narrow platform or ledge of rock right underneath the fall itself, but
extending how far I could not see, by reason of the steam that filled the
passage, and for which I was unable to account. Footing it carefully and
groping my way, I set step in the little water-curtained chamber and
advanced a pace or two. Suddenly, light grew about me, and a beautiful
rose of fire appeared on the wall of the passage in the midst of what
seemed a vitrified scoop in the rock.

Marvelling, I put out my hand to touch it, and fell back on the narrow
floor with a scream of anguish. An inch farther, and these lines had
not been written. As it was, the fall caught me by the fingers with the
suck of a cat-fish, and it was only a gigantic wrench that saved me from
slipping off the ledge. The jerk brought my head against the rock with a
stunning blow, and for some moments I lay dizzy and confused, daring
hardly to breathe, and conscious only of a burning and blistering agony
in my right hand.

At length I summoned courage to gather my limbs together and crawl out
the way I had entered. The distance was but a few paces, yet to traverse
these seemed an interminable nightmare of swaying and stumbling. I know
only one other occasion upon which the liberal atmosphere of the open
earth seemed sweeter to my senses when I reached it than it did on this.

I tumbled somehow through the cleft, and sat down, shaking, upon the
grass of the slope beyond; but, happening to throw myself backwards in
the reeling faintness induced by my fright and the pain of my head, my
eyes encountered a sight that woke me at once to full activity.

Balanced upon the very verge of the slope, his face and neck craned
forward, his jaw dropped, a sick, tranced look upon his features, stood