In due time the great nervous antidote is passed and replaced, and then, with the lighted lanterns worked around under their arms, they go down the tottering ladder.  Down they go into a great, damp, musty cavern, to which their lights give a pallid illumination.

“See here,” says old MORTARITY, raising a long, curved bone from the floor.  “Look at that:  shoulder-blade of unmarried Episcopal lady, aged thirty-nine.”

“How do you know she was so old, and unmarried?” asks the organist.

“Because the shoulder-blade’s so sharp.”

Mr. Bumstead is surprised at this specimen of the art of an AGASSIZ and Waterhouse Hawkins in such a mortary old man, and his intellectual pride causes him to resolve at once upon a rival display.

“Look at this skull, John McLAUGHLIN,” he says, referring to an object that he has found behind the ladder.  “See thish fine, retreating brow, bulging chin, projecting occipital bone, and these orifices of ears that musht’ve been stupen’sly long.  It’s the skull, John McLAUGHLIN, of a twin-brother of the man who really wished—­really wished, John McLAUGHLIN—­that he could be sat’shfied, sir, in his own mind, that Charles Dickens was a Christian writer.”

“Why, thash’s skull of a hog,” explains Mr. McLAUGHLIN, with some contempt.

“Twin-brother—­all th’shame,” says Mr. Bumstead, as though that made no earthly difference.

Once more, what a strange expedition is this!  How strangely the eyes of the two men look, after two or three more applications to the antique flask; and how curiously Mr. Bumstead walks on tip-toe at times and takes short leaps now and then.

“Lesh go now,” says Bumstead, after both have been asleep upon their feet several times; “I think th’s snakes down here, John McBUMSTEAD.”

“Wh’st! monkies, you mean,—­dozens of black monkies, Mr. BUMPLIN,” whispers old MORTARITY, clutching his arm as he sinks against him.

“Noshir!  Serp’nts!” insists Mr. Bumstead, making futile attempts to open his umbrella with one hand.  “Warzesmarrer with th’ light?—­ansh’r me t’ once, Mac JOHNBUNKLIN!”

In their swayings under the confusions and delusions of the vault, their lanterns have worked around to the neighborhoods of their spines, so that, whichever way they turn, the light is all behind them.  Greatly agitated, as men are apt to be when surrounded by supernatural influences, they do not perceive the cause of this apparently unnatural illumination; and, upon turning round and round in irregular circles, and still finding the light in the wrong place, they exhibit signs of great trepidation.

“Warzemarrer wirra light?” repeats Mr. Bumstead, spinning wildly until he brings up against the wall.

“Ishgotb’witched, I b’lieve,” pants Mr. McLAUGHLIN, whirling as frenziedly with his own lantern dangling behind him, and coming to an abrupt pause against the opposite wall.