s hanging till my back was ready to break, but I couldn't get
away, and I lay and lay, till all at once I was snatched up, and that
hurt me so that I yelled for help, and then the nightmare seemed to be
gone and I was lying all asleep like till I saw you and the captain; and
here I am, somewhere, and that's all."

It was all, for the corporal swooned away, and had to be lifted and
carried up.

"Poor fellow!" said Captain Roby; "he'll be better when we get him out
into the open air. See to him, my lads. If he cannot walk you must
carry him."

The men closed round the corporal, while the captain and Dickenson
walked back to where a couple of the men, looking sallow and half-scared
with their task, stood holding one of the lanterns at the month of the
water-chasm.

"Heard anything?" said the captain, in a low tone of voice which sounded
as if he dreaded to hear his own words.

"Nothing, sir," was the reply; "only the water rushing down."

"It seems to me,"--began the other, and then he paused.

"Yes: what? How does it seem to you?" asked the captain.

"Well, sir, as we stand listening here it sounds as if the hole down
there gets choked every now and then with too much water, and then the
place fills up more, and goes off again with a rush."

The captain made no reply, but stood with Dickenson gazing down into the
chasm till there was a difference in the sound of its running out, when
the latter caught at his companion, gripping his arm excitedly.

"Yes," he whispered hoarsely; "that's how it went while I was down
there. Oh Roby! can't we do anything more?"

The captain was silent for some little time, and then he half-dragged
his companion to the rough ladder.

"Come up," he said; "you know we can do no more by stopping thinking
till one is almost wild with horror. Here, go up first."

It was like a sharp order, but Dickenson felt that it came from his
officer's heart, and, with a shiver as much of horror as of cold from
his drenched and clinging garments, he climbed to the next level and
stood feeling half-stunned, and waiting while the sergeant climbed up
and joined them with some rings of the rope upon his arm.

"May's going to try and climb up by himself, sir," said the sergeant in
a low voice, "but I've made the rope fast round him to hold on by in
case he slips. We don't want another accident."

The sight of the rope, and the sergeant's words, stirred Dickenson into
speaking again.

"James,