long grey lichen, hanging motionless to the rock
as the white beard to the chin of a dead man. It seemed as though
only the dregs or heavier part of the light had sunk to the bottom
of this awful place. No bright-winged sunbeam could fall so low:
they died far, far above our heads.

By the river's edge was a little shore formed of round fragments
of rock washed into this shape by the constant action of water,
and giving the place the appearance of being strewn with thousands
of fossil cannon balls. Evidently when the water of the underground
river is high there is no beach at all, or very little, between
the border of the stream and the precipitous cliffs; but now
there was a space of seven or eight yards. And here, on this
beach, we determined to land, in order to rest ourselves a little
after all that we had gone through and to stretch our limbs.
It was a dreadful place, but it would give an hour's respite
from the terrors of the river, and also allow of our repacking
and arranging the canoe. Accordingly we selected what looked
like a favourable spot, and with some little difficulty managed
to beach the canoe and scramble out on to the round, inhospitable
pebbles.

'My word,' called out Good, who was on shore the first, 'what
an awful place! It's enough to give one a fit.' And he laughed.

Instantly a thundering voice took up his words, magnifying them
a hundred times. '_Give one a fit -- Ho! ho! ho!' -- 'A fit,
Ho! ho! ho!_' answered another voice in wild accents from far
up the cliff -- _a fit! a fit! a fit!_ chimed in voice after voice
-- each flinging the words to and fro with shouts of awful laughter
to the invisible lips of the other till the whole place echoed
with the words and with shrieks of fiendish merriment, which
at last ceased as suddenly as they had begun.

'Oh, mon Dieu!' yelled Alphonse, startled quite out of such
self-command as he possessed.

'_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_' the Titanic echoes thundered,
shrieked, and wailed in every conceivable tone.

'Ah,' said Umslopogaas calmly, 'I clearly perceive that devils
live here. Well, the place looks like it.'

I tried to explain to him that the cause of all the hubbub was
a very remarkable and interesting echo, but he would not believe it.

'Ah,' he said, 'I know an echo when I hear one. There was one lived
opposite my kraal in Zululand, and the Intombis [maidens] used
to talk with it. But if what we hear is a full-grown echo,