rn appeared to be failing in upon us. At the
same time the ground seemed to sink directly away beneath my feet with
an easy, rocking motion as of a wave of the ocean. Then I felt myself
plunging downward with a velocity that stunned my senses and took away
my breath; and then all was confusion and chaos--and oblivion.

When I awoke I was lying flat on my back, and Harry was kneeling at my
side. I opened my eyes, and felt that it would be impossible to make a
greater exertion.

"Paul!" cried Harry. "Speak to me! Not you, too--I shall go mad!"

He told me afterward that I had lain unconscious for many hours, but
that appeared to be all that he knew. How far we had fallen, or how he
had found me, or how he himself had escaped being crushed to pieces by
the falling rock, he was unable to say; and I concluded that he, too,
had been rendered unconscious by the fall, and for some time dazed and
bewildered by the shock.

Well! We were alive--that was all.

For we were weak and faint from hunger and fatigue, and one mass of
bruises and blisters from head to foot. And we had had no water for
something like twenty-four hours. Heaven only knows where we found the
energy to rise and go in search of it; it is incredible that any
creatures in such a pitiable and miserable condition as we were could
have been propelled by hope, unless it is indeed immortal.

Half walking, half crawling, we went forward.

The place where we had found ourselves was a jumbled mass of boulders
and broken rock, but we soon discovered a passage, level and straight
as any tunnel built by man.

Down this we made our way. Every few feet we stopped to rest. Neither
of us spoke a word. I really had no sense of any purpose in our
progress; I crept on exactly as some animals, wounded to death, move on
and on until there is no longer strength for another step, when they
lie down for the final breath.

We saw no water nor promise of any; nothing save the long stretch of
dim vista ahead and the grim, black walls on either side. That, I
think, for hours; it seemed to me then for years.

I dragged one leg after the other with infinite effort and pain; Harry
was ahead, and sometimes, glancing back over his shoulder to find me at
some distance behind, he would turn over and lie on his back till I
approached. Then again to his knees and again forward. Neither of us
spoke.

Suddenly, at a great distance down the passage, much further than I had