After that I went ranging hither and thither among all the passages and twinings of the cave, yet never daring to go very far from the place where we were, lest I should not be able to find my way back. For it was an ill, murderous, uncanny abode, where every step that I took something strange swept across my face or slithered clammily along my cheek, making me grue to my very bone marrows. I am as fond of a nimble fetch of adventures as any man, as every believing reader of this chronicle kens well by this time, but I want no more such darkling experiences—specially now that I am become a peaceable man, and no longer so regardlessly forward as I once was, in thrusting myself into all stirs and quarrels up to the elbows. Then in a little I went soft-footed to where Marjorie and Nell had bestowed themselves. When I told them how we had run into danger with a folly and senselessness that nothing could have excused—save the great necessity into which, by the hellish fury of our enemies, we had been driven—it was indeed cheerful to hear their words of trust and their declarations that they could abide the issue with fortitude. So a little heartened, we made such preparations as we could—as preparing our pistols and loosening our swords. Yet all had to be done by touch, in that abode of darkness and black, un-Christian deeds. It was silent and eerie beyond telling in the cave. We heard the water lapping further and further from us as it retreated down the long passage. Now and then we seemed to catch a gliff of the noise of human voices. But again, when we listened, it seemed naught but the wind blowing every way through the passages and halls of the cave, or the echoed wing-beatings of the uncanny things that battened in the roofs and crevices of this murtherous cavern, unfathomed, unsounded, and obscure. But we had not long to wait ere our courage and resolution were tested to the uttermost. For presently there came to us, clearly enough, though faintly at first, the crying and baying of voices fearful and threatening. Indeed they sounded more like the insensate howling of dogs or shut-up hungry hounds in a kennel than kindly human creatures. Then there was empty silence, through which the noise came in gusts like the sudden, deadly anger of a mob. Again it came, more sharp and double-edged with fear, like the wailing of women led to unpitied doom. And the sound of this inhuman carnival, approaching, filled the cave with shuddering.