But as the time went by, and there came no sign of the beasts, their spirits rose. They ceased to listen for suspicious sounds, and, though their progress was just as silent, their thoughts were fixed rather upon the end of their trip than upon the monstrous inhabitants of the jungle. What was to be the result of their quest? Would they find a way of escape through the passage whence the light came, or would their journey end in failure? They were tired of this underworld, wonderful though it was. They longed for the sunlight and the singing of birds, for the murmur of the wind amid the tree-tops. As the blind man craves for sight, so yearned they for these things.
Even Mervyn, with all his scientific zeal, would gladly have exchanged the rare treasures of the land of eternal twilight for the humbler ones of his own sphere.
So they pondered, until suddenly they were recalled to a sense of the dangers of their present position as a cry broke the stillness of the underworld, a cry so full of dreadful menace, so thrilling with murderous purpose, that the adventurers pulled up, trembling in every limb.
“Great Heaven!” Seymour cried, “what was that?”
“The terror of the jungle!” replied the Ayuti hoarsely; “look well to your weapons, for I doubt not ye will need them ere long.”
With every nerve quivering with a nameless fear, they stood for a moment, expecting, yet dreading to hear the cry again. But it did not come, and at length, shaking off the nightmare-like terror that gripped them, they pressed on, intent only on placing a safe distance between themselves and the author of the cry.
Then once more it arose, weird and terrifying, and at that Chenobi turned his steed abruptly to the right. To this course he kept for perhaps a hundred yards, then swerved again, this time to the left. Following close behind, his comrades found themselves within what at first they took to be a small valley, but a second glance corrected this impression. It was a disused quarry!
From this, perhaps, in the past ages, the great blocks had been hewn which now graced the walls of the city of Ayuti, though how they could have been conveyed such an incredible distance, and over so rough a route, passed comprehension. The implements of the long-dead quarrymen still lay where they had been left; picks and shovels of quaint and curious make were scattered over the floor, while not a few stone trolleys, broken now and useless, lay upon their sides amid the scattered clumps of fungi which managed to flourish in the crevices of the stone.
But they had no time to examine the quarry. Scarcely had the Ayuti alighted and assisted Mervyn to dismount, ere, for the third time, the cry of the jungle beast arose, and the hounds answered with their deep-throated bay. Evidently they had no fear of the creature. They seemed rather anxious than otherwise to meet him.
“He has scented us,” Chenobi announced, placing himself at the narrow entrance to the quarry. Seymour and Haverly took their stand beside him, and, fixing their eyes upon the fungi belt a few paces distant, they awaited the coming of the jungle terror. Soon came the sound as of some heavy body forcing its way swiftly through the fungi. The towering growths swayed as though shaken by a strong wind.