"Off to your right," he said. "Work off to your right. There's a hole in the wall--"
They fought off the struggling eruption of bodies that drove at them. Jerry was saving his ammunition, but once more he fired as a sword was falling over Winslow's head. He drove strongly with his left and beat at the white skulls with the butt of the gun gripped in his other hand.
The passage was suddenly behind them. One last stand against the screaming, frothing faces, and they backed, panting, into the sheltering dark. Jerry stopped and took Winslow by the arm.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded. The inventor was too breathless for reply.
"Nothing much," he panted, after a moment. "One got me along the cheek--you shot him just in time. How about you?"
"O.K.," was the assurance. "But, man, I've been hammered!"
"What a peach of a fight," he added. "But now what?"
Winslow laughed mirthlessly in the dark. "This looks like a one-way street," he said. "We can't go back.
"Say," he demanded, with sudden, dim recollection. "I remember something of a dream--a ghastly sort of thing. I was ... I was ... where was I when you collared me? Where was I headed?"
"For something too damnable for us to imagine," Jerry stated emphatically.
They were walking as rapidly as they dared through the dark passage. There were high-pitched voices from the rear. From somewhere ahead came the sound of running water.
"Too damnable to imagine!" he repeated. "But we'll hunt the vile thing out if we get a chance, and we'll slaughter--"
The words ended in a startled exclamation as the ground fell beneath their feet. They pitched headlong into nothingness--
There was water in Jerry's face as he fell. A torrent engulfed him as he struck into it, pouring in from a lower passageway to plunge straight down the shaft. The roaring crash of water tore madly at his body; his arm was shot through with stabbing pain as Winslow's falling body was torn from his grasp.
He was conscious only of his bursting lungs when he came to the surface from the depths into which he plunged. With one arm he swam weakly, the other trailing at his side, while he gulped greedily at the air.
A voice came hoarsely from a distance. "Foster," it called. "Jerry--where are you, Jerry?"