likely to reach, and so began a frantic hunt along the
walls of the cavern.

"By the greatest good fortune, my eye caught sight of a rocky projection,
quite a way up the side of the cave, and I yelled to my companions. They
hurried over, and we climbed desperately up the rocky wall. I was the
first to reach the platform, and I helped the others over its edge.
Bradhurst waited until we were all up, and then hoisted Bob up over his
head. I leaned over as far as I could, and was just able to get a grip
on the unconscious man. Assisted by the others, I pulled him up, and
then in a twinkling we had Brad up, too.

"And not a second too soon, either. Even as we hauled our friend over
the edge, a great foaming wall of water leaped out of the tunnel from
which we had emerged not three minutes before, and boiled out over the
floor of the cave in which we were. It washed against the walls, and we
thought for a few seconds that it would even reach our place of refuge.
It did lap up to within a foot of us, but then spread out more and
subsided a little.

"We would have been as helpless as so many chips of wood if it had caught
us while in the narrow tunnel, and we shuddered as we thought of our
narrow escape.

"The ledge on which we found ourselves was amply supplied with driftwood,
probably left there at the time of some former flood that had been even
fiercer than this one. We made a fire, and waited for the water to
subside with as much patience as we could muster. We knew that Bob would
probably die unless we could get him to a doctor soon, and this made the
waiting all the harder. At times he would rave in delirium, and at
others lie so quiet that more than once we thought him dead.

"But the water did go down after what seemed to us an age, but was in all
probability not more than a few hours. We resumed our journey down its
channel, and by great good fortune came at last to the place where it
emerged into the open air. The sun was shining brightly, and words are
inadequate to describe our joy at seeing it once more. We took deep
breaths of the warm tropical air, so grateful after the damp, confined
atmosphere in which we had been so long, and thanked a kind Providence
for our escape.

"We made our way back to our camp, and arrived just in the nick of time.
Our guides had given us up as lost, and were much astonished at seeing
us. After their first astonishment had worn off, they seemed to regard
us with t