and discover what kind of a pit held him prisoner.
He did not know it, but he had fallen into a cistern constructed by some worthy Roman colonist nearly two thousand years ago when north Africa was the granary of Rome. It was deep, with sheer rock walls that baffled all hand-holds—a square well of a thing with only a few feet of the arched roof left above the shifting sand and silt of ages. To climb out of it was impossible. Had it been deliberately built for a prison it could not have served that purpose better.
It took but a few moments for him to discover this. Holding his hurt wrist above his head so that it would not throb so keenly, he felt around the four walls. As high as he could reach in every spot there was no projection for him to cling to.
Once he shouted for help, then caught himself on the edge of the second cry. Of what use to call? If a European should hear him he would probably be taken back to Kairouan—to face the body of Dancherman. If an Arab should answer he would be unable to tell the man what he wanted; and he, too, might take him promptly back to Kairouan as the only solution of an un-Arabic dilemma.
In the meantime there was nothing to do but settle himself as comfortably as possible and wait for daylight. He lowered himself to the floor, leaning against a well and laying his wrist against the cold stone to soothe its hot aching.
At once, as his body relaxed into some degree of comfort, his mind raced back to the hotel, and painted pictures of the night's events: Dancherman cold in bed—the writhing thing beside him that crawled over the stiffened limbs—the smirk on the face of the snake-charmer as he sold him the gunny-sack with its deadly burden—the house-boy at the hotel with his stupid wonderment at sight of the foppishly dressed tourist carrying a filthy gunny-sack in his hand.
And through the shadowy memories wove the sinuous bodies of snakes; and back of them again laced tenuous figures with splayed necks, darting their forked tongues and striking out.
But this was delirium! His wrist—the pain of it—stealing his reason for a few minutes. He clamped his teeth shut and waved away the faces and figures that swam before his eyes. But the twining forms of the cobras persisted. No matter how tightly he closed his eyes he could still see the crawling, sluggish reptiles with their cold eyes and lightning tongues.
What would it feel like to be bitten by one? What had Dancherman felt when the needle points sank in his flesh? Probably as though his veins had been opened and molten iron poured in! Then—his face blackened by the poison, lying cold in bed beside the writhing cobra.
How dark in this ghastly pit! Black with the hopeless darkness that must belong to the blind. And quiet! The abysmal silence began to weigh on his nerves. It was so noiseless that he could hear the rasp of shirt fabric against coat as his chest rose and fell with his breathing. He moved his leg slightly, and could distinctly hear the rustle of cloth. A dry, scaly kind of rustling! Like the noise of
His heart pounded in his ears as he strained to hear. It had seemed for an instant as though he could still hear the rustling after his leg had stopped moving! Like the rasping of a scaly body on the stone of the floor!
Logic instantly came to his relief. It could not be a cobra he had heard. Snakes hunt for sun-warmed rocks, not chill, lightless pits. And with the sheer
