They struck bottom abruptly. Epworth was jarred and bruised some, but not seriously hurt although he lay as if stunned for several seconds. Joan was unhurt, and during the descent had regained her full faculties, which were leaving her under the choking power of the cricket tentacles. The second they were still she twisted out of Epworth’s arms, caught his flash light, which had been knocked out of circuit by the fall, and began to work with it hysterically. In a brief period she had it in action and was throwing a narrow stream of light around.
They had landed on a large ledge suspended over a bottomless chasm, and behind them there was a big tunnel. As they were dangerously close to the edge of the precipice she staggered to her feet and pulled Epworth away from the danger point.
“My,” she whispered, “I thought we were goners.”
Without waiting for Epworth to speak she stepped to the tunnel and shot her light ray into its gloomy depth. For several seconds the light pierced the gloom for fifteen feet, flickered, and died out. The battery had been exhausted, and now they were in murky, terrifying gloom with a deep chasm on three sides. In dying despair the girl covered her face with her hands.
Epworth, breathing heavily, sat up.
“Let me have the flash light,” he suggested.
“It has gone out for good,” she replied in a hopeless voice, at the same time handing him the tube. “I can’t get a ray out of it.”
Epworth fumbled with it for a moment in the dark.
“The batteries are dead,” he explained. “How foolish not to have looked into this before we started.”
“Great heavens!” Joan moaned. “Lost in the center of the moon, and no light to direct our steps.”