I started; but Rhodes, for some inexplicable reason, stood there, his look fixed on the spot whence came those demoniacal shrieks. The eyes had disappeared, but in almost that very instant that I turned, they shone again. I gazed at them as though in fascinated horror, forgetting for the moment that there was something behind me. Up the eyes rose. A black thing was visible there in the darkness, but its shape was amorphous, mysterious. Up the eyes rose, seeming to dilate, and the fire in them grew brighter and brighter, became so unearthly that I began to wonder if I were going insane. The eyes swayed, swayed back and forth for some moments, then gave a sudden lurch into darkness. The shrieks broke, then came again, more horrible, if that were possible, than before. "Come on!" I cried, starting. "For Heaven's sake, Milton, let's get out of this, or I'll go mad!" "What in the world," said Rhodes, reluctantly turning to follow, "can that thing be?" "Let's get out of this hellish place. Let's do it before it's too late. Remember, there is something _behind us_. Maybe monsters in other directions too." "Well," said Rhodes complacently as he followed along in my wake, "we have our revolvers." "Revolvers? Just see what your revolver has done. A revolver is only a revolver, while that thing--who knows what that monster is?" "The Dromans know, or at any rate, they think that they do." "And look at the Dromans. Fear has them. Did you ever see fear like that before? See how they are signing to us to come on. Even Drorathusa is shaken to the very soul." "After all, 'tis no wonder, Bill, that she is. Those shrieks! How can it continue to shriek and shriek like that?" Ere long we had come up with the Dromans, who at once quickened their pace. On we went, casting apprehensive glances into the gloom about us. Those frightful sounds sank as we moved onward. They became faint, fainter still, and at last, to my profound thankfulness, they were no longer to be heard, even when we paused to listen. "If that," said I during one of those pauses, "is a good sample of what we are to have here in Drome, then I wish that, instead of coming down here, I had stepped into a den of cobras or something." Drorathusa's eyes were upon me. As I ceased speaking, she raised a hand and pointed in the direction whence we had come. "_Gogrugron!_" she said. And I saw fear and horror unutterable well up in her eyes as she said it. Chapter 32 "LEPRAYLYA!" Steadily we made our way along and downward. The light-streams were increasing in volume, the luminosity becoming stronger and stronger, the vegetation more abundant, the weird shapes larger and more unearthly than ever. The silence was broken by the drone of insects--creatures meet inhabitants, forsooth, for a place so indescribably strange and dreadful.