of were smoke on
which a soft green light played for a moment and vanished.

But by degrees the light grew, though at no time did it become more than
a wan ghost of a light, and from its curious fluttering he judged that
it came through water.

Reasoning from the trend of the cavern, he came to the conclusion that
somewhere on that further side there were openings into the deep water
beyond, on which the sunlight played and struck at times into the cave,
and he was keen to look more closely into it.

He lowered his torch to the side of his rock, and its feeble flicker
fell on a chaos of rocks below. He looked long and cautiously for supple
yellow arms or tiny whip-like threads which might coil suddenly round
his legs and drag him to hideous death.

But he saw nothing of the kind. The rocks were dry and bare, not a
limpet nor a sea-weed visible, and leaving his jacket for a landmark as
before, he slowly let himself down from one huge boulder to another,
till he found himself climbing another great pile in front.

When at last his head rose above this ridge, he almost rolled over at
the sight of two huge green eyes blinking lazily at him out of the
darkness in front--two great openings far below sea-level, through which
filtered dimly the wavering green light whose refractions fluttered in
the roof.

The vast trough below him heaved gently now and then, with a ponderous
solemnity which filled him with awe. He felt himself an intruder. He
felt like a fly creeping about a sleeping tiger. He hardly dared to
breathe, lest the brooding spirit of the place should rise suddenly out
of some dark corner and squash him on his rock as one does a crawling
insect; and his anxious eyes swept to and fro for the smallest sign of
danger.

But, plucking up courage from immunity, and dreading to be caught in the
dark in that weird place, he crawled over the boulders towards the side
wall of the cavern to get as near to those openings as possible. From
the very slight movement of the water, which was ever on the boil round
the outside of L'Etat, he judged them deep down among the roots of the
island, far below the turmoil of the surface, but he must see and make
sure.

With infinite toil and many a scrape and bruise, he got round at last,
and could look right down into the dim green depths, and what he saw
there filled him with sickening fear.

The water was crystal clear, and in through the nearer opening, as he
looked, a huge o