oned me, and I was mighty glad that the marked similarity between
the various tribal tongues of Caspak enabled us to understand each
other perfectly, even though they were unable to believe or even to
comprehend the truth of my origin and the circumstances of my advent in
Caspak; and finally they left me saying that they would come for me
before the dance of death upon the morrow. Before they departed with
their torches, I saw that I had not been conducted to the farthest
extremity of the cavern, for a dark and gloomy corridor led beyond my
prison room into the heart of the cliff.

I could not but marvel at the immensity of this great underground
grotto. Already I had traversed several hundred yards of it, from many
points of which other corridors diverged. The whole cliff must be
honeycombed with apartments and passages of which this community
occupied but a comparatively small part, so that the possibility of the
more remote passages being the lair of savage beasts that have other
means of ingress and egress than that used by the Band-lu filled me
with dire forebodings.

I believe that I am not ordinarily hysterically apprehensive; yet I
must confess that under the conditions with which I was confronted, I
felt my nerves to be somewhat shaken. On the morrow I was to die some
sort of nameless death for the diversion of a savage horde, but the
morrow held fewer terrors for me than the present, and I submit to any
fair-minded man if it is not a terrifying thing to lie bound hand and
foot in the Stygian blackness of an immense cave peopled by unknown
dangers in a land overrun by hideous beasts and reptiles of the
greatest ferocity. At any moment, perhaps at this very moment, some
silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where it laired in
some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthily upon me. I craned
my neck about, and stared through the inky darkness for the twin spots
of blazing hate which I knew would herald the coming of my executioner.
So real were the imaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a
cold sweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close before me;
yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the grave-like stillness of
the cavern.

During that period of eternity many events of my life passed before my
mental vision, a vast parade of friends and occurrences which would be
blotted out forever on the morrow. I cursed myself for the foolish act
which had taken me from th