Rawson was as glad as I of our reunion. Somehow, now that we were together again, we both felt much stronger and the unknown foe seemed less redoubtable. Yet that foe seemed terrible enough as we sat there on the floor conversing in whispers. Although we had regained some slight composure, the falling of a pin might have sent us off into convulsions; and our imaginations were busy painting grotesque and shadowy horrors. “What can it mean?” murmured Rawson, as he sat with his hand upon my knee, as though to reassure himself by the mere physical fact of my presence. “What do you think it can mean?” I declined to venture any direct reply, although suggestions sufficiently dreadful were piling up in my brain. “Remember how Stranahan and the others were lost,” continued Rawson, solemnly, as if the explanation of their disappearance were now self-evident. “I don’t see what that has to do with us,” I argued. And then, with a forced attempt at bravado, “Don’t worry, Rawson. Chances are everything will turn out all right.” “I hope so,” conceded Rawson, in a tone indicating that he rather wished things would turn out badly. And, by way of fanning my courage, he entertained me with the most ghastly stories he could imagine--stories of men trapped in coal mines, men lost in labyrinthine caves, men entombed in deep pits or immured in lightless dungeons. To all these tales I listened with growing uneasiness, meanwhile racking my mind to remember a parallel to our own predicament. But I could think of nothing that even remotely resembled it; and, having nothing to say, I answered Rawson only in monosyllables. Perhaps owing to the terseness of my replies--or perhaps because of the terror of our plight--his loquacious mood soon deserted him. It was not long before we had lapsed into silence; and it was minutes before either of us spoke again. Meantime the darkness was so intense, the silence so complete and the stillness so absolute that I was persecuted with all manner of fantastic fears. What unknown horrors were brewing in these serene depths? What grotesque or malevolent or even murderous things? In my anxiety, I peopled the gloom with monstrous shapes of a thousand varieties, with slimy, crawling serpents, with lithe, crouching panthers, with great apes, whose brawny arms could strangle a man, and--worst of all--with slinking, barbarous humans that crept up slyly to seize and stab one in the dark. By degrees my imaginings were becoming so grewsome that I could no longer endure them. And, merely to find relief from myself, I whispered, “Come, Rawson, it’s senseless to sit here doing nothing. Maybe we can find some exit, if only we look carefully enough. What do you say? Shall we try anyhow?” “I say it’s a good idea,” assented Rawson, rising cautiously to his feet.