as round his shoulder.

"Now, let's see what this light means. Be ready for anything,
Harry--though Heaven knows we can find nothing worse than we've had.
Here, put your arm on my shoulder. Take it easy."

We advanced to the corner together within the patch of light and turned
to the right, directly facing its source.

It is impossible to convey even a faint idea of the wild and hugely
fantastic sight that met our gaze. With us it was a single, vivid
flash to the astonished brain. These are the details:

Before us was an immense cavern, circular in shape, with a diameter of
some half a mile. It seemed to me then much larger; from where we
stood it appeared to be at least two miles to the opposite side. There
was no roof to be seen; it merely ascended into darkness, though the
light carried a great distance.

All round the vast circumference, on terraced seats of rock, squatted
row after row of the most completely hideous beings within possibility.

They were men; I suppose they must have the name. They were about four
feet tall, with long, hairy arms and legs, bodies of a curious, bloated
appearance, and eyes--the remainder of the face was entirely concealed
by thick hair--eyes dull and vacant, of an incredibly large size; they
had the appearance of ghouls, apes, monsters--anything but human beings.

They sat, thousands of them, crouched silently on their stone seats,
gazing, motionless as blocks of wood.

The center of the cavern was a lake, taking up something more than half
of its area. The water was black as night, and curiously smooth and
silent. Its banks sloped by degrees for a hundred feet or so, but at
its edge there was a perpendicular bank of rock fifteen or twenty feet
in height.

Near the middle of the lake, ranged at an equal distance from its
center and from each other, were three--what shall I call
them?--islands, or columns. They were six or eight feet across at
their top, which rose high above the water.

On top of each of these columns was a huge vat or urn, and from each of
the urns arose a steady, gigantic column of fire. These it was that
gave the light, and it was little wonder we had thought it brilliant,
since the flames rose to a height of thirty feet or more in the air.

But that which left us speechless with profound amazement was not the
endless rows of silent, grinning dwarfs, nor the black, motionless
lake, nor the leaping tongues of flame. We forgot these when we