How far he walked he could not say. But suddenly, or perhaps only made sudden by the final acceptance of a half believed message from his eyes, he became aware of a soft light in the distance. This morning-like glow held fast at the edge of sight, and as he drew closer, began by slow degrees to reveal its source. Ahead of him the funnel reached its narrowest point, a squarish hole still broad enough for five men to pass abreast, that opened into a deepening expanse. Coming toward the rising, hard-rock lip of it, he went down on his belly, crawled forward, and looked over into the heart of the thing he feared. There are times when a man's worst fears are justified, and when he cannot, with any hope of survival, confront them. But often through patience, perseverance, and the fullness of time, the antithesis of his life can be worn down, altered, or made in the end less terrible. And while it is the height of foolishness for any man to laugh in the face of death, neither must he deify the many smaller deaths of Fear. There in the sunken center, the stage, as it were, of this vaulted subterranean amphitheater, stood the tiger on a patch of sandy earth, among a tangle of living scrub. A soft and warm light shone down on him through a broad opening in the stone overhead. Nor was it a mere hole to the world beyond. Through one of the many wonders of Nature, a vein of crystalline quartz interceded, allowing the sun's light to pass, while gathering and holding a fair measure of its warmth. All these things he observed in the time it took for his eyes to adjust to what seemed a blinding glare, though in reality it was many shades lighter than the unfiltered sunlight. He had not yet seen the shadows: the tiger was not alone. There, stretched lengthwise amid recessions in the descending, stair-like levels, as if the whole of a deceased family among the layered shelvings of a crypt, a full score of the dreadful reptiles lay sleeping. It was a sight to freeze the blood, but for one odd detail which their considerable girth clearly illustrated. THEY DID NOT BREATHE. Or if they did, it was so infrequently that in the considerable time he watched he never saw it. No heave or swell of the elastic ribs and dry, loose-fitting skin could be seen, even where an entire flank stood out against the unshaded light from above. BUT SURELY THEY WERE NOT DEAD. No sign of decay could be seen on them, nor any apparent cause of death. Sylviana had told him of the aquatic lizards of the Galapagos Islands, who when diving for the sea vegetation which sustained them could hold their breath for an hour or more, even stopping their heartbeat to do so. But even this did not fully explain the phenomenon by which these enormous, cold-blooded creatures could remain suspended for the nearly six month period when the world outside became to them untenable, or reveal the inner clock that told them to wake once more, and slowly revive into a living state.