Dodging quickly to one side, she dropped the crowbar and drew her revolver. Holding it straight before her, ready to fire at the first sign of a hostile advance, she listened breathlessly.
To her amazement, there was no sound; not the slightest indication of movement in the awful darkness. She supposed the enemy must be maneuvering to take her from some unexpected quarter. But she could not understand how it could be managed in that inky blackness without giving her some audible sign.
Feeling that she must have something firmer than mere space behind her, Dorothy retreated, keeping her pistol leveled. With her left hand she groped behind her and when she felt the solid timber, she leaned back against it, waiting.
Seconds dragged like hours and still there was no sound. Gradually, Dorothy’s nerves were beginning to quiet down.
“Well, this is darned queer,” she thought, “maybe that person is making tracks out of here. I can’t just stand still and do nothing, anyway.”
She began to move forward very cautiously. When she had covered ten short paces, she stopped and listened again. Absolute stillness everywhere, stillness pervaded by the strange, dank smell of unsunned earth and the musty rot of roots and wood.
But this time Dorothy fancied she could hear a faint, very faint sound of breathing. At first she thought it was her own, reechoing from the walls of the dark cavern. Then she held her breath and listened once more. There was some one else in this subterranean chamber.
“Well, here goes,” she said with closed lips. “It’s now or never. I can’t stand this much longer!”
But she had only taken a single step when the same chill of horror and fright raced over her again. Her revolver muzzle had touched something apparently alive and yielding, the clothed body of someone who stood motionless as before.
“Hold it! hold it!” she cried, her teeth chattering. “Don’t move or I’ll plug you!”