I murmured an acknowledgement of the information. Speaking frightened me. Kaselm’s voice still reverberated.

Soon the whirring flapping above us became intense, multitudinous. The tip of a hooked leather wing lashed across my face. I heard the priest draw his knife from its sheath. He continuously whirled and flashed the knife above his head. There were occasional little grunts or moans from above us and the flapping diminished as far as we were concerned, though I could hear the rest of the vaulting thick with it. The flashing knife also gave a sort of intermittent gleam which was not much good to see by but was comforting down here. It reminded one that light did exist. Once, however, his arm tired md he stopped. Immediately the bats were at us again.

I offered to take a turn, but he pointed out that I was too short and would only succeed in cutting his eye open.

Presently there assailed our eyes what I thought a blaze of light. It was only the saffron of torches in iron wall-sockets, turning the stone walls umber. The presence of torches did not even mean someone had lit them recently, down here there was little to stop them slow-burning for days. There are no bats in he lit sections of these Vaults.

But I decided with wonder that there were inhabitants. Other passages divided off the main one. Kaselm always seemed to know which to take. His stride never faltered. We were no longer even in a hurry. It was as though now, down a these Vaults, Kaselm was in his kingdom—more primitive-/, in his element. I took my hand from his. I no longer needed help for haste in dark, and I rarely like being touched by people. It worries me.

There were almost definite signs of present habitation. Raged but not mouldering curtains hung across rather smelly orifices in the walls, here and there a spear lay or leaned, not at all rusty, there were sometimes fountain-basins in the middle of a cross-space where several passages branched. The fountains were not springing but there were unrusty metal cups chained to them and puddles by them. Insects, centipedes and horned beetles, bustled in the upside-down forests of fungi on the ceilings.

“Do these fountains still work, Holy Kas—?”

He stepped to one, pressed the knob of a metal figure’s nail and there were glug-glug sounds and then water gushed from one of her nipples and jetted from the other, and began plop-plopping and gurgling down the vortex of the basin-drain. There was a chugging of subterranean water-pipes, but no doubt about it, they were working. Kaselm filled the chained cup and offered it to me. I drank though it was quite dirty. It was extremely cold and had almost a dry taste.