Off they went, and the blackness was upon us. So terrible was it and so strange and fearful that place in which we stood, I actually found myself wondering if it would not all prove to be a dream. "Why," I asked at last, "did we do this?" "To see if those lights that we saw will show again. Those Dromans may think that we have lost heart and started back." I saw it all now: instead of our advancing to those mysterious beings somewhere down the cavern, he would bring them to us. But they did not come. They did not show even the faintest gleam. We waited there for many minutes, but nothing whatever was seen. "Hum," said Rhodes at last, snapping on his light. "It didn't work. Wary folk, Bill, these Hypogeans." "And so," I replied, "we'll have to go to them." "That's what we shall have to do." "And," I added, "by doing so, walk maybe right into a trap." "It is possible, certainly," Rhodes admitted. "But, as the brave Pliny said, _Fortes Fortuna iuvat_." "I don't remember much of my Latin," I told him; "but I remember what happened to Pliny. And I remember enough to know that _Fortuna caeca est_." "So's Love," returned Rhodes. "And he's pretty clever, too, the little chap is, when it comes to setting traps. But men and women, for all that, still keep going to meet him. "But in this business now before us," he went on, "it is possible that the trap may not prove so terrible, possible, indeed, that there is no trap at all. Be that as it may, I tell you, old _tillicum_, I certainly would like to see that angel again." "Then let's go see her." "That's just what we'll do." And so we started. A strange, indefinable dread had its grip upon me, and yet I was anxious to go, to put the thing to an issue. In all probability, we should not have far to travel. Nor, in fact, did we. The way was much like the one that we had traversed in the opposite direction. One or two spots were even more dangerous than any we had found up there. And, over those narrow, dangerous places, where a false step or a slip of the foot on the smooth rock would have meant a most horrible death--along this airy, dizzy Stygian way, the angel had passed. Well, she was a brave angel, at any rate. We were descending all the while, sometimes at an angle that I was glad was no steeper. This does not mean, however, that our distance from the bottom of that black chasm, on our right, was decreasing. The sounds that came up from the unknown depths of it told plainly that the descent of the stream was as pronounced as that of the ledge we were following, and perhaps more so. "And here's something that I don't understand," was my remark as we stopped in a particularly broken spot: "to say nothing of our being below sea-level, here this stream has been pouring down for untold centuries, for how many thousands of years no man can even guess, and yet the place isn't full. Where does all the water go?"