ly when that
truth meant utter hopelessness and a terrible death. So they drifted in
silence under the great vault of the cavern, living-dead in a living
tomb.

Long afterward--it might have been an hour and it might have been a day,
for all passage of time was lost--Chutney rose to a sitting posture.

His brain was dizzy and reeling. The aching misery lay heavy on his
heart, and yet one faint spark of hope lingered amid the black despair,
the natural buoyancy of his nature that refused even to submit to the
decrees of the inevitable.

It was he who had first spoken the words of doom to his companions, and
now he told himself he would show them the way to safety. He fumbled in
his clothes for a match, and striking it deliberately, lit a fresh
torch.

The pale, haggard faces that looked into each other as the bright light
shone over the water were ghastly and unnatural. Abject misery and
hopelessness were stamped on each one.

The colonel and Forbes faced Guy calmly. Canaris looked up with a
shudder and then dropped his head again. Sir Arthur lay among the rugs
as though asleep.

At that instant the canoe struck some obstacle with a slight tremor and
stopped.

The colonel with a slight gesture pointed to the right, and there before
them lay the _Isle of Skeletons_. A strange fatality had drifted them a
second time to this awful spot.

Guy shuddered, but the colonel rose, and brushing past him stepped on
shore.

Forbes followed him in silence, and then Canaris staggered blindly past.

After a brief hesitation Guy stepped out, and dragged the canoe half
way up the sand. Sir Arthur never moved. He was sleeping and no one
dared disturb him. They sat down in a row on the sand.

"It's as good a place as any to die," said Forbes hoarsely. "The bones
will soon have company."

He paused, frightened at his own voice, and no one replied. For a while
they sat in silence.

Guy stuck the torch in the sand and it blazed away with a merry light.
Somehow or other the ray of hope that had animated him a little while
before had vanished, leaving only a dull despair, a reluctance to face
the horror of the situation.

"Is there no--no chance--for us?" he ventured to say timidly.

"Absolutely none," replied the colonel, in a firm voice. "You told us a
while ago, Chutney, that our doom was sealed. I have faced the situation
as calmly and clearly as possible from every conceivable aspect, and I
now tell you on my own respon