Then she moved and appeared to acquiesce.  I started ahead; Harry brought up the rear, with an arm round Desiree’s shoulders.  She started once more to speak, but I wheeled sharply with a command for silence, and she obeyed.

We reached the turn in the corridor and passed to the right, moving as swiftly and noiselessly as possible.  Ahead of us was the light from the doorway of the room in which we had formerly been imprisoned.

We had nearly reached it when I saw, some distance down the corridor, moving forms.  The light was very dim, but there appeared to be a great many of them.

I turned, with a swift gesture to Harry and Desiree to follow, and dashed forward to the light and through the doorway into the room.  Discovery was inevitable, I thought, in any event, but it was better to meet them at the door to the room than in the open passage.  And we had our spears.

But by a rare stroke of luck we had not been seen.  As we stood within the room on either side of the doorway, out of the line of view from the corridor, we heard the patter of many footsteps approaching.

They neared the doorway, and I glanced at Harry, pointing to his spear significantly.  He gave me a nod of understanding.  Let them come; we would not again fall into their hands alive.

The footsteps sounded just without the doorway; I stood tense and alert, with spear ready, expecting a rush momentarily.  Then they passed, passed altogether, and receded down the corridor in the direction whence we had come.  I wanted to glance out at their number, but dared not.  We stood still till all was again perfectly silent.

Then Desiree spoke in a whisper: 

“It is useless; we are lost.  That was the king.  He is going to my room.  In ten seconds he will be there and find me gone.”

There was only one thing to do, and I wasted no time in discussing it.  A swift command to Harry, and we dashed from the doorway and down the corridor to the left, each holding an arm of Desiree.  But she needed little of our assistance; the presence of the Inca king seemed to have inspired her with a boundless terror, and she flew, rather than ran, between us.

We reached the bend in the passage, and just beyond it the light—­the first one we had seen on our way in.  I had our route marked on my memory with complete distinctness.  Soon we found ourselves in the wide, sloping passage that carried us to the level below, and in another five seconds had reached its end and the beginning of the last stretch.

At the turn Harry stumbled and fell flat, dragging Desiree to her knees.  I lifted her, and he sprang to his feet unhurt.

She was panting heavily.  Harry had dropped his spear in the fall, and we wasted a precious minute searching for it in the darkness, finally finding it where it had slid, some twenty feet ahead.  Again we dashed forward.

A light appeared ahead in the distance, dim but unmistakable —­the light of the urns in the cavern for which we were headed.  Suddenly Desiree faltered and would have fallen but for our supporting arms.