“Onrai,” said Mr. Bruce, “have you ever seen any such people in your country?”
“Never,” answered Onrai, and his face looked puzzled. “I cannot understand this at all. Can it be that these people have always inhabited these underground passages, here under our country? Can this be the great death hole, to which the wicked are condemned?” and Onrai turned to look about him.
“No, no, Onrai, let not such thoughts come into your mind,” said Mr. Bruce. “These are dead and they know no suffering. If they were, as you suppose, they would be alive and undergoing great torture. You have been kept in ignorance of the existence of these people for good reasons, or it may be that the founder of your country knew nothing of this.”
“But are there any of these now living, I wonder? This we must learn before returning, so let us go on, taking good care not to lose our way,” said Mr. Graham.
They accordingly moved along through the death chamber, keeping straight ahead. The chamber seemed unending and went on and on, with the dead still piled in heaps and leaning against the walls. It must have taken ages to accumulate these thousands of dead.
“There seems no end to all this,” said Mr. Graham. “I would prefer that we get out of this place and into another not so thickly populated with the dead.”
“It must end some place,” said Mr. Bruce, and he had hardly finished speaking, when a wall loomed up ahead of him and the chamber was ended.
“Well, we are a nice lot,” said Harry; “there is no opening here and we will have to return.”
But after looking around for some time, and by moving several of the bodies, an opening was discovered in one corner. This was small, but after crawling through it the party found themselves in another corridor, resembling the one of the winds. The hideous sight of the dead was now lost and they passed on down a smooth hallway quickly, nothing obstructing their headway. On, on they went, the corridor leading in a straight line, as near as they could calculate, in a southeasterly direction.
“I should much rather have followed the windy passage, if it had been possible,” said Mr. Bruce.