sand deaths. In my
terror I made no attempt to arrest my downward course. Stones and dust
rattled past my ears, flashes, as of sparks, in front of my brain; then
I stopped.

"At first I hardly dared open my eyes, but, feeling the grip on my leg
relax, I looked beneath, shuddering, fearful as to what my glance might
rest upon--I who had boasted that I knew not fear.

"As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I made out little slanting
rays of light penetrating from somewhere. I could see a vaulted rock
wall above, around. But beneath?

"The black darkness of another pit, wherein voices were murmuring,
shapes were moving. Ha! the vision of the wizard's _muti_! And as I
looked, claws shot upward to seize me. All the old horror which had
overwhelmed me in Masuka's hut came back to me now--the vision of the
living creatures; shadowy, shapeless, hideous; mouthing and gnashing to
draw me down. That frightful grip was again upon my legs, and,
struggling, gasping, amid a cloud of dust and falling shingle, I was
dragged down with a violent crash to the bottom of the pit.

"And now I could see I was beset by a number of the most grisly and
horrible shapes the eyes of man ever beheld, for it was not quite dark
in this evil hole. Frightful heads, with flattened skulls, and huge,
champing jaws and horn-like ears, were wagging over me as I lay, and a
bony claw put forth gripped me by the throat in the iron grip of
strangulation, and with a growling, worrying snarl more than one pair of
teeth seized me in different parts of the body.

"Then, desperate at the prospect of being torn in pieces and devoured by
these foul and loathsome creatures, with the very despair of terror I
put forth all my strength, and whirling my knobstick, it met and crashed
against what felt like a head. There was a most blood-chilling yell of
wild dismay; then these hideous ghosts flung themselves from me and fled
shrieking.

"As I leaped to my feet, shivering with the horror of this awful fate,
my eyes becoming more accustomed to the darkness, I made out that I was
in a great square chamber, on the floor of which lay several skulls.

"The odour which rose up from this was unspeakably fearful, and as the
shafts of light came in stronger I could make out six or eight shapes--
human shapes, I was going to say; but they were as the skeletons of
baboons with dry bags of skin hung around them, and they had huge heads.
They were huddled together on