Nothing invited them there in the look of that house, but they were now in such a forbidding waste that shelter had to be found; they were all among edges of rock as black as the night and hard as the material of which Cosmos was formed, at first upon Chaos’ brink.  The sound of their climbing ran noisily up the mountain but no sound came from the house:  only the shadows moved more swiftly across a room, passed into other rooms and came hurrying back.  Sometimes the shadows stayed and seemed to peer; and when the travellers stood and watched to see what they were they would disappear and there were no shadows at all, and the rooms were filled instead with their wondering speculation.  Then they pushed on over rocks that seemed never trodden by man, so sharp were they and slanting, all piled together:  it seemed the last waste, to which all shapeless rocks had been thrown.

Morano and these black rocks seemed shaped by a different scheme; indeed the rocks had never been shaped at all, they were just raw pieces of Chaos.  Morano climbed over their edges with moans and discomfort.  Rodriguez heard him behind him and knew by his moans when he came to the top of each sharp rock.

The rocks became savager, huger, even more sharp and more angular.  They were there in the dark in multitudes.  Over these Rodriguez staggered, and Morano clambered and tumbled; and so they came, breathing hard, to the lonely house.

In the wall that their hands had reached there was no door, so they felt along it till they came to the corner, and beyond the corner was the front wall of the house.  In it was the front door.  But so nearly did this door open upon the abyss that the bats that fled from their coming, from where they hung above the door of oak, had little more to do than fall from their crannies, slanting ever so slightly, to find themselves safe from man in the velvet darkness, that lay between cliffs so lonely they were almost strangers to Echo.  And here they floated upon errands far from our knowledge; while the travellers coming along the rocky ledge between destruction and shelter, knocked on the oaken door.

The sound of their knocking boomed huge and slow through the house as though they had struck the door of the very mountain.  And no one came.  And then Rodriguez saw dimly in the darkness the great handle of a bell, carved like a dragon running down the wall:  he pulled it and a cry of pain arose from the basement of the house.

Even Morano wondered.  It was like a terrible spirit in distress.  It was long before Rodriguez dare touch the handle again.  Could it have been the bell?  He felt the iron handle and the iron chain that went up from it.  How could it have been the bell!  The bell had not sounded:  he had not pulled hard enough:  that scream was fortuitous.  The night on that rocky ledge had jangled his nerves.  He pulled again and more firmly.  The answering scream was more terrible.  Rodriguez could doubt no longer, as he sprang back from the bell-handle, that with the chain he had pulled he inflicted some unknown agony.