a thing I've never been subject to,
from a child, never. Max will tell you the same.'

Max said nothing, but only fixed his beautiful eyes hopefully on the
cocoa jug.

And all the time the yacht was speeding along the underground stream,
beneath the vast arch of the underground cavern.

'The worst of it is we may be going ever so far away from where we want
to get to,' said Philip, when Max had undertaken the steering again.

'All roads,' remarked the parrot, 'lead to Somnolentia. And besides the
ship is travelling due north--at least so the ship's compass states, and
I have no reason as yet for doubting its word.'

'Hullo!' cried more than one voice, and the ship shot out of the dark
cavern into a sheet of water that lay spread under a white dome. The
stream that had brought them there seemed to run across one side of this
pool. Max, directed by the parrot, steered the ship into smooth water,
where she lay at rest at last in the very middle of this great
underground lake.

'_This_ isn't out of _The Cruise of the Teal_,' said Philip. 'They must
have shut that book.'

'I think it's out of a book about Mexico or Peru or Ingots or some
geographical place,' said Lucy; 'it had a green-and-gold binding. I
think you used it for the other end of the outer justice court. And if
you did, this dome's solid silver, and there's a hole in it, and under
this dome there's untold treasure in gold incas.'

'What's incas?'

'Gold bars, I believe,' said Lucy; 'and Mexicans come down through the
hole in the roof and get it, and when enemies come they flood it with
water. It's flooded now,' she added unnecessarily.

'I wish adventures had never been invented,' said Brenda. 'No, dear
Lucy, I am not whining. Far from it. But if a dear little dog might
suggest it, we should all be better in a home, should we not?'

All eyes now perceived a dark hole in the roof, a round hole exactly in
the middle of the shining dome. And as they gazed the dark hole became
light. And they saw above them a white shining disk like a very large
and very bright moon. It was the light of day.

'Some one has opened the trap-door,' said Lucy. 'The Ingots always
closed their treasure-vaults with trap-doors.'

The bright disk was obscured; confused shapes broke its shining
roundness. Then another disk, small and very black appeared in the
middle of it; the black disk grew larger and larger and larger. It was
coming down to them. Slowly and steadily it cam