“But natives have gone through safely, else they wouldn’t know.”
“Some did, a long time ago. That was the last.”
“Some did? Not all that started?”
“Not all. The others went mad. Don’t talk about it, dear Choseph.”
Assuredly Beelo had been driven to a desperate extremity to choose this way of escape from the valley. It showed how closely the ordinary outlets were guarded.
CHAPTER XII.—Dramatic Discoveries.
Plunged Into Mysterious Terrors. Christopher’s Obscure Powers at Work. A Struggle for Our Lives. Stout Hearts Fail. A Dear One Lost.
THE passage was crooked. The darkness was unqualified, and so dense that it seemed resistant and hard to breathe. It was the sort of blackness that penetrates to the heart and quenches the light there. Matches had long ago disappeared from the colony, and I had no means of making a light. Nor had Beelo provided against the blackness. All time-reckoning had been lost, but our rate was slow, and I knew that the passage must be long.