west, with a bale o' blue fox an' otter pelt. Fust I knew them geysers
begun for to groan egregious like, an' I seen the caribou gallopin'
hell-bent south. 'This climate,' sez I, 'is too bracin' for me,' so I
struck a back trail an' landed onto a hill. Then them geysers blowed
up, one arter the next, an' I heard somethin' kinder cave in between
here an' China. I disremember things what happened. Somethin' throwed
me down, but I couldn't stay there, for the blamed ground was runnin'
like a river--all wavy-like, an' the sky hit me on the back o' me
head."

"And then?" I urged, in that new excitement which every repetition of
the story revived. I had heard it all twenty times since we left New
York, but mere repetition could not apparently satisfy me.

"Then," continued William, "the whole world kinder went off like a
fire-cracker, an' I come too, an' ran like--"

"I know," said I, cutting him short, for I had become wearied of the
invariable profanity which lent a lurid ending to his narrative.

"After that," I continued, "you went through the rent in the
mountains?"

"Sure."

"And you saw a dingue and a creature that resembled a mammoth?"

"Sure," he repeated, sulkily.

"And you saw something else?" I always asked this question; it