THE LABYRINTH--LOST
We soon saw that we had entered not a cavern but a perfect labyrinth
of caverns. I could never have imagined a place like that. It was
bewildering, dreadful, forsooth, in the possibilities that it limned on
the canvas of one's imagination. How in the world could any one ever
have found his way through it? But somebody had, for there were the
inscriptions and signs on the wall. For these the Dromans kept a keen
watch, and the relief evinced whenever one was sighted showed what a
frightful thing it might be to lose the way.
An hour passed, another, and still we were moving in that awful maze.
"Great Erebus," said I, "but this is confusion worse confounded. Do you
think that we can ever find our way back through this?"
"I've got it all down here, Bill," returned Rhodes, tapping his
notebook. "The angel, _the_ leader now, is finding her way through it:
what she can do can't we do also?"
"She isn't through it yet! It is some time, too, since we saw one
of those directions on the wall. The fact is, unless I am greatly
mistaken, our Dromans are becoming uneasy right now."
"Think so, Bill? I confess that I thought something of the kind myself,
but I was not sure that it wasn't only a fancy."
"I wish that I could believe so."
As Rhodes had remarked, Drorathusa was the leader now. And a striking
sight it was--her tall white figure leading the way, the shadows
quivering, swaying, rushing over the broken, savage walls and deepening
to inky blackness in the secret places as we passed.
Farther and farther we went, deeper and deeper; but never another
inscription was seen. The advance became broken, irresolute. Then
suddenly there was a halt.
And at that instant the last vestige of uncertainty vanished:
Drorathusa had lost the way.
There was a sudden panicky fear in the eyes of the girls, but it
soon was gone. The little party met this most unpleasant truth with
exemplary philosophy. There was a short consultation, and then we began
to retrace our way. The object was, of course, to return to the last
mark on the wall. If we missed it, then Heaven help us!
"Perhaps," I thought, "it will be Heaven help us, anyway!"
And it was.
We reached our objective without misadventure, and then a new start
was made. Rhodes and I were greatly puzzled, for it was patent that
neither the angel nor any one else knew how we had gone astray. And,
not knowing that, how could any one tell which way to go?
"Better get it clear in that notebook," I admonished Rhodes. "Maybe
this new start will end up in something more unpleasant than the other
did. It's a queer business, and I don't pretend to understand any of it
at all."
We went along for a half-mile or so, carefully and with no little
apprehension, and then, hurrah, there was a sign on the wall! The route
to Drome again! But for how long?
Drorathusa quickened her pace. She was moving along now as though
in confidence, certitude even. I have never been able to explain
what followed. For a time, an hour or more, that confidence of hers
certainly was fully justified. Then came the change. Suddenly we became
aware of an unpleasant fact--there was something wrong again. Not that
we remained in doubt as to what that something was which was wrong. A
few minutes, and we had a fact even more unpleasant presented to our
contemplation and incidentally cogitation--again we had gone astray.
Once more there was a consultation, and once more we retraced our
steps--I mean we started to retrace them. Neither I nor any one else
could tell how it happened. Not that I marveled at our failure to
return, even though I could not explain just how we had missed the way.
However, it was no longer possible to blink the fact that we were lost,
utterly lost in this maze of passages, caverns and chambers.
I raised my canteen and shook it; my heart sank at that feeble
wish-wash sound. The canteen was almost empty. Nor was any one of the
others, in this respect, much more fortunate than myself.
Our position was a most unpleasant one--appalling even in the grisly
possibilities which it presented to the mind.