Stern had only time to see that she was as yet unharmed when with a quick slash of a blade somebody cut the thongs that bound his feet.
Then he was pushed forward, away from the dim and ghostly sea up an acclivity of smooth black pebbles all wet with mist.
Limping stiffly, by reason of his cramped muscles, he stumbled onward, while all about him and behind him--as about the girl, who followed--came the throng of these strange people.
Their squinting, pinkish eyes and pallid faces showed ghastly by the torch-glare, as, murmuring among themselves in their incomprehensible yet strangely familiar tongue, they climbed the slope.
Even then, even there on that unknown beach beside an uncharted sea at the bottom of the fathomless abyss, Stern thought with joy of his revolver which still swung on his hip.
“God knows how we're going to talk to these people,” reflected he, “or what sort of trouble they've got ready to hand out to us. But, once I get my right hand free--I'm ready for whatever comes!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE DUNGEON OF THE SKELETONS
As the two interlopers from the outer world moved up the slippery beach toward the great, mist-dimmed flare, escorted by the strange and spectral throng, Stern had time to analyze some factors of the situation.
It was evident that diplomacy was now--unless in a sharp crisis--the only role to play. How many of these people there might be he could not tell. The present gathering he estimated at about a hundred and fifty or a hundred and seventy-five; and moment by moment more were coming down the slope, looming through the vapor, each carrying a cresset on a staff or a swinging light attached to a chain.
“The village or settlement, or whatever it is,” thought he, “may contain hundreds of them, thousands perhaps. And we are only two! The last thing in the world we want is a fight. But if it comes to fighting, Beatrice and I with our backs to the wall could certainly make a mighty good showing against barbarians such as these.