"Not so," Denham assured me, "for when there is a call for aid from their fellows below, the guards above don't descend by the stair, since it would take them too long. They unreel great ropes or cables, drop them over the shaft's edge so that they hang clear to the stair's bottom, and then attach a sort of harness to themselves, join that harness to the cables with special pulleys, and slide down to the stair's bottom in a few minutes. Twice, since I have been here, there have been riots around the gate, and each time the guards above came whizzing down in that way, to repel the riot." "Whatever else they are," added D'Alord, "there are no cowards among the guards. No one ever called me craven yet, but _ventre-de-biche_, I'd look twice before sliding down a rope into this hell." "Yet what if some of the guards did come down the stair?" I asked. Denham shook his head. "I do not think they will do so," he said. "Yet if they did?" I insisted. He shrugged his shoulders. "Why, then you would meet them on the stair." We looked at each other, a little grimly, I think, and then there was a shattering roar of laughter from D'Alord. "Why borrow trouble?" he cried. "Take your sword with you, lad, and if you meet anyone on the stair, have at him. If you are the stronger, you will kill your enemies, and if your enemies are the stronger, they will kill you. What more is there to it?" I could not help laughing, ruefully, as did the rest, but Lantin suddenly sobered. "But Cannell?" he asked. "What of my friend? We came here to rescue him, you know, and can't leave without him." "There are eight days yet in which to find him," Denham pointed out, "and if you can not find him in that time, we four will try to locate him after you and Wheeler have escaped. If he's here in the pit, we'll have him with us by the time you come back." * * * * * Our conversation was abruptly broken off by the entrance of a number of the room's occupants, who regarded our little group with suspicious stares. "We'd best break up," Denham whispered, "for we don't want it to get abroad that we're planning something." So, rising, we sauntered out of the room into the street. Outside a hot sunlight was pouring down from the glass globes in the roof, so strongly that one could not look up at that roof directly, any more than one can look directly at the sun. Whatever method the Kanlars had devised to collect and bring so far underground the light and heat of the sun, it was a wonderfully efficient one. Behind us loomed the gray-rock wall of the pit, and before us, stretching away for miles to the opposite wall, were the masses of white buildings that housed the city's teeming thousands. And at the central plaza, the titanic, gleaming spiral of the metal stairway rose vastly up toward the black, round shaft that pierced the cavern's roof, its winding turn on turn glinting in the light like a huge, upraised serpent of metal.