on, startled into loosening his
hold as the brute brushed by him, came scrambling and falling down, till
he was checked by his friends.

"Hurt?" cried Oliver, excitedly.

"Hurt!" was the reply, in an angry tone, "just see if you can come down
twenty or thirty feet without hurting yourself."

"But no bones broken?" said Drew.

"How should I know? Oh, hang it, how I've hurt my poor shoulder again."

Irritation, more than injury, was evidently the result of the fall, for
as he knelt down to bathe a cut upon one of his hands, Panton
exclaimed,--

"One of you might have shot the brute. Only let me catch a glimpse of
him again."

"There wasn't time," said Oliver. "But don't you think we had better
give up the excursion for to-day?"

"No, I don't," cried Panton. "Think I've taken all this trouble for
nothing," and, rising to his feet again, he took his gun from where he
had stood it, and began to climb once more in and out among the pendent
vines and creepers till he was at the top, and the others followed, but
did not reach his side without being bitten and stung over and over
again by the ants and winged insects which swarmed.

"There, what do you say to that?" cried Panton, forgetting his injuries
and pointing downward.

His companions were too much entranced to speak, but stood there gazing
at as lovely a scene as ever met the eyes of man.

For there below them, in a cup-like depression, lay a nearly circular
lake of the purest and stillest water, in whose mirror-like surface were
reflected the rocky sides, verdant with beautiful growth, the towering
trees and spire-like needles which ran up for hundreds of feet, here and
there crumbled into every imaginable form, but clothed by nature with
wondrous growth wherever plant could find room to root in the slowly
decaying rock.

"Glorious, glorious!" exclaimed Drew, in a subdued voice, as if tones
ought to be hushed in that lovely scene, for fear they should all awaken
and find it had been some dream.

Panton gazed from one to the other, forgetful of his fall, and with a
look of triumph in his smiling eyes, while Oliver let himself sink down
upon the nearest stone, rested his chin upon his hand, and gazed at the
scene as if he could never drink his fill.

As for the two sailors, they exchanged a solemn wink and then stood
waiting with a calm look of satisfaction as much as to say: "We did all
this; you'd never have known of it if it had not been for us."