. He could find no matches. Had he by
chance put them on the table, and left them there? He had no
recollection of doing so, but in any case dared not get up and grope for
them, bearing in mind the shaft-like pit at one end of the room.
Nothing would be easier than to fall into this in the bewildering
blackness. Equally nothing was there for it but to lie still and await
the course of events.

More and more did the walled-in blackness weigh him down. The air
seemed full of whispering voices--indistinct, ghostly, rising and
falling in far-away flute-like wailings; and there came upon him a
vision. He saw again the great granite cone with the black hole, dark
and forbidding, piercing its centre; but not as he had pointed it out to
his fellow-fugitive in the sunlight gold. No; it was night now, and
there, around its base, a mighty gathering occupied the open, and from
this arose a roar of voices--voices in supplication, voices in
questionings, voices singing fierce songs of war. Then there would be
silence, and from the cavern mouth would issue one voice--denunciatory,
reproachful, prophetic, yet prophesying no good thing. And the voice
was as that of the strange being in whose power he lay.

Louder and louder boomed the roar of the war-song. It shook t