Grom stopped short, having no mind to dash out his brains against the rock. There was stillness at last, and silence save for the faint, humming moan of the earthquake which seemed to come from vast depths beneath his feet. Profoundly awed, but master of his spirit, he stood leaning upon his spear in the thick dark till the last of that strange humming note had died away. Then, through a silence so thick it seemed to choke him, he called aloud: "A-ya! where are you?" "_Grom!_" came the girl's answer, a sobbing cry of relief and joy, from almost, as it seemed, beneath his outstretched hand. "We are all here," came the voices of the three men. They had fallen headlong at the second shock, as at the first; and in the darkness they had not dared to rise again, but lay waiting for their leader to tell them what to do. In half a dozen cautious, groping steps he was among them, and sank down by A-ya's side, clutching her to him to stop her trembling. "What are we to do now?" asked the girl, after a long silence. Without Grom, they would probably have died where they were, not daring to stir in the darkness. But their faith in their chief kept them cheerful even in this desperate plight. "We must find a way out," answered Grom, with resolute confidence. "If Hobbo had not dropped the fire!" said young Mo bitterly. The giant groaned in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his great fists. But Grom, who would allow no dissensions in his following, answered sternly: "Be silent. You might have done no better yourself." Then for a time there was no more said, while Grom, sitting there in the dark with the girl's face buried in his great shaggy chest, thought out his plans. It was plain to him, from what he had seen in that last instant of daylight, that the entrance was blocked impregnably. Moreover, he judged that any attempt to work an opening in that direction would be likely, for the present, to bring more rocks down upon them. It would be better, first, to feel their way on into the cave in the hope of finding another exit. He was not afraid of getting lost, no matter how absolute the dark, because he possessed that sixth sense, so long ago vanished from modern man's equipment--the sense of direction. He knew that, as a matter of course, he could find his way back to this starting-point whenever he would. "Come on!" he ordered at last, lifting A-ya and holding her hand in his grasp. Reaching out with his spear, he kept tapping the ground before him as he went, and occasionally the wall upon his left. Sometimes, too, he would reach upwards to assure himself that there was no lowering of the rocky ceiling. A spear's length to the right, more or less, he got always a splash of water.