Vaguely he became aware that Dr. Cairn was seeking to drag him away. Through a cloud of smoke he saw the black-robed figure turn; dream fashion, he saw the pallid, glistening face of Antony Ferrara; the long, evil eyes, alight like the eyes of a serpent, were fixed upon him. He seemed to stand amid a chaos, in a mad world beyond the borders of reason, beyond the dominions of God. But to his stupefied mind one astounding fact found access. He had fired at least seven shots at the black-robed figure, and it was not humanly possible that all could have gone wide of their mark. Yet Antony Ferrara lived! Utter darkness blotted out the evil vision. Then there was a white light ahead; and feeling that he was struggling for sanity, Sime managed to realise that Dr. Cairn, retreating along the passage, was crying to him, in a voice rising almost to a shriek, to run--run for his life--for his salvation! "_You should not have fired_!" he seemed to hear. Unconscious of any contact with the stones--although afterwards he found his knees and shins to be bleeding--he was scrambling down that long, sloping shaft. He had a vague impression that Dr. Cairn, descending beneath him, sometimes grasped his ankles and placed his feet into the footholes. A continuous roaring sound filled his ears, as if a great ocean were casting its storm waves against the structure around him. The place seemed to rock. "Down flat!" Some sense of reality was returning to him. Now he perceived that Dr. Cairn was urging him to crawl back along the short passage by which they had entered from the King's Chamber. Heedless of hurt, he threw himself down and pressed on. A blank, like the sleep of exhaustion which follows delirium, came. Then Sime found himself standing in the King's Chamber, Dr. Cairn, who held an electric lamp in his hand, beside him, and half supporting him. The realities suddenly reasserting themselves, "I have dropped my pistol!" muttered Sime. He threw off the supporting arm, and turned to that corner behind the heap of _debris_ where was the opening through which they had entered the Satanic temple. No opening was visible! "He has closed it!" cried Dr. Cairn. "There are six stone doors between here and the place above! If he had succeeded in shutting _one_ of them before we--?" "My God!" whispered Sime. "Let us get out! I am nearly at the end of my tether!" Fear lends wings, and it was with something like the lightness of a bird that Sime descended the shaft. At the bottom-- "On to my shoulders!" he cried, looking up. Dr. Cairn lowered himself to the foot of the shaft. "You go first," he said. He was gasping, as if nearly suffocated, but retained a wonderful self-control. Once over into the Borderland, and bravery assumes a new guise; the courage which can face physical danger undaunted, melts in the fires of the unknown.