Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 4 (1927-04).djvu/114

, if that were possible, than before.

"Come on!" I cried, starting.

"For heaven's sake, let's get out of this, or I'll go mad!"

"What in the world," said Rhodes, reluctantly turning to follow, "can it be?"

"Let's get out of this hellish place—before it's too late. Remember, there is something behind us! Maybe things in other directions too!"

"Well," said Rhodes complacently as he followed along in my wake, "we have our revolvers."

"Revolvers? Just see what your revolver has done! A revolver is only a revolver, while that thing—who knows what that monster is?"

"The Dromans know—or think that they do."

"And look at the Dromans! Fear has them. Did you ever see fear like that before? See how they are signing to us to come on. Even Drorathusa is shaken to the very soul."

"After all, 'tis no wonder, Bill, that she is. Those shrieks! How can it continue to shriek and shriek like that?"

Ere long we had come up with the Dromans, who at once quickened their pace. On we went, casting apprehensive glances into the gloom about us. The frightful sounds sank as we moved onward. They became faint, fainter still, and at last, to my profound thankfulness, were no longer to be heard, even when we paused to listen.

"If that," said I during one of these pauses, "is a good sample of what we are to have here in Drome, then I wish that, instead of coming here, I had stepped into a den of cobras or something."

Drorathusa's eyes were upon me. As I ceased speaking, she raised a hand and pointed in the direction whence we had come.

"Gogrugron!" she said.

And I saw fear and horror unutterable well up in her eyes as she said it.

we made our way along and downward. The light-streams were increasing in volume, the luminosity becoming stronger and stronger, the vegetation more abundant, the weird shapes larger and more unearthly than ever. The silence was broken by the drone of insects—creatures meet inhabitants, forsooth, for a place so indescribably strange and dreadful.

The cavern we were following was very tortuous, our route even more so, what with the twists and turns which we had to make in order to get through that fantasmagoria of fungal things. I do not mean to say that all of those growths were horrible, but most of them were, and some were as repulsive to the touch as they were to the sight.

As we toiled our way through them,. my heart was replete with dire apprehension. I could not banish the horror of those great burning eyes, the horror of those shrieks, which perhaps were still ringing out. What if we were suddenly to find ourselves face to face with one of those monsters (or more than one) here in this nightmare forest?

''Gogrugron! Gogrugron! What on earth was that monstrosity known to the Dromans as a gogrugron?'' Well, most certainly, I was not desirous of obtaining first-hand knowledge upon that interesting item for the great science of natural history.

At length the light no longer lay in streams and rifts in the darkness, but the darkness, instead, lay in streams through the light. The Dromans quickened their already hurried pace, and there were exclamations of "Drome! Drome!"