oss-torrent of the underground
tributary. Here we turned short to the left along the margin of the
barrier stream, and tracing its course across the gorge came presently
to the northern cliff at the lip of the spewing cavern mouth.

By now the night was fully come and in the wooded defile we could place
ourselves only by the sense of touch.

"Are you ready, Dick?" said I.

"As ready as a man with a shaking ague can be," he gritted out. "This
dog's work we have been doing of late has brought my old curse upon me
and I am like to rattle my teeth loose."

"Let me go alone then. Another cold plunge may be the death of you."

"No," said he, stubbornly. "Wait but a minute and the fever will be on
me; then I shall be fighting-fit for anything that comes."

So we waited, and I could hear his teeth clicking like castanets.
Having had a tertian fever more than once in the Turkish campaigning, I
had a fellow-feeling for the poor lad, knowing well how the thought of a
plunge into cold water would make him shrink.

In a little time he felt for my hand and grasped it.

"I'm warm enough now, in all conscience," he said; and with that we
slipped into the stream.

'Twas a disappointment of the grateful sort to find the water no more
than mid-thigh deep. The current was swift and strong, but with the
pebbly bottom to give good footing 'twas possible to stem it slowly.
Laying hold of each other for the better breasting of the flood we felt
our way warily to the middle of the pool; felt for the low-sprung cavern
arch, and for that scanty lifting of it where we hoped to find head room
between stone above and stream below.

We found the highest part of the arch after some blind groping, and
making lowly obeisance to the gods of the underworld began a snail-like
progress into the gurgling throat of the spewing rock-monster.

I here confess to you, my dears, that, had I loved my sweet lady less,
no earthly power could have driven me into that dismal stifling place.
All my life long I have had a most unspeakable horror of low-roofed
caverns and squeezing passages that cramp a man for breath and for the
room to draw it in; and when the suffocating madness came upon me, as
it did when we were well jammed in this cursed horror-hole, I was right
glad to have my love for Margery to make an outward-seeming man of me;
glad, too, that my dear lad was close behind to shame me into going on.

Yet, after all, the passage through the throat of