same, musty,
age-old smell; the same hushed gloom was about him; his eyes saw dimly
on the walls the same rows of hieroglyphs telling of long-past deeds
of warriors and priests.

But there the similarity ended. In Egypt it had been a dead Pharaoh;
here, though even yet he could hardly believe it, a living
one--living by grace of modern science--walked warily behind him, and
a living virgin of the temple at his side. The sword of the Pharaoh
was pricking his back.

The passageway they trudged down became one of many. Others angled
from it frequently, all dark, all hushed, all seemingly devoid of
people. The volcano--extinct, almost surely, for the warmth was only
that of the earth--was honey-combed with corridors. The marvelous
ingenuity of the Egyptian race had come into play in fashioning this
warm home in the barren arctic wastes. But Craig's ever-alert eyes
warned him of what was to come. The characters, the hieroglyphs, the
rude forms of Egyptian gods on the jagged walls were of degenerate
character--and always, when degeneration sets in, the cruellest form
of worship has been chosen. The worship of Aten, the Sun God, Wes
recalled, was one that demanded human sacrifice....

* * * * *

Still they went down. Savage crevices, split in the days when the
volcano roared with fire and gushing lava, were skirted; crude,
ladders reached down ever-recurring pits, beneath which there was
always another corridor, and always leading down. Craig could not
reckon the depth they must be at; he knew that the heat was growing,
though, and that his skin was wet with perspiration beneath his furs.
He started to ask Taia the question that ceaselessly tormented
him--how her race had come to the arctic; but a prick from Shabako's
sword silenced him.

Then the passageway they were in widened. There was a bend just ahead.
Through the gloom came the sonorous chant of many voices.

"The Temple!" whispered Taia.

They turned the bend, and saw, ahead, lit by a thick cluster of oil
lamps which threw a broad swathe of yellowish light, two tall columns
of corrupt Egyptian design. They framed the entrance to the Sun God's
Temple. The full volume of a chant of worship from inside poured
through them.

Shabako's sword brooked no pause. He drove his prisoners straight
through.

A host of impressions thronged Wes's bewildered eyes: a huge,
misty-dark room, columns lining it--the vague form of a great idol
sq