each other. One end of the rope being thus apparently made firm to the
ledge, the other, to which we fastened a fragment of the rock, rested on
the ground below, a distance of some fifty feet. I was a younger man and
a more active man than my companion, and having served on board ship in
my boyhood, this mode of transit was more familiar to me than to him. In
a whisper I claimed the precedence, so that when I gained the ground I
might serve to hold the rope more steady for his descent. I got safely
to the ground beneath, and the engineer now began to lower himself.
But he had scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when the
fastenings, which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or rather the
rock itself proved treacherous and crumbled beneath the strain; and the
unhappy man was precipitated to the bottom, falling just at my feet,
and bringing down with his fall splinters of the rock, one of which,
fortunately but a small one, struck and for the time stunned me. When I
recovered my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me,
life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief and
horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a snort and a
hiss; and turning instinctively to the quarter from which it came, I saw
emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head,
with open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes--the head of a monstrous
reptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely
larger than the largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in my
travels. I started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmost
speed. I stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight, and
returned to the spot on which I had left the body of my friend. It
was gone; doubtless the monster had already drawn it into its den and
devoured it. The rope and the grappling-hooks still lay where they had
fallen, but they afforded me no chance of return; it was impossible to
re-attach them to the rock above, and the sides of the rock were too
sheer and smooth for human steps to clamber. I was alone in this strange