Sentence The Fourhundredandninetyfourth 

“It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew, where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few,” the old Woody Guthrie song kept going like a loop in Roxy Davidova's head as she felt her way around the Cavern she had been lowered into; she described what she saw into the microphone clipped to her collar and heard the reassuring voice of Aunty Crist in her ear: yes, there were signs of recent human habitation, there were things apparently left behind by the American soldiers in their rush to escape the volcano, and there were also artefacts she could not place – och, she admitted to herself, she was no historian or archaeologist, probably not the right person to have wangled her way into this initial search, and she knew there had been some dissensus at the whole idea of a volunteer from the General Public, chosen by a name being drawn from a hat, a name she had ensured would be

hers, but the yeasayers had prevailed, seeing the publicity value as being greater than the waste of resources in sending an amateur down, and her Chief of Staff, Brunnhilda Macintosh-Maclehose, a truly blue-blooded true-blue truepenny if there ever was one, had come up with the means to ensure she and her Unionist Party came up smelling like roses – but she would do her very best, while the rest of the team – well, the actual team – were getting ready to descend, and that was when she heard it, that tune, In The Hall of The Mountain King from Peer Gynt, and before she turned round, she knew exactly who she would see, a man with a sad and softly smiling face and a softly guttural voice, a man in a felt hat, with the letter M scrawled on his back, and as the tune grew closer and she fancied she could feel the whistling breath on the back of her neck and her hair bristle and stand on end, and with a gentle sigh she fainted!