ntered at summer swimming pools. If
ever the confounded spiral passage came to an end, he might find that he
was still all right. As seconds passed and he fell and fell, it seemed
that he was bound for the center of the earth. It seemed that--

* * * * *

He swished around a multiple bend, and eyes which had been accustomed to
darkness were blinded by light.

It was light which radiated in all colors--blue, yellow, browns,
purples, reds, pinks, and then all the new colors for which he had no
name. Somehow Kirby knew that he had shot out of the tunnel, which
emerged high up in the face of a cliff, and that he was dropping through
perfumed, brilliant air resonant with the sound of birds and insects and
human cries. The funny thing was that the pull of gravity was not right,
somehow, and he was dropping fairly slowly. From far below, a body of
what looked like water was sweeping up to meet him. Kirby closed his
eyes.

When he opened them again, his whole body was stinging with the slap of
his impact, and he found that it was water which he had struck. The
proof of it lay in the fact that he was swimming, and was approaching a
shore.

But such water! It was milky white and perfumed as the geyser flow had
been, and it seemed luminous as with a radium fire. Had he not realized
presently that the fluid probably contained enough arsenic to finish a
thousand like him, he would have thought of himself as bathing in the
waters of Paradise.

But then he began to forget about the poison which might already be at
work upon him.

Ahead of him, stretched out in the gorgeous, colored light, ran a beach
which was backed by heavy jungle. And on the beach stood the lovely
creatures, all clad in shimmering, glistening garments, whose flutelike
cries had come to him as he fell.

* * * * *

Kirby looked, and became almost powerless to continue his swim. The
beauty of those frail women was like the reputed beauty of bright
angels. That paralyzing effect of wonder, however, did not last long.

The girls moved forward to the water's edge, and, laughing amongst
themselves, beckoned to him with lovely slender hands whose every motion
was a caress.

"Be not afraid," called one in a curious patois dialect, about
five-sixths of which seemed made up of Spanish words, distorted but
recognizable.

"The water would kill you," called another, "as it killed the Spaniard
in armor