when I said just now: I am afraid. You did not see that."

"Come now, I'll put you to the test at once. You see that crucifix on
the altar? On that we will swear fidelity to each other and everyone
here present will also swear to preserve eternal secrecy. As, however,
we coiners cannot call God to witness, for by our trade we have rejected
him, our oaths cannot ascend to Heaven but must descend elsewhere. In
order then that our oath may be effectual, go if you have the courage,
turn the crucifix and return it to its place--only upside down."

For an instant the girl grew pale and trembled, then she advanced boldly
up to the altar, seized the crucifix and lifting it up, turned it round
and thrust it upside down into a hole that happened to be on the altar,
so that its pedestal stood up in the air.

All who were present looked on with wonder and horror.

As the girl raised the cross and put it down again reverse ways, a
mechanical involuntary jolting motion of her arms was discernible,
though her face betrayed nothing. An electrical machine hidden beneath
the altar was the cause of this shock.

"Well?" enquired Fatia Negra as she returned to her place.

"The crucifix struck me when I seized it, and struck me again when I put
it down," whispered the girl; and as she said these words she was very
pale.

"And yet you did what I told you," said Fatia Negra, placing his hand on
Anicza's shoulder. "You are a brave girl, and worthy of me."

"Comrades!" the leader of the adventurers now cried with a thundrous
voice, "come and listen to me!"

Everyone thereupon abandoned his booth, his table or his diversion and
stood in a circle round Black Mask.

"Ye know," he began, "the name of that place which is under the earth!
Its name is the grave. Ye are all of you at this moment in the grave
with me and if I wish it, dead men. Whoever would see once more the
bright sunlight of the upper world where dawn is now breaking, he must
swear that he will never at any time, drunk or sober, tell to any man
what has happened, what he has seen or heard in this underground tomb,
but will regard it all as a dream which he has forgotten on awakening.
Swear this with me in this hour! I myself will first of all repeat the
oath and ye must say whether ye are content therewith or not."

Thereupon he approached the altar whose basement formed the glass
isolating "island" which all of us who have ever seen an electrical
machine know so well. Th