scampering
away. Now and then an arrow would flitter between us; but their
supply of ammunition seemed very scanty.

At night we camped in the cavern mouth to cut off all escape, and
resumed the hunt at dawn. But the caverns were hot--hotter by contrast
with the biting winds outside; and when in the afternoon of the second
day we all came out to breathe and cool off the running sweat, we saw
the whole tribe--scarcely more than fifty of them--emerge from an
opening above, whose existence we had not guessed, and go scampering
away along a ledge like monkeys. Some of them stopped to throw stones
at us--impotent, aimless stones that fell half-way; and Fred sent
three bullets after them, chipping bits from the ledge, after which
they showed us a turn of speed that was simply incredible, and vanished.

"Now for the great disillusionment!" laughed Will. "Hassan! Go
forward, and show us where that hoard of ivory ought ta be!"

We all expected disillusionment. Brown, who was under no delusion as
to his share in the venture, scoffed openly at the idea of finding
anything buried, in a land where every living "crittur," as he put it,
was a thief from birth. But Hassan led on in, fearless now that the
cannibals were gone, and positive as if he led into his own house and
would show his house-hold treasures.

He stopped before a black-mouthed chasm, two or three hundred yards
along the smallest subdivision of the cavern, and called for lights and
a rope. We lit lanterns, and he showed us men's bones lying everywhere
in grisly confusion.

"Tippoo Tib his men!" he remarked. "They throwing ivory in here, then
byumby men who eat men kill and eat them. I alone living to tell!
Plenty men who eat men in those days--all mountains full of them!"

He tied a lantern to a rope and lowered it down what looked like an old
vent-hole in the lava. But the little light was lost in the enormous
blackness, and we could see nothing.

"Send a man down!" he counseled.

We leaned over the edge and sniffed. There was a faint smell of what
might be sulphur, but not enough to hurt.

"Who'll go?" asked Monty, and I thought he was going to volunteer
himself.

"I go down!" announced Kazimoto cheerfully, and promptly proceeded to
divest himself of every stitch of clothing.

We made our stoutest line fast under his arm-pits, gave him a lantern
and lowered him over the edge. For fifty or sixty feet he descended
steadily, swinging the lante