ersack about his neck,
well above the surface of the water, and in his left hand he carried
his knife. Other precautions there were none to take.

The monotony of the blind trail was increased by the fact that from the
moment he had started from the foot of the ladder he had counted his
every step. He had promised to return for An-Tak if it proved humanly
possible to do so, and he knew that in the blackness of the tunnel he
could locate the foot of the ladder in no other way.

He had taken two hundred and sixty-nine steps--afterward he knew that
he should never forget that number--when something bumped gently
against him from behind. Instantly he wheeled about and with knife
ready to defend himself stretched forth his right hand to push away the
object that now had lodged against his body. His fingers feeling
through the darkness came in contact with something cold and
clammy--they passed to and fro over the thing until Bradley knew that
it was the face of a dead man floating upon the surface of the stream.
With an oath he pushed his gruesome companion out into mid-stream to
float on down toward the great pool and the awaiting scavengers of the
deep.

At his four hundred and thirteenth step another corpse bumped against
him--how many had passed him without touching he could not guess; but
suddenly he experienced the sensation of being surrounded by dead faces
floating along with him, all set in hideous grimaces, their dead eyes
glaring at this profaning alien who dared intrude upon the waters of
this river of the dead--a horrid escort, pregnant with dire forebodings
and with menace.

Though he advanced very slowly, he tried always to take steps of about
the same length; so that he knew that though considerable time had
elapsed, yet he had really advanced no more than four hundred yards
when ahead he saw a lessening of the pitch-darkness, and at the next
turn of the stream his surroundings became vaguely discernible. Above
him was an arched roof and on either hand walls pierced at intervals by
apertures covered with wooden doors. Just ahead of him in the roof of
the aqueduct was a round, black hole about thirty inches in diameter.
His eyes still rested upon the opening when there shot downward from it
to the water below the naked body of a human being which almost
immediately rose to the surface again and floated off down the stream.
In the dim light Bradley saw that it was a dead Wieroo from which the
wings a