"I can go down the hill now, Mr. Jones, sir. There is nothing to fear." I was weary in mind and body, and I turned over to lay my head upon my arm. As I did so there came a faint sound as of a footstep, and I saw Cynthia approaching. She seemed like herself. She walked with her eyes open, and advanced with confidence. I arose to my feet at once.
"Are you better?" I asked.
"S-h-h-h!" said the Skipper, his warning finger upraised.
Cynthia started at the sound of my voice, put her hand to her head, rubbed her eyes and opened them. They fell upon my face. A smile of recognition overspread her features as she raised her eyes to mine, when a shout of terror filled the chamber. It came from the Bo's'n. The others sprang up, and with me followed with their gaze the direction of his pointed finger. We each, I think, emitted a sound of some kind, all but the English lad, who was still sleeping.
I can see the Bo's'n now, his hair standing on end, his arms raised across his forehead. Cynthia fell back into my arms and pinioned me against the wall, for it was a sight which made the other occupants of the cave fall each one upon his face.
CHAPTER X.
THE MINION POINTS A MORAL, ALTHOUGH HE DOES NOT ADORN A TALE.
Those who have never passed through days of wearing suspense, days of anxiety, days when water was scarce and food more so, days when, as in my case and the lad's, we were in danger of death, and, in fact, were very near to his dread presence—I say that those who have never suffered these things can not imagine how wracked and torn one's nerves become with a combination of such disagreeables and horrors. The scarcity of food was not a horror, but certainly the experience in the great hall had been more than disagreeable. We were weakened mentally and physically, so that it is not to be wondered at that we all showed overpowering signs of terror at the sight which now met our eyes. The passage was dark in itself, but there stood a little way down, amid its sombre gloom, the skeleton of the Chief Justice. I had heard him tossed, a mass of bones, into the corner, and here he was, standing erect as he had been in life, come to ask me, doubtless, what I had done with that last house of which I had deprived him. You will wonder how we could discover him in that darkened interior. But he shone refulgent. He brought his light with him, as it were, and it seemed to flood his body, and glisten and scintillate from all his whitening bones. His teeth appeared to grin at us, as if he were enjoying the ghastly joke. His head waggled from side to side, and the sockets of his eyes emitted a fiendish light. His legs trembled and his toes touched the ground. They seemed to dance—a dance of death. The Skipper and the Bo's'n had fallen prone upon the floor of the cave. Lacelle had shrieked and fled away, and I was left to support the form of the unconscious girl. Suddenly the light was extinguished. I heard several sharp blows and a sobbing sigh. Then a sound as if the skeleton himself was fleeing down the corridor in terror as great of us as ours of him. There was a rattling of bones, as if again they had sunk down into an inanimate heap.