"Yes; we have our revolvers. But we don't know what's coming."
"There!" Rhodes exclaimed, his voice a whisper. "We'll soon know. Did you hear that?"
"I heard it. And there it is again!"
"It's coming, Bill!"
It was coming. What were we to see issue from that passage? I gripped my revolver and waited in a suspense that was simply agonizing. The sound ceased. It came again. It was a pad-pad. Once or twice another sound was heard. I thought that that one was produced by something brushing along the wall.
"Look!" I said, crouching forward. "Light!"
The rays grew stronger, casting long shadows—shadows swaying, shaking, crawling.
Then of a sudden the light itself appeared, and a tall figure came gliding out of the passage.
"Drorathusa!" exclaimed Milton Rhodes.
This sudden lurch from agonized suspense and Gorgonic imagination to glad reality left me for some seconds speechless.