s infectious.
Come away!"

CHAPTER IV

THE POOL OF TERRORS

We came soon to another flight of steps made of gigantic blocks of stone
older than history, and groping our way up those we followed the Gray
Mahatma to a gallery at the top, on the other side of which was a sheer
drop and the smell of stagnant water. I could hear something sluggish
that moved in the water, and somewhere in the distance was a turning
around which light found its way so dimly that it hardly looked like
light at all, but more like filmy mist. A heavy monster splashed
somewhere beneath us and the Mahatma raised the lantern to peer into our
faces.

"Those are _muggers_ (alligators). You may see them now if you would
rather. The same as with the snakes, the rule is you must do them no
harm."

He looked at us keenly, as if making sure that we really were not
enjoying ourselves, and then leaned his weight against an iron door in a
corner. It swung open, and we followed him through into a pitch-dark
chamber of some kind. But the door we came in by had hardly slammed
behind us when a bright light broke through a square hole in the ceiling
and displayed a flight of rock-hewn steps. Some one overhead had removed
a stone plug from the hole.

The Mahatma motioned to King to go first, but as King refused he led the
way again, going through the square hole overhead as handily as any
seaman swinging himself into the cross-trees. King followed him and I
stood on the top step with head and shoulders through the opening
surveying the prospect before scrambling up after him.

I was looking between King's legs. The light came from three large
wood-fires placed over at the left end of a rectangular chamber hewn out
of solid rock. The chamber was at least a hundred feet long and thirty
wide; its roof was lost in smoke, but seemed to be irregular, as if the
walls of a natural cavern had been shaped by masons who left the high
roof as they found it.

A very nearly naked man with a long beard, hair over his shoulders, and
the general air of being some one in authority, was walking about with
nothing in his hand except a seven-jointed bamboo cane. He was a very
old man, but of magnificent physique and ribbed up like a race-horse in
training. His principal business seemed to be the supervision of several
absolutely naked individuals, who carried in wood through a dark gap in
the wall and piled it on the three fires at the farther end with almost
ludic