They watched the man bending over his caldron and brazier for at least ten minutes before he leaned back and held at arm’s length the thing he had been kneading over the fire.
He scrutinized it with the air of an artist looking over a sketch he had just made. Then he made some slight alterations and held it out again.
Nick observed that there was a low couch, with a roll of skins, at one side of the cavern, and that a pitcher and some coarse cakes lay beside it on the floor.
“He must live alone,” remarked Chick. “A cheerful existence, I don’t think.”
Patsy Garvan could not hold back his curiosity any longer. He pushed his way past the others, stole down the shallow steps, and tiptoed across the white sand until he was close behind the man.
He clapped his hand to his mouth to stifle a cry.
What Patsy had seen in the strange creature’s skinny fingers was the head of a man—a man with a light-colored beard, hair, and eyebrows. The head had been reduced to the size of an orange.
The head was not artificial. A single glance was enough to assure him of that. No, it was a real head, but in miniature.
The things Nick Carter had noted hanging to the crossbar were human heads drying in the smoke!
In spite of Patsy’s endeavor to keep back his ejaculation of horror, he had made sound enough to break the spell which had overhung the place.