Then I took up my own part of this work of exploration.

I had compassed half my distance amid profound stillness, perceiving nothing strange, and constantly feeling more intensely the solemn loneliness of the place, which by now, to my awakened imagination, appeared peopled with bloodless victims of heathen superstition.

I felt no doubt this was a torture chamber; that many a hapless slave, or shrieking captive, had yielded up life in agony upon the summit of the gloomy pile, and the haunting spectres seemed to grin at me with distorted faces from every crevice along the walls.

I was weakly yielding to such weird dreams, when a wild, shrill scream rang forth from the darkness in front.

The cry contained such note of affright that, for an instant, I connected it with the fantasies which thronged my brain.