“Then if you will be so good as to choose another for us to return by, I shall be much obliged to you, Oro,” said Bastin.

“How do you know that if I did it would not be more terrible, Preacher?  How do you know indeed that this is not your last journey from which there is no return?”

“Of course I can’t be sure of anything, Oro, but I think the question is one which you might more appropriately put to yourself.  According to your own showing you are now extremely old and therefore your end is likely to come at any moment.  Of course, however, if it did you would have one more journey to make, but it wouldn’t be polite for me to say in what direction.”

Oro heard, and his splendid, icy face was twisted with sudden rage.  Remembering the scene in the temple where he had grovelled before his god, uttering agonised, unanswered prayers for added days, I understood the reason of his wrath.  It was so great that I feared lest he should kill Bastin (who only a few hours before, be it remembered, had tried to kill him) then and there, as doubtless he could have done if he wished.  Fortunately, if he felt it; the impulse passed.

“Miserable fool!” he said.  “I warn you to keep a watch upon your words.  Yesterday you would have slain me with your toy.  Today you stab me with your ill-omened tongue.  Be fearful lest I silence it for ever.”

“I am not in the least fearful, Oro, since I am sure that you can’t hurt me at all any more than I could hurt you last night because, you see, it wasn’t permitted.  When the time comes for me to die, I shall go, but you will have nothing to do with that.  To tell the truth, I am very sorry for you, as with all your greatness, your soul is of the earth, earthy, also sensual and devilish, as the Apostle said, and, I am afraid, very malignant, and you will have a great deal to answer for shortly.  Yours won’t be a happy deathbed, Oro, because, you see, you glory in your sins and don’t know what repentance means.”

I must add that when I heard these words I was filled with the most unbounded admiration for Bastin’s fearless courage which enabled him thus to beard this super-tyrant in his den.  So indeed were we all, for I read it in Yva’s face and heard Bickley mutter: 

“Bravo!  Splendid!  After all there is something in faith!”

Even Oro appreciated it with his intellect, if not with his heart, for he stared at the man and made no answer.  In the language of the ring, he was quite “knocked out” and, almost humbly, changed the subject.

“We have yet a little while,” he said, “before that happens which I have decreed.  Come, Humphrey, that I may show you some of the marvels of this bubble blown in the bowels of the world,” and he motioned to us to pick up the lanterns.

Then he led us away from the wall of the cavern, if such it was, for a distance of perhaps six or seven hundred paces.  Here suddenly we came to a great groove in the rocky floor, as broad as a very wide roadway, and mayhap four feet in depth.  The bottom of this groove was polished and glittered; indeed it gave us the impression of being iron, or other ore which had been welded together beneath the grinding of some immeasurable weight.  Just at the spot where we struck the groove, it divided into two, for this reason.