“Come, get on, old fellow,” said Good, “or we shall lose our fair guide.”

Thus adjured, I started down the passage, and after about twenty paces found myself in a gloomy apartment some forty feet long, by thirty broad, and thirty high, which in some past age evidently had been hollowed, by hand-labour, out of the mountain.  This apartment was not nearly so well lighted as the vast stalactite ante-cave, and at the first glance all I could discern was a massive stone table running down its length, with a colossal white figure at its head, and life-sized white figures all round it.  Next I discovered a brown thing, seated on the table in the centre, and in another moment my eyes grew accustomed to the light, and I saw what all these things were, and was tailing out of the place as hard as my legs could carry me.

I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free to own that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir Henry caught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that in another five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite cave, and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not have induced me to enter it again.  But he held me tight, so I stopped because I could not help myself.  Next second, however, his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mop the perspiration off his forehead.  As for Good, he swore feebly, while Foulata threw her arms round his neck and shrieked.

Only Gagool chuckled loud and long.

It was a ghastly sight.  There at the end of the long stone table, holding in his skeleton fingers a great white spear, sat Death himself, shaped in the form of a colossal human skeleton, fifteen feet or more in height.  High above his head he held the spear, as though in the act to strike; one bony hand rested on the stone table before him, in the position a man assumes on rising from his seat, whilst his frame was bent forward so that the vertebrae of the neck and the grinning, gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow eye-places upon us, the jaws a little open, as though it were about to speak.

“Great heavens!” said I faintly, at last, “what can it be?”

“And what are those things?” asked Good, pointing to the white company round the table.

“And what on earth is that thing?” said Sir Henry, pointing to the brown creature seated on the table.

“Hee! hee! hee!” laughed Gagool.  “To those who enter the Hall of the Dead, evil comes. Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!”

“Come, Incubu, brave in battle, come and see him thou slewest;” and the old creature caught Curtis’ coat in her skinny fingers, and led him away towards the table.  We followed.