The white path wound in and out of the boulders, which became thicker as we advanced, and suddenly it dived through a dark passage into the side of the hill.  We felt that we were at the mouth of the burrow by which Leith and his dancers had entered, and we moved into the shadow to reconnoitre.  Leith had informed the Professor that he would not return to the camp till the following morning, so the chances were that the treacherous scoundrel was still assisting at the ceremonies that we had witnessed.

“Shall we go in?” whispered Holman.

“As you like,” I answered.

He moved toward the mouth of the burrow, then stopped and turned toward me.  “What time is it?”

“It’s ten minutes of midnight,” I replied.

“We’ve got six hours,” he whispered.  “Come along, we’ll chance it.”

Very cautiously we moved into the darkness of the passageway, feeling our way along the walls that were cold and damp from the moisture which had soaked through from the crown of the cliff.  The place was not more than five feet wide, and as I walked along on one side of the wall, Holman, feeling his way along the other, could touch me whenever he wished to ascertain my position.  Our shoes made no sound upon the floor of the corridor.  It was covered deep with fine dust, upon which we walked noiselessly.

An occasional bat fluttered past us, but outside the flapping of the wings not a sound disturbed the stillness of the place.  The silence of the outside was intensified a hundredfold.  In the open, one heard the crooning of the trees as the soft winds from the Pacific played with their heavy foliage, but in the natural passage through which we crawled in search of Leith the air felt as if it had not been disturbed for centuries.  It was heavy and thick, possessing a faint odour that seemed to rise from the dust beneath our feet.

We had walked about one hundred yards along the corridor when it widened suddenly.  The walls that we were following turned off at right angles, and from the moonlight which filtered through a dozen small fissures high up above our heads we saw that we had entered a cavern of vast proportions.  We sensed its vastness.  The few streaks of moonlight that stabbed the darkness were like so many guide-posts that enabled us to make a mental calculation of the height and extent of the place.

We stopped and moved together instinctively.  Holman put his mouth close to my ear.

“What do you make of it?” he asked.

“It might be a cavern leading into the one that runs out to the face of the cliff,” I replied.

“But how are we to cross it?”

“I can’t tell you.  I’m afraid if we leave this opening that we’ll get lost.”

It was rather plain that we would.  The surrounding walls were as black as the opening by which we had entered the place, and we stood with quick-beating hearts staring out across the place through which the bars of moonlight appeared like silver skewers.