After following its sinuosities for several hundred feet, we suddenly-stepped out of the passage and into a great chamber. This, like our sleeping place, was weird and savage in the extreme. Broken rock masses rose up, in all directions. There were distorted pyramids, fantastic pinnacles, spires, obelisks—even pillars, but they were pillars grotesque and awful as though seen in a dream.
Wider and wider grew the place, more and more broken and savage. Soon even the walls were involved in darkness. The roof, as we advanced, became more and more lofty. Clearly this cavern was one of enormous extent. I began to glance about with some apprehension. How had Drorathusa found her way into such a place—and out again? I marveled that she had not got lost. But she had not, and evidently there was no likelihood that that could happen. She was moving forward, into that place of savage confusion, with never a sign of hesitation, with the certitude of one following a well-beaten path.
Suddenly Drorathusa stopped, and, after making a sign of silence, she said, pointing into the blackness before us: "Narranawnzee."
Narranawanzee! Yes, there it was, the faint murmur and tinkle of water.
We hurried forward, the wall of the cavern merging from out the darkness. And there it was, a large spring of the purest, coolest water gushing out from the base of the rock, to fall in a gentle cascade and then flow away to a great pool gleaming dark and sullen in the feeble rays that found their way to it.
It was near 9 o'clock of the day
following when we left that spot.
Rhodes and I were smooth-shaven
again; yes, he had brought along a
razor—one of your old-fashioned,
antediluvian scrapers. Narkus and
Thumbra too had gladly availed
themselves of this opportunity to get
rid of their beards, which, however,
they had kept trimmed close with
clippers. Your Droman has a horror
of mustaches, beard or whiskers. As
for the ladies, they were now radiant
and lovely as Dians.
We were following the stream. An hour passed, another. We had advanced five miles or so and had descended probably half a thousand feet. And then we lost our guide; the stream flowed into a cleft in the rock, to burst forth again perhaps far, far down, in some black cavern that has never known, and indeed never may know, the tread of any human foot.
For some minutes we lingered there, as though reluctant to quit the spot; and then, with a last lingering look at those pellucid waters, flashing dark and sullen, however, as the light moved from them, we pressed grimly on and soon were involved in a cavern so rugged and smashed that we actually began to despair of ever getting through it. But we did get through, to step suddenly out into a place as smooth almost as a floor. The slope was a gentle one, and we pressed forward at a rapid rate.
We had gone perhaps a mile and a half when Rhodes, who was walking in advance with Drorathusa, abruptly halted, cried out and pointed.
Something white was dimly visible off in the darkness. We moved toward it, the Dromans evincing a tense excitement. A cry broke from them, and they made a rush forward.
It was a mark upon the wall, a mark which they themselves had placed there. We had found the way to Drome.
"And let us hope," said I to Rhodes in the midst of the rejoicing, "that we don't lose it again."
