Prisoners of Chance

Wherever there was fire burning there must, of necessity, be attendants to feed the flame, but I could detect no sign of life, no sign of any kind, other than the crackling of the blazing log, and the heavy breathing of my companion. The silence oppressed me.

"Go to the right," I advised at last, nervous from inaction, "I will try the left, until we meet again. Keep close against the wall, and move with care."

"'Tis not wholly unlike a visit to hell," he muttered gloomily, "but I am weary of lying shivering here."

I watched the fellow creep forward on his knees, his brilliant head-covering revealed in the glare like a flame. Then I took up my own part of this work of exploration. I had compassed half my distance amid profound stillness, perceiving nothing strange, and constantly feeling more intensely the solemn loneliness of the place, which by now, to my awakened imagination, appeared peopled with bloodless victims of heathen superstition. I felt no doubt this was a torture chamber; that many a hapless slave, or shrieking captive, had yielded up life in agony upon the summit of the gloomy pile, and the haunting spectres seemed to grin at me with distorted faces from every crevice along the walls. I was weakly yielding to such weird dreams, when a wild, shrill scream rang forth from the darkness in front. The cry contained such note of affright that, for an instant, I connected it with the fantasies which thronged my brain. I stood still, rooted to the spot, the blood curdling in my veins, my eyes straining in vain effort to pierce the darkness. Then there arose a roar not unlike that of an angry lion; the sound of a fierce struggle; the dull thud of a blow, and Cairnes's deep voice boomed forth.

"Ye black-faced villain! 'T is the strength of the righteous you have felt this day. Blessed be the name of the Lord, who hath given me the victory! Lie there in your sins, and no longer affront your Maker."

I sprang eagerly forward, but at my first step came into contact with a fleeing figure, which rounded the end of the altar in such blind terror as nearly to hurl me from my feet. I grasped at the floating robe, but missed, and the next instant was rushing blindly after the fellow down the dark passage toward where the moonlight silvered the outer rocks. Fright gave him wings, but desperate determination lightened my feet, and I was nearly upon him when the fleeing man rounded the great rock. One instant he paused, glancing behind. What he saw, or imagined he saw, I have no means of knowing; perchance some shrieking victim of his foul rites risen from the dead. With one wild, echoing cry, which rang in my ears like the scream of a lost soul, he gave a mad leap out into the air, and went plunging down to the jagged rocks at the base. Sick and pulseless I drew back. Trembling in every limb, even in the silence which followed I could detect no sound of his body as it struck the earth. I crept to the edge, lying prone upon my face, and looked over. The moonlight ended a hundred feet beneath me; beyond its line there was nothing but a black void. There could be no question as to what had occurred--the man was dead. I made my way back into the cave seeking to discover what had befallen the Puritan. I found him at the farther extremity of the great altar, calmly enjoying a quantity of cold meat he had discovered. He was squatting upon the floor, in close proximity to the motionless, extended figure of a savage arrayed in the black garments of the priesthood. They formed a picture so startlingly grotesque I could but stare in amazement.