Great was Bradley's relief when he found the water no more
than waist deep and beneath his feet a firm, gravel bottom.
Feeling his way cautiously he moved downward with the current,
which was not so strong as he had imagined from the noise of
the running water.

Beneath the first arch he made his way, following the winding
curvatures of the right-hand wall. After a few yards of progress
his hand came suddenly in contact with a slimy thing clinging to
the wall--a thing that hissed and scuttled out of reach. What it
was, the man could not know; but almost instantly there was a
splash in the water just ahead of him and then another.

On he went, passing beneath other arches at varying distances,
and always in utter darkness. Unseen denizens of this great
sewer, disturbed by the intruder, splashed into the water ahead
of him and wriggled away. Time and again his hand touched them
and never for an instant could he be sure that at the next step
some gruesome thing might not attack him. He had strapped his
haversack about his neck, well above the surface of the water,
and in his left hand he carried his knife. Other precautions
there were none to take.

The monotony of the blind trail was increased by the fact that
from the moment he had started from the foot of the ladder he had
counted his every step. He had promised to return for An-Tak if
it proved humanly possible to do so, and he knew that in the
blackness of the tunnel he could locate the foot of the ladder in
no other way.