He did not utter a single word. Passion or fear had mastered him utterly and robbed him both of speech and action. And herein the danger lay; for no sooner had I spoken than the light of a lantern shone full upon my face, while deep down as it were in the very bowels of the earth, an alarm bell was ringing. The unknown were coming up out of the pit. And the man who could have saved me from them had been struck dumb as though by a judgment of God! CHAPTER XV. THE ALARM. _Dr. Fabos is Made a Prisoner._ The Jew seemed unable to utter a sound, but the men who came up out of the cave made the night resound with their horrid cries. What happened to me in that instant of fierce turmoil, of loud alarm, and a coward’s frenzy, I have no clear recollection whatever. It may have been that one of the men struck me, and that I fell—more possibly they dragged me down headlong into the pit, and the press of them alone saved me from serious hurt. The truth of it is immaterial. There I was presently, with a hundred of them about me—men of all nations, their limbs dripping with sweat, their eyes ablaze with desire of my life, their purpose to kill me as unmistakable as the means whereby they would have contrived it. It has been my endeavour in this narrative to avoid as far as may be those confessions of purely personal emotions which are incidental to all human endeavour. My own hopes and fears and disappointments are of small concern to the world, nor would I trespass upon the patience of others with their recital. If I break through this resolution at this moment, it is because I would avoid the accusation of a vaunted superiority above my fellows in those attributes of courage which mankind never fails to admire. The men dragged me down into the pit, I say and were greedy in their desire to kill me. The nature of the death they would have inflicted upon me had already been made clear by the words the Jew had spoken. The pain of fire in any shape has always been my supreme dread, and when the dazzling white light shone upon me from the unspeakable furnaces, and I told myself that these men would shrink from no measure which would blot out every trace of their crime in an instant, then, God knows, I suffered as I believe few have done. Vain to say that such a death must be too horrible to contemplate. The faces of the men about me belied hope. I read no message of pity upon any one of them—nothing but the desire of my life, the criminal blood-lust and the anger of discovery. And, God be my witness, had they left me my revolver, I would have shot myself where I stood.