"You're out of sorts, to-night. Your head, or your nerves, or some thing,
has gone back on you, and you walk through this blackness with half a
notion that you're going to walk over a precipice, or drop head-first into
some danger. With such a feeling it would be cruelty to let you go
forward, chum, and I'm not going to do it. I'll go alone."

The crouching figure to the rear of the young engineers quivered as though
this separation of the two engineers on this black night was a thing
devoutly to be desired.

"You're not going to do anything of the sort," retorted Harry Hazelton.
"I'm going forward with you. I'm going to stick to you. All I wanted was
a minute in which to brace myself. I've had that minute. Now get forward
with you. I'm on your heels!"

Tom Reade shrugged his shoulders slightly. However, he did not object or
argue, for he realized that his chum was sensitive over any circumstance
that seemed to point to sudden failure of his courage.

"Come along, then," urged Tom. "Wait just a second, though. I'll flash
the light ahead along the wall, to show you that it's all there, and just
where it lies."

A narrow beam of light shot ahead as Tom pressed the spring of his pocket
flash lamp.

A weird enough scene the night betrayed. In perspective the wall ahead
narrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all was
the thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A little
farther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardly