--to be left with jewels galore and
not a bite to sustain life. The thing was too commonplace to be
endured. I grew angry, and declined so obvious a fate. 'Ek sal 'n
plan maak,' I told myself in the old Dutchman's words. I had come
through worse dangers, and a way I should find. To starve in the cave
was no ending for David Crawfurd. Far better to join Laputa in the
depths in a manly hazard for liberty.

My obstinacy and irritation cheered me. What had become of the
lack-lustre young fool who had mooned here a few minutes back. Now I
was as tense and strung for effort as the day I had ridden from
Blaauwildebeestefontein to Umvelos'. I felt like a runner in the last
lap of a race. For four days I had lived in the midst of terror and
darkness. Daylight was only a few steps ahead, daylight and youth
restored and a new world.

There were only two outlets from that cave--the way I had come, and the
way the river came. The first was closed, the second a sheer staring
impossibility. I had been into every niche and cranny, and there was
no sign of a passage. I sat down on the floor and looked at the wall
of water. It fell, as I have already explained, in a solid sheet,
which made up the whole of the wall of the cave. Higher than the roof
of the cave I could not see what happened, except that it must be the
open air, for the sun was shining on it. The water was about three
yards distant from the edge of the cave's floor, but it seemed to me
that high up, level with the roof, this distance decreased to little
more than a foot.

I could not see what the walls of the cave were like, but they looked
smooth and difficult. Supposing I managed to climb up to the level of
the roof close to the water, how on earth was I to get outside on to
the wall of the ravine? I knew from my old days of rock-climbing what
a complete obstacle the overhang of a cave is.

While I looked, however, I saw a thing which I had not noticed before.
On the left side of the fall the water sluiced down in a sheet to the
extreme edge of the cave, almost sprinkling the floor with water. But
on the right side the force of water was obviously weaker, and a little
short of the level of the cave roof there was a spike of rock which
slightly broke the fall. The spike was covered, but the covering was
shallow, for the current flowed from it in a rose-shaped spray. If a
man could get to that spike and could get a foot on it without being
swept d