he place over which the white men had fallen. Then there was
much eager conversation in an unknown tongue, mingled with occasional
bursts of laughter--on hearing which latter the huge mouth of our negro
enlarged in silent sympathy. After a while the voices were heard to
retire up the narrow track and become fainter until they died away
altogether, leaving no sound save the murmur of the rushing river to
fill the ears of the anxious listeners who stood like three statues in a
niche on the face of that mighty precipice.

"Now, you know," said Breezy, with a sigh of relief, "this is very
satisfactory as far as it goes, and we have reason to be thankful that
we are neither speared nor dashed to pieces; nevertheless, we are in an
uncomfortable fix here, for night is approaching, and we must retrace
our steps somehow or other, unless we make up our minds to sleep
standing."

"That's so, doctor. There's not room to lie down here," assented the
sailor, glancing slowly round; "an', to tell 'ee the plain truth, I feel
as funky about trustin' myself again to that serpent-like creeper as I
felt the first time I went up through the lubber-hole the year I went to
sea."

"What you's 'fraid ob, Mr 'Ockins?" asked Ebony.

"Afraid o' the nasty thing givin' way under my weight. If it was a good
stout rope, now, I wouldn't mind, but every crack it gave when I was
comin' aloft made my heart jump a'most out o' my mouth."

"What have 'ee found there, doctor?" asked the seaman, on observing that
his companion was groping behind a mass of herbage at the back part of
the niche in which they stood.

"There's a big hole here, Hockins. Perhaps we may find room to stay
where we are, after all, till morning. Come here, Ebony, you've got
something of the eel about you. Try if you can wriggle in."

The negro at once thrust his head and shoulders into the hole, but could
not advance.

"Bery strange!" he said, drawing out his head, and snorting once or
twice like a dog that has half-choked himself in a rabbit-hole. "Seems
to me dere's a big block o' wood dere stoppin' de way."

"Strange indeed, Ebony. A block of wood could not have grown there.
Are you sure it is not a big root?"

"Sartin' sure, massa. I hab studied roots since I was a babby. Hold
on, I try again."

The negro tried again, and with such vigour that he not only displaced
the block of wood, but burst in several planks which concealed the
entrance to a cavern. They