a scimitar, passed in one sheet the spot where we stood, and dived
into a sunless pool thirty feet below with a thunderous boom. What it may
have been in full phases of the stream, I know not; yet even now it was
sufficiently magnificent to give pause to a dying soul eager to shake off
the restless horror of the world. The flat of its broad blade divided the
lofty black walls of a deep and savage ravine, on whose jagged shelves
some starved clumps of rhododendron shook in the wind of the torrent.
Far down the narrow gully we could see the passion of water tossing,
champed white with the ravening of its jaws, until it took a bend of the
cliffs at a leap and rushed from sight.

We stood upon a little platform of coarse grass and bramble, whose fringe
dipped and nodded fitfully as the sprinkle caught it. Beyond, the sliding
sheet of water looked like a great strap of steel, reeled ceaselessly off
a whirling drum pivoted between the hills. The midday sun shot like a
piston down the shaft of the valley, painting purple spears and angles
behind its abutting rocks, and hitting full upon the upper curve of the
fall; but half-way down the cataract slipped into shadow.

My brain sickened with the endless gliding and turmoil of descent, and I
turned aside to speak to my companion. He was kneeling upon the grass,
his eyes fixed and staring, his white lips mumbling some crippled memory
of a prayer. He started and cowered down as I touched him on the
shoulder.

"I cannot go, Monsieur; I shall die!"

"What next, Camille? I will go alone,"

"My God, Monsieur! the cave under the fall! It is there the horror is."

He pointed to a little gap in the fringing bushes with shaking finger.
I stole gingerly in the direction he indicated. With every step I
took the awful fascination of the descending water increased upon
me. It seemed hideous and abnormal to stand mid-way against a
perpendicularly-rushing torrent. Above or below the effect would have
been different; but here, to look up was to feel one's feet dragging
towards the unseen--to look down and pass from vision of the lip of the
fall was to become the waif of a force that was unaccountable.

I had a battle with my nerves, and triumphed. As I approached the opening
in the brambles I became conscious of a certain relief. At a little
distance the cataract had seemed to actually wash in its descent the edge
of the platform. Now I found it to be further away than I had imagined,
the