CHAPTER XVII
YA-HOO!
Time dragged in the White Chapel. The air seemed devitalized. The kerosene flare, the exploded powder gases, the carbonic discharge of their own lungs, appeared to have robbed it of freshness, despite the great vault of the cave, the tunnels and the rift above the dry waterfall. The taint of the cavern where the mummies sat in ghastly conclave crept into the place. Worst of all, the explosions had somewhere opened a fissure, and, drop by drop, with an iteration that was maddening, somewhere within the walls water was falling. It was impossible in that place of hollows even to trace the general direction of the sound, but sitting there in the silence, parching with a thirst that seemed to increase with every drip, the tantalizing plop-plop dominated everything. Their pulses began to beat to it, it was like the tick of a clock, beating off the hours they had left to live; it seemed to pound upon their brains like the water torment of medieval prisons.
So it affected Sheridan, a species of hypnosis that caused the little thread of water to assume the proportions of a sparkling mountain torrent, clear and cold, impressed upon his brain until, with an effort, he concentrated upon more material things.
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