e on one side, and the African,
accepting the movement as an invitation, entered in an obsequious way.
The moment, however, that he was inside, he gave a quick look around him.

"Much death here--big death. Many deaths. Good, good!"

He sniffed round as if he was enjoying the scent. The matter and manner
of his speech were so revolting that instinctively Adam's hand wandered
to his revolver, and, with his finger on the trigger, he rested satisfied
that he was ready for any emergency.

There was certainly opportunity for the nigger's enjoyment, for the open
well-hole was almost under his nose, sending up such a stench as almost
made Adam sick, though Lady Arabella seemed not to mind it at all. It
was like nothing that Adam had ever met with. He compared it with all
the noxious experiences he had ever had--the drainage of war hospitals,
of slaughter-houses, the refuse of dissecting rooms. None of these was
like it, though it had something of them all, with, added, the sourness
of chemical waste and the poisonous effluvium of the bilge of a water-
logged ship whereon a multitude of rats had been drowned.

Then, quite unexpectedly, the negro noticed the presence of a third
person--Adam Salton! He pulled out a pistol and shot at him, happily
missing. Adam was himself usually a quick shot, but this time his mind
had been on something else and he was not ready. However, he was quick
to carry out an intention, and he was not a coward. In another moment
both men were in grips. Beside them was the dark well-hole, with that
horrid effluvium stealing up from its mysterious depths.

Adam and Oolanga both had pistols; Lady Arabella, who had not one, was
probably the most ready of them all in the theory of shooting, but that
being impossible, she made her effort in another way. Gliding forward,
she tried to seize the African; but he eluded her grasp, just missing, in
doing so, falling into the mysterious hole. As he swayed back to firm
foothold, he turned his own gun on her and shot. Instinctively Adam
leaped at his assailant; clutching at each other, they tottered on the
very brink.

Lady Arabella's anger, now fully awake, was all for Oolanga. She moved
towards him with her hands extended, and had just seized him when the
catch of the locked box--due to some movement from within--flew open, and
the king-cobra-killer flew at her with a venomous fury impossible to
describe. As it seized her throat, she caught hold