“Drop it,” said Mr. Hume, sternly.

“But why?”

“Look at this.”  Mr. Hume pointed to a square block in the centre of, the room—­a block all stained with dark streaks that came from a basin in the centre.  Venning approached it.  “Blood—­perhaps a sacrificial stone.”

“And this,” said Mr. Hume, pointing to a bone projecting from one of the pots.  “They are man-eaters.”

Venning put down the skull and looked with a white face at his companion.

“Cannibals!  That is why they tried to kill us last night.”

The Hunter nodded his head.  “I did not want to tell you, but I could not stand a lecture on skulls.”

“Let us go.”

“First let us take a couple of these mats.  Cut up, they would serve as torches at a pinch.”  He tied one on Venning’s back and one on his own.  “Forward!”

When they wished to proceed, however, they could not find the continuation of the passage, and, to their dismay, it seemed as if they would have to retrace their steps in search for another way out, when behind a hanging mat in the left-hand corner they found a narrow opening.  It was not inviting, but they were glad of any path that led away from that evil place, and away also from the lower depths.  So, though the way became more and more difficult as they advanced, they continued to press on, now up, now down, at another place going on their hands and knees, and further on having to wriggle between cracks which sorely nipped the Hunter as he forced his heavy frame through.  And in the end they came out on the verge of the vast vault, which appeared to fill so much of the space below; emerged on a wind-swept platform, with a sudden din after the quiet of the tortuous passage as of demons shrieking through the air.

Here Venning gave up.  He had been now over twenty-four hours underground without one good meal, except the drain of goats’-milk, and after the shock of the previous afternoon, when he hung in mid-air, the disappointment at coming upon another forbidding pit was too much for him.  He crouched back against the rock, and sat down.

Mr. Hume spread the mat under the boy, wrapped the kaross over him, and made him comfortable as could be, and then he looked anxiously about.  Little comfort did he gain.  They had evidently pursued a false trail, and the platform was the end, standing sheer on the edge of that very vaulted space, down which, far down, the jets of water shot out through the blow-holes.  Their windings had brought them, after all, to an impasse, and the only retreat was through the chamber of the skulls, where perhaps the savage beings of the underground vault were already collected.  Looking over and down, he could see the jets of water shooting out to fall in a mantle of spray, on which the arrow-like shafts of sunlight sparkled in iridescent hues, and through the spray he could see the white waters of the cataract.  Above his head there was a jutting rock, which shut out the wall immediately above, but outside the rock he saw the roof of the vault, gaunt ribs of rock pierced at intervals by fissures, through which shone the blue of the sky.  Turning to Venning, he saw that the boy’s eyes were fixed on those openings with a longing in his look that wrung the man’s heart.