rhythmically, rarely varying the distance by a yard--twenty yards off,
then back again, then away. On every third or fourth approach he stepped
literally to the edge of the chasm, and glanced down, ten thousand feet
to where the stream below looked like the finest silver thread, lighted
by the dazzling light from the giant crater, reflected into every
smallest fissure. Now and again the madman would lash himself into a
fury, and stop for a moment to gaze at Lilama, who never moved from her
crouching position some ten feet from the canyon's brink. Even Peters,
the stoic, was moved--but moved to anger rather than to grief or fear.
He inwardly chafed, and madly raved, by turns, at the impotency of his
position; whilst Pym seemed frozen into statuesque despair. How much
longer would this scene of terror last? Oh, the thought of that awful
leap into space! The maniac might any moment end the scene--each time as
he approached in that wild rush backward and forward might be the last.
The slightest move, the slightest sound, might precipitate the dire
calamity--and Lilama as well as Pym and Peters seemed to feel this
truth. The madman, like the wild beast, appears to need an extraneous
stimulus, be it ever so slight, to suggest an initiative: the crooking
of a finger, the whispering of a word, may be sufficient, but it must be
something.--Ah! Has the moment come? Has the insane man caught some
sound inaudible to the others? He pauses. Yes, he is going to act.

"'Oh! friend,' wailed Pym to Peters, in a low voice, 'save her, save
her, or where she goes, there go I.'

"Then Peters looks across the chasm, down upon the scene beyond. The
opposite brink at this point is ten or twelve feet lower than the spot
where Pym and Peters stand, which gives them an excellent view of Lilama
and Ahpilus. It is impossible to say just why, but it is obvious that
the time which they dread has come. Ahpilus stands looking at the