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and rapidly so. Down some sections they fairly slid along, and although it seemed foolish to Jonathan, the deeper they descended, the more fascinated the Professor became with the idea of seeing what lay at the bottom of the tunnel. It was impossible to say how deep they were. In the faint twilight of the oil lamp everything looked the same from one step to the next. Nothing but the echo of their footsteps on the stone of the tunnel floor reminded them that time was passing – that and the lowering level of oil in the lamp. There was enough left in the jar for them to refill the lamp twice. So, worse come to worst, they could at least light their way back to the cellar above.
    They stopped to rest, finally, on a heap of stones, and Jonathan held up the lantern to get a look at the rocky ceiling overhead. The pale rays of light shone on fissured granite, shot through with veins of quartz. Clumps of crystals the size of a man’s fingers jutted down here and there, and among them were long spires of amethyst, glowing purple in the lamplight.
    ‘Give me a hand here, Professor.’ Jonathan heaped several of the larger rocks scattered about into a pile and then clambered up onto them in order to reach the ceiling. He stabbed away at the amethyst crystals with his penknife, nicking the blade in the process, but loosening several wonderful pieces. One, a crystal as long as Jonathan’s hand, was marbled with deep swirls of emerald green. He went to work on another, the chip, chip, chip of the blade striking stone echoing off down the tunnel.
    In the flickering darkness of the shadows cast on the roof by the jutting crystals, the tiny hairless head of a little beast, something the size of a rat with blind, pink, lidless eyes, peered out at Jonathan from behind the very crystal he chipped at. Another peeked out from behind the first, and two more stared blindly at him a ways farther on. The first dropped suddenly from its niche in the granite ceiling, spread gauzy batwings, and whirred away into the darkness, a long pointed tail trailing coldly across Jonathan’s forehead. Jonathan shouted and tumbled backward, scattering rocks and thinking only of saving the fragile lantern he was still holding in his left hand. His right shoulder hit the wall of the tunnel and whale oil spewed out of the lamp, burning droplets igniting a spreading pool of it on the tunnel floor. The tunnel, instantly, was alive with light and with the fleshy whirring of a thousand spidery wings as little blind bat things dropped from the ceiling and screeched their way deeper down the tunnel. Ahab raced about up and down the corridor barking, as Jonathan and the Professor crouched next to the pile of stones, brushing at hairless tails. In a moment the tunnel was both silent and dark, the sloshing oil having extinguished the burning wick in the lamp and the pool on the floor having burned itself out.
    Jonathan, rummaging in his bag, found wooden matches and a candle. By the light of the candle, he refilled and lit the oil lamp. He blew the candle out and shoved it back into his pack along with all the amethyst and quartz crystals he had chipped loose. ‘What were those things, Professor,’ Jonathan asked. ‘Bats?’
    ‘Not bats that I’ve ever seen. I’ve come across blind cave bats before, but nothing like those critters – nothing with tails. These looked like bats that had gotten mixed up with ‘possums. Probably one of Selznak’s experiments.’
    Jonathan grimaced. ‘I don’t care much for Selznak’s experiments. In fact, they give me the creeps. Let’s get out of here. This tunnel isn’t going anywhere but down.’
    ‘I believe,’ the Professor said, ‘that we’re in the tunnel that leads to the door. I
have
to see that door.’
    ‘Or dogs. Or pinks bats. Or some other horrible thing. I’m about ready to have a look at the door on Hightower Tavern myself.’ Upon mentioning Hightower Tavern he remembered the four bottles of ale he had in