ad spectacles."

Then a sensation as of being whirled round and round in some vast
machine, down the sloping sides of which I sank at last into a vortex of
utter blackness, whereof I knew the name was death.

Dimly, very dimly, I became aware that I was being carried. I heard
voices in my ears, but what they said I could not understand. Then a
feeling of light struck upon my eyeballs which gave me great pain. Agony
ran all through me as it does through the limbs of one who is being
brought back from death by drowning. After this something warm was
poured down my throat, and I went to sleep.

When I awoke again it was to find myself in a large room that I did not
know. I was lying on a bed, and by the light of sunrise which streamed
through the window-places I saw the three others, my son Roderick, Orme
and Higgs lying on the other beds, but they were still asleep.

Abati servants entered the room bringing food, a kind of rough soup with
pieces of meat in it of which they gave me a portion in a wooden bowl
that I devoured greedily. Also they shook my companions until they awoke
and almost automatically ate up the contents of similar bowls, after
which they went to sleep again, as I did, thanking heaven that we were
all still alive.

Every few hours I had a vision of these men entering with the bowls
of soup or porridge, until at last life and reason came back to me in
earnest, and I saw Higgs sitting up on the bed opposite and staring at
me.

"I say, old fellow," he said, "are we alive, or is this Hades?"

"Can't be Hades," I answered, "because there are Abati here."

"Quite right," he replied. "If the Abati go anywhere, it's to hell,
where they haven't whitewashed walls and four-post beds. Oliver, wake
up. We are out of that cave, anyway."

Orme raised himself on his hand and stared at us.

"Where's Maqueda?" he asked, a question to which of course, we could
give no answer, till presently Roderick woke also and said:

"I remember something. They carried us all out of the cave; Japhet was
with them. They took the Child of Kings one way and us another, that is
all I know."

Shortly afterwards the Abati servants arrived, bearing food more solid
than the soup, and with them came one of their doctors, not that old
idiot of a court physician, who examined us, and announced that
we should all recover, a fact which we knew already. We asked many
questions of him and the servants, but could get no answer, for
evid