We two drew very near together, and I laid my hand upon Gerry’s shoulder for mere support of a warm and sentient body. The fog of our startled breathings went up steamingly in the air. It smoked like incense before a yet sacred shrine of evil. We gasped as those who seek fresh air in a stuffy atmosphere, and at the same time huddled to one another for warmth. Never in any other condition of heat or cold do I remember to have experienced a freezingly hot oppression.
There were thirty of these poor hapless souls; all were face to earth, with garments hanging about them by mere stillness of pose. Their hands were yellow and claw-like, and were spread abroad upon the pavement. Their faces were swathed in brown hoods that covered their features utterly. Their bony, shrunken outlines showed haggard through the musty rags that clothed them.
We looked questioningly in each other’s eyes before we laid hands upon the rigid kneeling form nearest us. We raised the low-laid face from the floor and turned it towards the scanty light.
The wrinkled features were drawn and crisp with the dryness of a hundred frozen years; the deep-sunk eyes were blurred—the smoothness of the pupils dulled to roughness by the shrinking of the temporal muscles and nerves. As we moved the head, a tooth or two clattered on the floor from the dried, fleshless gums, and gleamed white against the dust. The arms, set stiffly in their parchmenty skin, flopped helplessly abroad as we raised the body from its crouching position. The joints were tense as the bones. The whole body moved as one solid piece, as if it had been run into an invisible mould. Across the drawn forehead was a white band, and on it was broadly sealed the similitude of the great Beast. On the floor in patches remained a few rags of the texture of the rotten clothing.
Silently we gazed on this luckless remnant of a long-forgotten religion and race; then the ghastliness of the thing crowded upon our nerves fearsomely. Reverently we placed the poor gaunt body in its original position, and turned hastily to the door. We shivered as we gained the portico, and I passed the flask to Gerry. At the moment he gulped at the spirit the rope came flapping and uncoiling down the ice-hill opposite, and slipped up almost to our feet.
I sprang forward to catch it up; and began briskly to knot a running loop at the end of it. Gerry eyed me with approval.
“That’s right, old chap,” he remarked. “Up you go.”
I wasted no time or words in argument, being well aware that he would defend for half-an-hour if necessary his proposition that I should have the first chance of ascent. I merely smiled upon him compassionately, reeving a deft hangman’s knot. This done I flung myself suddenly upon my companion, threw the loop over his shoulders and drew it tight beneath his arm-pits. Then I yelled lustily, dragging at the rope with hearty tugs.
Amid the faint echo of an answering shout from above, I had the pleasure of seeing my friend fly swiftly toward the roof of the cavern, using language which might well have melted the adjoining ice. In a very halo of cursing his legs disappeared into the intricacies of the ice-dome, his feet kicking extravagantly at space and dislodging an occasional icicle upon me like a malediction. There was silence, and I was left alone with the ceaseless drip and the dreamy tinkle of the underground waterway.
I will own that for the few moments I was left companionless in the near presence of that musty ring of shrivelled corpses I felt as uncomfortable as I remember to have felt in my life.