taken of the shape of various rocks,
I am sure that we never should have managed it at all, but have wandered
about in the dreadful womb of the volcano--for I suppose it must
once have been something of the sort--until we died of exhaustion and
despair. As it was we went wrong several times, and once nearly fell
into a huge crack or crevasse. It was terrible work creeping about
in the dense gloom and awful stillness from boulder to boulder,
and examining it by the feeble light of the lamps to see if I could
recognise its shape. We rarely spoke, our hearts were too heavy
for speech, we simply stumbled about, falling sometimes and cutting
ourselves, in a rather dogged sort of way. The fact was that our spirits
were utterly crushed, and we did not greatly care what happened to us.
Only we felt bound to try and save our lives whilst we could, and indeed
a natural instinct prompted us to it. So for some three or four hours,
I should think--I cannot tell exactly how long, for we had no watch
left that would go--we blundered on. During the last two hours we were
completely lost, and I began to fear that we had got into the funnel of
some subsidiary cone, when at last I suddenly recognised a very large
rock which we had passed in descending but a little way from the top.
It is a marvel that I should have recognised it, and, indeed, we
had already passed it going at right angles to the proper path, when
something about it struck me, and I turned back and examined it in an
idle sort of way, and, as it happened, this proved our salvation.

After this we gained the rocky natural stair without much further
trouble, and in due course found ourselves back in the little chamber
where the benighted Noot had lived and died.

But now a fresh terror stared us in the face. It will be remembered that
owing to Job's fear and awkwardness, the plank upon which we had crossed
from the huge spur to the rocking-stone had been whirled off into the
tremendous gulf below.

How were we to cross without the plank?

There was only one answer--we must try and _jump_ it, or else stop there
till we starved. The distance in itself was not so very great, between
eleven and twelve feet I should think, and I have seen Leo jump over
twenty when he was a young fellow at collage; but then, think of the
conditions. Two weary, worn-out men, one of them on the wrong side of
forty, a rocking-stone to take off from, a trembling point of rock some
few feet across t