"Shades of the Gorgons," I cried, "what is in there?"
A sound from Milton Rhodes turned me round on the instant.
"The eyes again!" he cried. "There they are. See them? Have we at last got into Dante's Inferno itself?"
I was beginning to think that we had got into something worse.
Yes, there the eyes were, and they were nearer this time. But that was all we saw, eyes and nothing more. The thing itself was hidden in the fungoid growth and the shadows.
Rhodes raised his revolver, rested it on his left arm, took careful aim and fired.
The report seemed to bellow like thunder through the cavern. There was a scream from the Dromans, none of whom, save Drorathusa, had ever heard a firearm before; and I doubt that even Drorathusa knew what had killed her demon. On the instant, whilst the report of the weapon and the cry of the Dromans were ringing in our ears, came another sound; it was a shriek, high, piercing, unearthly, one that seemed to arrest and curdle the very blood in our hearts.
It sank, ceased. But almost instantaneously it came again; it rose until the air seemed to quiver to the sound.
The effect upon the Dromans was most sudden and pronounced.
A nameless fear, and something worse, seized upon me as I saw it.