tony Ferrara lived!

Utter darkness blotted out the evil vision. Then there was a white
light ahead; and feeling that he was struggling for sanity, Sime
managed to realise that Dr. Cairn, retreating along the passage, was
crying to him, in a voice rising almost to a shriek, to run--run for
his life--for his salvation!

"_You should not have fired_!" he seemed to hear.

Unconscious of any contact with the stones--although afterwards he
found his knees and shins to be bleeding--he was scrambling down that
long, sloping shaft.

He had a vague impression that Dr. Cairn, descending beneath him,
sometimes grasped his ankles and placed his feet into the footholes. A
continuous roaring sound filled his ears, as if a great ocean were
casting its storm waves against the structure around him. The place
seemed to rock.

"Down flat!"

Some sense of reality was returning to him. Now he perceived that Dr.
Cairn was urging him to crawl back along the short passage by which
they had entered from the King's Chamber.

Heedless of hurt, he threw himself down and pressed on.

A blank, like the sleep of exhaustion which follows delirium, came.
Then Sime found himself standing in the King's Chamber, Dr. Cairn, who
held an electric lamp in his hand, beside him, and half supporting
him.

The realities suddenly reasserting themselves,

"I have dropped my pistol!" muttered Sime.

He threw off the supporting arm, and turned to that corner behind the
heap of _debris_ where was the opening through which they had entered
the Satanic temple.

No opening was visible!

"He has closed it!" cried Dr. Cairn. "There are six stone doors
between here and the place above! If he had succeeded in shutting
_one_ of them before we--?"

"My God!" whispered Sime. "Let us get out! I am nearly at the end of
my tether!"

Fear lends wings, and it was with something like the lightness of a
bird that Sime descended the shaft. At the bottom--

"On to my shoulders!" he cried, looking up.

Dr. Cairn lowered himself to the foot of the shaft. "You go first," he
said.

He was gasping, as if nearly suffocated, but retained a wonderful
self-control. Once over into the Borderland, and bravery assumes a new
guise; the courage which can face physical danger undaunted, melts in
the fires of the unknown.

Sime, his breath whistling sibilantly between his clenched teeth,
hauled himself through the low passage, with incredible speed. The two
worked their way