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Mary labored with the thongs that confined me. They proved refractory--defying
her tender, childish fingers. She assured me, however, that she would release
me, if "they" did not come too soon.
But, alas, they came. We heard them coming down the trench, and I bade Mary
hide in a corner, lest she be discovered and punished. There was naught else she
could do, and so she crawled away into the Stygian blackness behind me.
Presently two warriors entered. The leader exhibited a unique method of
discovering my whereabouts in the darkness. He advanced slowly, kicking out
viciously before him. Finally he kicked me in the face. Then he knew where I
was.
A moment later I had been jerked roughly to my feet. One of the fellows stopped
and severed the bonds that held my ankles. I could scarcely stand alone. The
two pulled and hauled me through the low doorway and along the trench. A
party of forty or fifty warriors were awaiting us at the brink of the excavation
some hundred yards from the hut.
Hands were lowered to us, and we were dragged to the surface. Then commenced
a long march. We stumbled through the underbrush wet with dew, our way
lighted by a score of torchbearers who surrounded us. But the torches were not
to light the way--that was but incidental. They were carried to keep off the huge
Carnivora that moaned and coughed and roared about us.
The noises were hideous. The whole country seemed alive with lions. Yellow-
green eyes blazed wickedly at us from out the surrounding darkness. My escort
carried long, heavy spears. These they kept ever pointed toward the beast of
prey, and I learned from snatches of the conversation I overheard that
occasionally there might be a lion who would brave even the terrors of fire to leap
in upon human prey. It was for such that the spears were always couched.
But nothing of the sort occurred during this hideous death march, and with the
first pale heralding of dawn we reached our goal--an open place in the midst of a
tangled wildwood. Here rose in crumbling grandeur the first evidences I had seen
of the ancient civilization which once had graced fair Albion--a single, time-worn
arch of masonry.
"The entrance to the Camp of the Lions!" murmured one of the party in a voice
husky with awe.
Here the party knelt, while Buckingham recited a weird, prayer-like chant. It was
rather long, and I recall only a portion of it, which ran, if my memory serves me,
somewhat as follows:
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