Once more there was a consultation, and once more we retraced our steps--I mean we started to retrace them. Neither I nor any one else could tell how it happened. Not that I marveled at our failure to return, even though I could not explain just how we had missed the way. However, it was no longer possible to blink the fact that we were lost, utterly lost in this maze of passages, caverns and chambers. I raised my canteen and shook it; my heart sank at that feeble wish-wash sound. The canteen was almost empty. Nor was any one of the others, in this respect, much more fortunate than myself. Our position was a most unpleasant one--appalling even in the grisly possibilities which it presented to the mind. Chapter 26 THROUGH THE HEWN PASSAGE I could set down no adequate record of those hours which followed. It was late now, and yet on and on we went, mile after mile, deeper and deeper but only, it seemed, to involve ourselves the more hopelessly in the dread mysteries of that fearsome place. I wondered if it was my imagination that made it so, but certainly the confusion of those chambers and caverns seemed to become only confusion and the worse confounded. At last and suddenly came the discovery. We had entered a long and narrow chamber and were drawing near the end, Rhodes and I wondering if we should find an exit there. Of a sudden there was a sharp exclamation from the lips of Drorathusa, who was some little distance in advance--an exclamation that fetched me up on the instant. She had stopped and was pointing towards the left-hand wall, her attitude and the look upon her face such that I started and a sudden fear shot through me. "What in the world can it be?" I said. "I see nothing but rock and shadows and blackness. What has she found?" Milton Rhodes made no answer. He was moving forward. I followed. A moment, and he was beside the Dromans, his light turned full upon the wall. "Look at that, Bill!" said he. I moved to his side, and we stood there gazing, for some moments motionless and silent. "Well, Bill," he queried at last, "what do you think of that? We are not the first human beings to stand in this spot." "But probably many centuries have passed since any human being stood here," I said, "and gazed upon that entrance--went into it. I wonder what it leads to. Why should men have cut that passage into the living rock? In such a horrible place. And how do we know that it was made by men? In this underground world, there may be intelligent beings that are not men." "Well, that is possible, of course," Milton nodded.