“Well, old chap,” I said; “here we are!”
The sound of my voice, clanging in a vaulted space, gave me a start.
“O!” I exclaimed; and the monosyllable rolled away into the darkness like a barrel.
We scrambled up, while it was still echoing, and catching involuntarily at one another, looked fearfully about us. At a height of twelve feet or so behind us shone the opening through which we had entered. It made a great splotch of light, with a dim tail running fanlike from it down the slope by which we had fallen. The effect to us, standing possessed by gloom, was as of our being involved in the tail of a comet. So long as we looked that way, it dazzled and perplexed us. We turned our backs on it.
Then, gradually, the obscure details of the place gathered coherence; and we saw that we were standing in a low vaulted chamber, giving at its further end upon a sewer-like mouth of blackness.
“Dicky,” said Harry, in a rather tremulous whisper, “have you got the candles and lucifers all safe? This is p-p-prime, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I gulped, to either question. But I answered without heart, being sick to postpone the advance, by whatever means, for a little.
“Don’t let me go, you old idiot!” I complained in a panic, as he made as if to step forward. “Supposing we lost one another. Ha-Harry, do you know what I saw under my arm as you p-pulled me up outside there?”
“No. What?”
“Rampick—the b-beast—scuttling for the Gap. He must have been watching us again, hidden below somewhere this time; and like enough now he’s making for the cliff overhead.”