a
reached the steps on the far side and stood, out of the water waiting
for us, all the monsters that had watched his progress came and joined
our party; and now, instead of keeping to the water, two of them climbed
up on the causeway, so that there was one of the creatures behind us and
two in front.

"Call off your cousins and your uncles and your aunts!" I shouted,
bearing in mind the Hindu creed that consigns the souls of unrighteous
men to the bodies of animals in retribution for their sins.

The Gray Mahatma picked up a short pole from the embankment, and
returned into the water with it, not striking out right and left as any
ordinary-minded person would have done, but shoving the brutes away
gently one by one, as if they were logs or small boats. And even so,
they followed us so closely that they climbed the steps abreast of us.

But I'm willing to bet that there is not an alligator living that can
catch me once my feet are set on hard ground, and I can say the same for
King; we danced up those steps together like a pair of fauns emerging
from a forest pool.

Then the Gray Mahatma came and peered into our faces, and asked an
extraordinary question.

"Do you feel proud?" he asked, looking keenly from one to the other of
us. "Because," he went on to explain, "you have now crossed the Pool of
Terrors, and they are not so many who accomplish that. The _muggers_ are
well fed. And those who reach to this side are usually proud, believing
they now have the secret key to the attainment of all Knowledge. You are
going to see now what becomes of the proud ones."

The Mahatma led us forward toward a long, dark shadow that transformed
itself into a temple wall as we drew closer, and in a moment we were
once more groping our way downward amid prehistoric foundation stones,
with bats flitting past us and a horrible feeling possessing me, at
least, that the worst was yet to come.

The hunch proved accurate. We came into an enormous crypt that evidently
underlay a temple. Great pillars of natural rock, practically square and
twenty feet thick, supported the roof, which was partly of natural rock
and partly of jointed masonry. There was nothing in the crypt itself,
except one old gray-beard, who sat on a mat by a candle, reading a roll
of manuscript; and he did not trouble to look up--did not take the
slightest notice of us.

But around the crypt there were more cells than I could count off-hand.
Some were dark. There w