"I don't think it's as bad as that. But the Dromans all know what it is themselves." "There!" I cried, whirling round. "Did you hear that, Milton? There's that other thing again--that thing behind us!" "I heard nothing." "I heard something, I tell you. That mystery with the eyes is not the only thing that is watching us, watching us and waiting." Some moments passed, perhaps minutes, in expectant watching, our glances incessantly darting about the cavern, through which the light-mist was moving in troubled, writhing streams, the nebulous, spectral glow of it seeming to enhance the fearsome gloom of that dreadful place. "I see nothing," Rhodes said at last, "and the cavern is as silent as a tomb." "But we are _seen_. And, if we don't get out of this, it may be _our_ tomb." "I don't think it's as bad as that. But the Dromans are signing to us to come on--let us hope to a place more pleasant than this one." I had turned to quit the spot, my look, however, lingering in that direction whence had come those low, mysterious sounds, a direction right opposite to that in which the moving eyes had shone. And scarcely had I taken a step forward when I fetched up, cried out and pointed. "See that! See it moving?" A large fungus-tree, its form one indescribably grotesque, was quivering. It began to shake violently. Some heavy body, hidden from our eyes, was moving there, and it was moving toward us. Of a sudden the tree was thrust far over, there was a squishy, sickening sound, then down it came, the spot where it fell involved in a cloud of phosphorescence, which thinned and faded in the air like dust or mist as it settles. "Shades of the Gorgons," I cried, "what is in there?" A sound from Milton Rhodes turned me round on the instant. "The eyes again!" he cried. "There they are. See them? Have we at last got into Dante's Inferno itself?" I was beginning to think that we had got into something worse. Yes, there the eyes were, and they were nearer this time. But that was all we saw, eyes and nothing more. The thing itself was hidden in the fungoid growth and the shadows. Rhodes raised his revolver, rested it on his left arm, took careful aim and fired. The report seemed to bellow like thunder through the cavern. There was a scream from the Dromans, none of whom, save Drorathusa, had ever heard a firearm before; and I doubt that even Drorathusa knew what had killed her demon. On the instant, whilst the report of the weapon and the cry of the Dromans were ringing in our ears, came another sound; it was a shriek, high, piercing, unearthly, one that seemed to arrest and curdle the very blood in our hearts. It sank, ceased. But almost instantaneously it came again; it rose until the air seemed to quiver to the sound. The effect upon the Dromans was most sudden and pronounced. A nameless fear, and something worse, seized upon me as I saw it. They started from the spot as if in a panic, signing to us with frantic gestures to follow.