sea on the other side
of the world!

"Well, all this was mighty pretty, but it didn't tell me where to find a
meal; so I baled out the boat and paddled along the eastern edge of the
lake searching the cliffs for a path, and after an hour or so I hit on
what looked to me like a foot-track, zig-zagging up through the creepers
and across the face of the rock. I determined to try it, made the boat
fast to a clump of fern, slung O'Hara's cornet on to my side-belt and
began to climb.

"I saw no marks of footsteps; but the track was a path all right, though
a teazer. A dozen times I had to crawl on hands and knees under the
creepers--creepers with stems as thick as my two wrists--and once, about
two-thirds of the way up, I was forced to push sideways through a
crevice dripping with water, and so steep under foot that I slid twice
and caked myself with mud. I very nearly gave out here; but it was do
or die, and after ten minutes more of scratching, pushing, and
scrambling, I reached the top and sat down to mop my face and recover.

"I daresay it was another ten minutes before I fetched breath enough and
looked about me; and as I turned my head, there, close behind me, lay
another crater with another lake smiling below, all blue and peaceful as
the one I had left! I gazed from one to the other. This new crater had
no opening on the sea; its sides were steeper, though not quite so tall;
and either my eyes played me a trick or its water stood at a higher
level. I stood there, comparing the two, when suddenly against the
skyline, and not two hundred yards away, I caught sight of a man.

"He was walking towards me around the edge of the crater, and halting
every now and then to stare down at my boat. He might be a friend, or
he might be a foe; but anyway it was not for me, in my condition, to
choose which, so I waited for him to come up. And first I saw that he
carried a spear, and wore a pair of wide dirty-white trousers and a
short coat embroidered with gold; and next that he was a true Malay,
pretty well on in years, with a greyish beard falling over his chest.
He had no shirt, but a scarlet sash wrapped about his waist and holding
a _kris_ and two long pistols handsomely inlaid with gold. In spite of
his weapons he seemed a benevolent old boy.

"He pointed towards my boat and tried me with a few questions, first in
his own language, then in Spanish, of which I knew very little beyond
the sound. But I spread out my