d into tunnels wondrously cut by some forgotten
river of fire in the ages long ago, and, emerging again, we entered a
wilderness of ravines wherefrom even the sky was to be seen and the
cliffs towering majestically above us. Then, at last, we left the
daylight altogether, and going downward as to the heart of the earth I
knew that the land lay behind us and that the sea flowed above our
heads.

Reader of a plain seaman's story, can you come with me on such a
journey as I and four stout hearts made on that unforgotten day? Can
you picture, as I picture now, that dark and lonesome cavern, with the
sea beating upon its roof and the air coming salt and humid to the
tongue, and the echo of distant breakers in your ears, and always the
night and the doubt of it? Can you follow me from grotto to grotto and
labyrinth to labyrinth, stumbling often by the way, catching at the
lantern's dancing rays, calling one to the other, "All's well--lead
on"? Aye, I doubt that you can. These things must be seen with a man's
own eyes, heard with his own ears, to be understood and made real to
him. To me that scene lives as though yesterday had brought it. I see
the doctor with his impatient step. I see Peter Bligh stumbling after
him. I hear little Dolly Venn's manly voice; I help Seth Barker over
the rocks. And these four stand side by side with me on the white
pool's edge. The danger comes again. The fear, the loathing, are
unforgotten.

I speak of fear and loathing and of dread white pool, and you will ask
me why and how we came thereto. And so I say that the water lay,
may-be, a third of a mile from the land, in a clear, transparent basin
of some quartz or mica, or other shining mineral, so that it gave out
crystal lights even to the darkness, and the arched grotto which held
it was all aglow, as though with hidden fires. A silent pool it was, we
said, and our path seemed to end upon its brink; but even as we stood
asking for a road, all the still water began to heave and foam, and, a
great creature rising up from the depths, the lantern showed us a
monster devil-fish, and we fell back one upon the other with affrighted
cries. Nor let any man charge us with that. A situation more perilous I
have never been in, and never shall. The fish's terrible suckers
searching all the rocks, the frightful eye of the brute, the rushing
water, the half-light worse than darkness, might well have driven back
a stronger man than I. And upon the top of th