Benjy at my shoulder, thrusting his cool nose against my feverish
cheek. I suppose he didn't understand my ignoring him so, or
thought I scorned him for losing out in his race with the pig. Yet
when I think of what I owe that pig I could swear never to taste
pork again.

Brought back to earth and sanity, I rose and began to consider my
surroundings. Somewhere close at hand was the mouth of the
cave--but where? The cliffs, as I have already said, were too
steep for descent. Nothing but a fly could have crawled down them.
I turned to the craggy face of the mountain. There, surely, must
be the entrance to the cave! For hours I clambered among the
rocks, risking mangled limbs and sunstroke--and found no cave. I
came back at last, wearily, to the grave. There lay the dust of
the brain that had known all--and a wild impulse came to me to tear
away the earth with my bare hands, to dig deep, deep--and then with
listening ear wait for a whispered word.

I put the delirious fancy from me and moved away to the edge of the
cliffs. Looking down, I saw a narrow sloping shelf which dropped
from the brink to a distance of ten or twelve feet below, where it
met a slight projection of the rock. I had seen it before, of
course, but it had carried no significance for my mind. Now I
stepped down upon the ledge and followed it to its end in the angle
of the rock.

Snugly hidden in the angle was a low doorway leading into blackness.

Now of course I ought in prudence to have gone back to the hut and
got matches and a lantern and a rope before I set foot in the
darkness of that unknown place. But what had I to do to-day with
prudence--Fortune had me by the hand! In I went boldly, Benjy at
my heels. The passage turned sharply, and for a little way we
walked in blackness. Then it veered again, and a faint and far-off
light seemed to filter its way to us through a web woven of the
very stuff of night. The floor sloped a little downward. I felt
my way with my feet, and came to a step--another. I was going
along a descending passage, cut at its steepest into rough,
irregular stairs. With either hand I could touch the walls. All
the while the light grew clearer. Presently, by another sharp
turn, I found myself in a cave, some thirty feet in depth by
eighteen across, with an opening on the narrow strip of beach I had
seen from the top of the cliffs.

The roof is high, with an effect of Gothic arches. Near the mouth
is