"I heard nothing."
"I heard something, I tell you. That mystery with the eyes is not the only thing that is watching us, watching us and waiting."
Some moments passed, perhaps minutes, in expectant watching, our glances incessantly darting about the cavern, through which the light-mist was moving in troubled, writhing streams, the nebulous, spectral glow of it seeming to enhance the fearsome gloom of that dreadful place.
"I see nothing," Rhodes said at last, "and the cavern is as silent as a tomb."
"But we are seen. And, if we don't get out of this, it may be our tomb."
"I don't think it's as bad as that. But the Dromans are signing to us to come on—let us hope to a place more pleasant than this one."
I had turned to quit the spot, my look, however, lingering in that direction whence had come those low, mysterious sounds, a direction right opposite to that in which the moving eyes had shone. And scarcely had I taken a step forward when I fetched up, cried out and pointed.
"See that! See it moving?"
A large fungus-tree, its form one indescribably grotesque, was quivering. It began to shake violently. Some heavy body, hidden from our eyes, was moving there, and it was moving toward us.
Of a sudden the tree was thrust far over, there was a squishy, sickening sound, then down it came, the spot where it fell involved in a cloud of phosphorescence, which thinned and faded in the air like dust or mist as it settles.