each other. Blotches of green and crimson drifted across my eyes.
My conductor stopped suddenly. "Home!" said he, and I stood
in a floor of a chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me.
I heard some strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand
into my eyes. I became aware of a disagreeable odor, like that of
a monkey's cage ill-cleaned. Beyond, the rock opened again upon
a gradual slope of sunlit greenery, and on either hand the light
smote down through narrow ways into the central gloom.




XII. THE SAYERS OF THE LAW.


THEN something cold touched my hand. I started violently,
and saw close to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed
child than anything else in the world. The creature had exactly
the mild but repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead
and slow gestures.

As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me
more distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing and
staring at me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow
passage between high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock,
and on either side interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds
leaning against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens.
The winding way up the ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide,
and was disfigured by lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse,
which accounted for the disagreeable stench of the place.