en minutes after that there was no more firing. My skin, more
than my ears, brought to my brain the information that there were others
somewhere in the thick darkness, but the little air tremors that came to
me were so faint that it was impossible to tell in which direction they
were. I had lost all trace of Holman. With extreme caution I crawled
toward what I thought to be the spot where I had left him, but my
groping fingers found only the fragments of bone that covered the dusty
floor of the charnel house.

I sat in the dust and endeavoured to make my addled brains direct me as
to the best course to pursue. The silence led me to infer that Leith and
his party, who were evidently familiar with the cave, were making for
the passage by which we had entered the place, and a cold chill passed
over me as my imagination pictured Leith, One Eye, and the oily dancers
waiting for Holman and me in the narrow corridor. To escape from the
place immediately was our only chance, and with a courage born of terror
conjured up by the thoughts of imprisonment in that place of skulls, I
started to crawl rapidly into the dark.

I had not proceeded half a dozen yards when my hand touched a bare leg,
and I drew back hastily. With madly pounding heart I crouched in the
dust, waiting for an attack, but as I waited I convinced myself that the
leg had not been drawn back when my fingers encountered it. With my
right hand clubbing my revolver, I reached my left out cautiously, and
once again my fingers came in contact with the bare limb. The fear left
me at that moment. I was back at the spot where I had fired at an unseen
foe some fifteen minutes before, and the body near me was the victim of
my lucky bullet.

Carefully I felt the dead man. He wore a large feather cloak and a tall
headdress, and I concluded that he was one of the wriggling brutes whose
performance we had watched in the cave. In the dust, beside the body, my
fingers found his revolver, and the fact that he had been armed at the
moment his party came unexpectedly upon us was more proof, if proof were
needed, that Leith's tactics were anything but straightforward.

Securing the revolver, I started to crawl away, but a sudden inspiration
came to me. I stripped the parrot-feather mat and the headdress from
the corpse and donned them over my own clothing. In the darkness
recognition was made through the fingers, and as there were eight
enemies in the cavern and only one friend, I