souls in torment. It was a dolorous whistling that increased to a
shrill screeching, then died away sobbingly.

Martin listened to that weird grief all a-prickle with shivery
sensations. It was unnerving.

Nor were his companions indifferent to the sound. The four sailors
huddled quickly together and gazed fearfully into the dark opening.

Moto chopped off short the word he was saying, and Martin saw his body
stiffen and his eyes dilate. Even Ichi betrayed agitation, and Martin
saw a violent but quickly mastered emotion flit across his yellow
features.

The eery wail died quite away, and Martin's scalp stopped crawling.
Ichi turned to him with a somewhat shaken smile; Martin saw that the
Japanese gentleman's nostrils were twitching nervously, and that his
voluble speech was really an effort to regain composure.

"Have no afraid. The sound of much strangeness is from the cave of the
wind," said Ichi. "It is from the deep place. Now will come the
shake, perhaps."

The shake came on the tail of Ichi's words. A heavy, ominous rumbling
came out of the black depths. Martin recalled hearing the same sound
the day before, when he was on the topgallant-yard. And suddenly the
hard, packed sand began to crawl beneath his feet, things swayed
dizzily before his eyes, and a sharp nausea attacked the pit of his
stomach.

It was but a baby temblor, and it lasted but an instant.

Martin was not much disturbed--a lifetime in San Francisco had made
quakes a commonplace experience--but he had the sudden thought that
there were safer journeys in the world than the one he was about to
take into the heart of a half-extinct volcano. Not that the probable
danger of the trip impressed him sharply--he was too much occupied with
his plight, and desperate plan--but it was evident the Japs did not
relish the undertaking.

The four sailors and Moto were plainly terrified, and, as the trembling
and rumbling ceased, they exclaimed with awe and fear. Ichi held
himself in hand, but his mouth sagged.

"Always comes the strange noise, and then the shake," he said to
Martin. There was the hint of a quiver in his voice. "Out of the deep
place, they come--like the struggles of Evil Ones!"

He broke off to speak sharply to his men, bracing them with words.

"They are of much ignorance," he continued to Martin. "They have much
fear. They know a silly story their mothers have told them, about the
Evil Ones calling from the deep pit