ten feet below. Luckily he had escaped serious injury, and
climbed up on the other side, while I leaped across--a distance of
about six feet.

"They could never have brought her through this," he declared, rubbing
a bruised knee.

"Do you want to go back?" I asked.

But he said that would be useless, and I agreed with him. So we
struggled onward, painfully and laboriously. The sharp corners of the
rocks cut our feet and hands, and I had an ugly bruise on my left
shoulder, besides many lesser ones. Harry's injured knee caused him to
limp and thus further retarded our progress.

At times the passage broadened out until the wall on either side was
barely visible, only to narrow down again till it was scarcely more
than a crevice between the giant boulders. The variation of the
incline was no less, being at times very nearly level, and at others
mounting upward at an angle whose ascent was all but impossible.
Somehow we crawled up, like flies on a wall.

When we came to a stream of water rushing directly across our path at
the foot of a towering rock Harry gave a cry of joy and ran forward. I
had not known until then how badly his knee was hurt, and when I came
up to where he was bathing it in the stream and saw how black and
swollen it was, I insisted that he give it a rest. But he absolutely
refused, and after we had quenched our thirst and gotten an easy breath
or two we struggled to our feet and on.

After another hour of scrambling and failing and hanging on by our
finger nails, the way began to be easier. We came to level, clear
stretches with only an occasional boulder or ravine, and the rock
became less cruel to our bleeding feet. The relief came almost too
late, for by that time every movement was painful, and we made but slow
progress.

Soon we faced another difficulty when we came to a point where a split
in the passage showed a lane on either side. One led straight ahead;
the other branched off to the right. They were very similar, but
somehow the one on the right looked more promising to us, and we took
it.

We had followed this but a short distance when it broadened out to such
an extent that the walls on either side could be seen but dimly. It
still sloped upward, but at a very slight angle, and we had little
difficulty in making our way. Another half-hour and it narrowed down
again to a mere lane.

We were proceeding at a fairly rapid gait, keeping our eyes strained
ahead, when the