t some forty feet long, by thirty
broad, and thirty high, which in some past age evidently had been
hollowed, by hand-labour, out of the mountain. This apartment was not
nearly so well lighted as the vast stalactite ante-cave, and at the
first glance all I could discern was a massive stone table running down
its length, with a colossal white figure at its head, and life-sized
white figures all round it. Next I discovered a brown thing, seated on
the table in the centre, and in another moment my eyes grew accustomed
to the light, and I saw what all these things were, and was tailing out
of the place as hard as my legs could carry me.

I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with
superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free to
own that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir Henry
caught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that in
another five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite cave,
and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not have
induced me to enter it again. But he held me tight, so I stopped
because I could not help myself. Next second, however, _his_ eyes
became accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mop
the perspiration off his forehead. As for Good, he swore feebly, while
Foulata threw her arms round his neck and shrieked.

Only Gagool chuckled loud and long.

It _was_ a ghastly sight. There at the end of the long stone table,
holding in his skeleton fingers a great white spear, sat _Death_
himself, shaped in the form of a colossal human skeleton, fifteen feet
or more in height. High above his head he held the spear, as though in
the act to strike; one bony hand rested on the stone table before him,
in the position a man assumes on rising from his seat, whilst his frame
was bent forward so that the vertebrae of the neck and the grinning,
gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow eye-places
upon us, the jaws a little open, as though it were about to speak.

"Great heavens!" said I faintly, at last, "what can it be?"

"And what are _those things_?" asked Good, pointing to the white
company round the table.

"And what on earth is _that thing_?" said Sir Henry, pointing to the
brown creature seated on the table.

"_Hee! hee! hee!_" laughed Gagool. "To those who enter the Hall of the
Dead, evil comes. _Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!_"

"Come, Incubu, brave in battle, com