drank very sparingly—though this work gives one a most remarkable appetite. Rhodes and I endeavored to emulate their example.
As we sat there resting, the Dromans held a low and earnest colloquy. The girls, though, had but very little to say. The subject of the dialogue was an utter mystery to us. Only one thing could we tell, and that was that the matter which they were revolving was one of some gravity. Once and only once did we hear the word "Drome."
Also, it was then that we first heard the name of our angel. We could not be certain at the time that was her name, but there was no uncertainty about the name itself—Drorathusa. Ere the afternoon was far advanced, however, we saw our belief become a certitude. Drorathusa! I confess that there was in my mind something rather awesome about that name, and I wondered if that awesome something was existent only in my mind. Drorathusa. It seemed to possess some of that Sibylline quality which in the woman herself was so indefinable and mysterious.
Drorathusa. Sibylline certainly, that name, and beautiful too, I thought.
In our world, it would, in all likelihood, be shortened to Drora or Thusa. But it was never so here. No Droman, indeed, would be guilty of a barbarism like that. It was always Drorathusa—the accent on the penultimate and every syllable clear and full. Drorathusa. Milton Rhodes declared it was the most beautiful name he had ever heard in all his life!
It was about 4 o'clock when we issued from that passage, steep to the last, and found ourselves in a great broken cavern. The rock was granite, the place jagged and savage-looking as though seen in some strange and awful dream.
Here we rested for a while, and I, for one, was glad enough to do so. I was tired, sore and stiff from head to foot—especially to foot.
Just by the tunnel's mouth, there was some writing on the wall. Before this, Drorathusa and the older man (his name, we had learned, was Narkus) stood for some moments. This examination, and the short dialogue which followed it, left them, I noticed, even more grave of aspect and demeanor than we had ever seen them. I wondered what it could mean. I felt a vague uneasiness; a nameless forboding was creeping over me.
It was futile to think and wonder what it meant, and yet I could not help doing it. Glad had I been to stop, but, strangely enough, glad I was to get under way once more. For 'twas only so that we could hope to get the answer.
Well, we got it—an answer that I wish never to know again.
Chapter 25
The Labyrinth—lost
We soon saw that we had entered not a cavern but a perfect labyrinth of caverns. I could never have imagined a place like that. It was bewildering, dreadful, forsooth, in the possibilities that it limned on the canvas of one's imagination. How on earth could anyone ever have found his way through it? But somebody had, for these were the inscriptions and signs on the wall. For these Dromans kept a keen watch, and the relief evinced whenever one was sighted showed what a frightful thing it might be to lose the way.
An hour passed, another, and still we were moving in that awful maze.
"Great Erebus," said I, "do you think that we can ever find our way back through this?"
"I've got it all down here, Bill," returned Rhodes, tapping his note-
