"How long we lay without food I don't know; anyway, it seemed days. Perhaps it was only so many hours. Try lying in the pitch dark fighting with nameless unseen terrors and see how many bitter years can be crammed into a minute. And yet we knew there was far worse to come. But for the fact that we were together and could cheer the black hours with the sound of each other's voices we should have gone mad. One moment we were cast down in the depths of gloom, the next we prayed for death; anon we laughed and sang sketches of gay songs. We were not insane, but were treading perilously near to the borderland. "Then, after many years--or so it seemed to us--they fetched us again. We were not led into the banqueting hall, but to a long, low vault-like place on the floor of which were two shallow tanks or baths covered over with a frame of iron, and from the frame of iron ran long sliding rods for all the world like a bird cage, only the sliding wires of the cage ran far into the room. "Around these cages were glowing charcoal fires, the greater part of the sliding bars or wires growing red and crocus blue from the heat. What did it mean? "I wondered. Ah! I was very soon to know." Tchigorsky drew a deep breath and a shudder passed over his powerful frame. The moisture on his forehead was not due to the heat alone. "On a throne of stone the princess was seated. A few of the higher grade priests were grouped around her. Evidently they had been discussing us, and had made up their minds. We were not going to be tried even. [Illustration: On a throne of stone the princess was seated, a few of the higher grade priests grouped around her.--Page 215.] "'Stand there!' the princess commanded! 'Dogs, do you want to live?' "Ralph Ravenspur said nothing. He was ever a man of few words. "'We have no desire to die,' I replied. 'Nothing that breathes ever has. Even if I were an old man with one foot in the grave the desire for life would be as strong upon me as it is now!' "The princess smiled. I will not try to describe that smile. If you had seen it you would have given ten years of your life to forget it again. "It is in your hands to live,' the woman said; 'it is for you to say whether or not you return to your people. But you shall not carry our cherished secrets to the West. You shall live, you shall go free, but you shall take no memory of the past with you!' "I guessed at once what she meant. There were attendants upon the priests, poor fools who fetched and carried, who would undertake errands one at a time, but who had no reasoning powers, no wits of their own. "They were not born idiots; they had been made so. They are put under drugs, a portion of the scalp is removed, and then some small fragment of the brain is destroyed. We could have our liberty if we chose, but at what price! We could go free, but for the rest of our lives we should never know the blessed light of reason again.