r hear you," whispered
Jack. "I mean in one of my legs: it will keep waggling so and giving
way at the knee."

"Why, Jack!" I said.

"No, no," he whispered hastily, "it ain't that. I ain't a bit afraid.
It's cramp."

"Well, if you are not afraid," I whispered back, "I am. I hope, Jack, I
may never live to be in such an awful place again."

"I say, Joe Carstairs, say that once more," whispered Jack excitedly.

"I hope I may never be--"

"No, no, I don't mean that. I mean the other," whispered Jack.

"What, about being afraid?" I said. "Well, I'm not ashamed to own it.
It may be cramp, Jack Penny, but I feel as if it is sheer fright."

"Then that's what must be the matter with my leg," said Jack eagerly,
"only don't let's tell the doctor."

"Ready behind there?" said the latter just then.

"Yes," I said, "quite ready;" and I passed the word to Jimmy and Aroo,
who were close to me.

"Let's get on then," said the doctor in a low voice. "I want to get out
of this awful gorge."

"Hooray!" whispered Jack Penny, giving me such a dig with his elbow that
for the second time he nearly sent me off the rocky shelf. "Hooray! the
doctor's frightened too, Joe Carstairs. I ain't ashamed to own it now."

"Hist!" whispered the doctor then, and slightly raised as was his voice
it seemed strangely loud, and went echoing along the side of the chasm.

Going steadily on at once we found the shelf kept wonderfully the same
in width, the only variation being that it dipped down close to the
rushing water at times, and then curved up till we were fifteen or
twenty feet above the stream. With the walls on either side of the
river, though, it was different, for they gradually rose higher and
higher till there was but a strip of starry sky above our heads, and our
path then became so dark that but for the leading of the sure-footed
blacks we could not have progressed, but must have come to a halt.

I was wondering whether this gorge would end by opening out upon some
plain, through its being but a gap or pass through a range of hills, but
concluded that it would grow deeper and darker, and bring us face to
face with a second waterfall, and I whispered to the doctor my opinion;
but he did not agree with me.

"No," he said, "the gorge is rising, of course, from the way in which
the river rushes on, but there can be no waterfall this way or we should
hear it. The noise of the one behind us comes humming along this rocky