It was six o'clock when I awoke. Rhodes was sitting up. He had, he told me, just awakened. One of the Dromans was stirring in his sleep and muttering something in cavernous and horrible tones. As I sat there and listened, a chill passed through me, so terrible were the sounds. "I can't stand that!" I exclaimed. "I'm going to wake him up. It's time that we were moving, anyway." "Yes," nodded Milton. "Surely, though, we'll find water today." "Today? Where is your _day_ in this place? It's night eternal. And for us, I'm afraid, it is good night with a vengeance." "Aw, Bill, quit your kidding," was Rhodes' answer. Now, the thing that I want to know is this: what can you do with a man like that? Ere long we were again under way. My canteen was now as dry as a bone, and I tell you that I felt mighty sad. However, I endeavored to mask, since I could not banish them, those dark and dire forebodings. When we set forth, it was with the hope that we might find, and be conducted by it to safety, the road by which those old worshippers had journeyed to and from that hall of the dragon. But not a vestige of such a route could we discover. Hours passed. On and on we went, deeper and deeper. Noon came. No change. No one had a drop of water now. Rhodes and I estimated the distance traveled since quitting the temple of the dragon at ten miles and the descent at something like four thousand feet. This estimate, or rather guess, may, however, have been wide of the truth. We were still involved in the maddening intricacies of the labyrinth. I confess that our situation began to assume an aspect that made my very soul turn sick and cold. Rhodes, however, divining perhaps what was in my mind, pointed out that we had not been lost very long! and that surely we would find water some place. A man, said he, in the equable temperature of this subterranean world, could live for quite a time without water. I have no doubt that a man could--if he were lying in bed. But we were not doing that; we were in constant motion. The arduous exercise that we were undergoing, our fatigue, the anxieties and fears that preyed upon the mind--each was contributing its quota to the dire and steady work of enervation. No, I would fight against despair; but certainly I could imbibe no consolation, no strength, either mental or physical, from a deliberate blinking of facts. And one of the facts was that, unless we soon found water, ours would be that fate which has overtaken so many of those who have gone forth to search out the secrets of mysterious places.