"What is it?" he inquired. "I didn't hear."

"It was nothing," replied Leith, in his slow, drawling voice. "Holman
suggested that the word of the wizard men might not be infallible, and
lest we have some one who ran the gauntlet under false colours we had
better move on so as to keep the exception out of danger."

The cavern, into which we passed from the slippery ledge, did not lead
into the interior of the mountain as one would be inclined to think
after viewing it from the top of the crater. We had hardly traversed it
for more than sixty yards when we were once again in the bright
sunlight, in what appeared to be a deep, wide valley in the centre of
the island. The basalt cliffs surrounded the place on every side, and
although we had great doubts regarding Leith's veracity, we felt
inclined to accept his word that the path by which we had come was the
only one by which we could reach the spot where we stood. The circles of
black rocks above the tops of the highest trees, though indescribably
beautiful, were strangely repellent in their weird conformation. They
struck us as the walls of a prison from which the only way to liberty
lay across the path in the crater.

The trees--ebony, chatak, dakua, and sandalwood--grew here in greater
numbers than we had met them on the first day, while the lawyer-vines
and thorny creepers rivalled the devilish meshes that had held us back
as we climbed the slope to the Vermilion Pit. Like green serpents they
covered the treetops, and as we struck forward in the same order as we
had marched on the first day the solemnity of the place was more
apparent than ever. It appeared that Nature, for some reason of her own,
had made the place difficult of access, and that our invasion was