"
"Heavens!" screamed a woman, "and you expect us to go down to certain
death there? How ungallant!"--and amid such laughter and persiflage
half a dozen men and women descended.
"But really, are there snakes?" asked Mrs. Campbell's languid tones,
curiously like her husband's, without his coarseness--for this heavy,
beefy, blear-eyed man was undoubtedly the husband whom she had never
cared to mention on shipboard.--"You know I am deathly afraid of them.
I should faint if I saw one."
Her voice showed real agitation, but her husband laughed uproariously.
Evidently he was under the influence of liquor. The girls, after one
glance at him, shrank back into the shadow, hoping they would not be
recognized by the wife. For the first time in their acquaintance of
the woman, they pitied her. To be that man's daily companion was a
degradation.
Just as Mrs. Campbell's dainty foot touched the stone floor of the
cavern, the captain saw a gliding motion in the uncertain light, and,
with the readiness of the man used to coping with danger, he sprang
forward and struck at something dark and slender, that might have been
but a crevice in the uneven floor. But it was no crevice. A hissing
sound issued from the silent, creeping thing, and with shrieks of
consternation the women fled back up the stairway, while Mr. Campbell
and the other man leaped to one corner, to get beyond the reach of its
fangs.
"Stay where you are!" shouted the captain to his daughters.
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