We stood now on the rim of the crater, looking straight into the
inferno. By means of the dull light that struggled through the grimy,
grated windows, I discovered that we were in a corridor having an iron
floor that sprang up and down under our feet. This was flanked by a line
of steel cages--huge beast-dens really--reaching to the ceiling. In each
of these cages was a small, double-barred gate.

These dens were filled with men and boys; some with faces thrust through
the bars, some with hands and arms stretched out as if for air; one hung
half-way up the bars, clinging with hands and feet apart, as if to get
a better hold and better view. I had seen dens like these before: the
man-eating Bengal tiger at the London Zoo lives in one of them.

The Warden, who was standing immediately behind the attendant, stepped
forward and shook Marny's hand. I discharged my obligations with a nod.
I had never been in a place like this before, and the horror of its
surroundings overcame me. I misjudged the Warden, no doubt. That this
man might have a wife who loved him and little children who clung to his
neck, and that underneath his hard, forbidding exterior a heart could
beat with any tenderness, never occurred to me. As I looked him over
with a half-shrinking glance, I became aware of a slash indenting his
pock-marked cheek that might have been made by a sabre cut--was,
probably, for it takes a brave man to be a warden; a massive head set on
big shoulders; a square chin, the jaw hinged like a burglar's jimmy; and
two keen, restless, elephant eyes.

But it was his right ear that absorbed my attention--or rather, what was
left of his right ear. Only the point of it stuck up; the rest was
clipped as clean as a rat-terrier's. Some fight to a finish, I thought;
some quick upper-cut of the razor of a frenzied negro writhing under the