st the wall. It was an
abrupt question, with no apparent pertinence, but I understood.

"Heaven knows!" I answered shortly. I was none too pleased with myself.

"But it must be something. Is it an animal?"

"Do you remember," I asked by way of answer, "a treatise of Aristotle
concerning which we had a discussion one day? Its subject was the
hypnotic power possessed by the eyes of certain reptiles. I laughed
the idea to scorn; you maintained that it was possible. Well, I agree
with you; and I'd like to have about a dozen of our modern skeptical
scientists in this cave with me for about five minutes."

"But what is it? A reptile!" Harry exclaimed. "The thing is as big as
a house!"

"Well, and why not? I should guess that it is about thirty feet in
height and forty or fifty in length. There have been species, now
extinct, several times as large."

"Then you think it is just--just an animal?" put in Desiree.

"What did you think it was?" I nearly smiled. "An infernal machine?"

"I don't know. Only I have never before known what it was to fear."

A discussion which led us nowhere, but at least gave us the sound of
one another's voices.

We passed many hours in that manner. Utterly blank and wearisome, and
all but hopeless. I have often wondered at the strange tenacity with
which we clung to life in conditions that made of it a burden almost
insupportable; and with what chance of relief?

The instinct of self-preservation, it is called by the learned, but it
needs a stronger name. It is more than an instinct. It is the very
essence of life itself.

But soon we were impelled to action by something besides the desire to
escape from the cavern: the pangs of hunger. It had been many hours
since we had eaten; I think we had fasted not less than three or four
days.

Desiree began to complain of a dizziness in her temples, and to weaken
with every hour that passed. My own strength did not increase, and I
saw that it would not unless I could obtain nourishment. Harry did not
complain, but only because he would not.

"It is useless to wait longer," I declared finally. "I grow weaker
instead of stronger."

We had little enough with which to burden ourselves. There were three
spears, two of which Harry had brought, and myself the other. Harry
and I wore only our woolen undergarments, so ragged and torn that they
were but sorry covering.

Desiree's single garment, made from some soft hide, was he