into the stream and swim about
until I found her, but this I considered would be vain, and I tried
to first find where she was by getting her if possible to answer
me. I called her several times by name, at the same time following,
as well as I could in the darkness, the direction taken by the
current. Oh, how I wished we had brought two torches instead of
only the one that was now lost!

As I crawled about from rock to rock, guiding myself by the
indistinct sounds I heard, I blamed myself for not having listened
to Thora's words of expressed fear at the opening of the cave. That
she had the viking's stone in her possession was a matter of small
comfort to me when I seriously reflected upon the extreme danger of
the situation, and I feared that, in spite of the supernatural aid,
she might even now be drowned, and that I would never again see her
fair face in life.

But I was determined not to leave the cave until I had found her,
and, accordingly, I continued the search with growing consternation.

No response came to my constant cries of "Thora! Thora!" and I
wandered hither and thither in the difficult darkness for what
appeared to me fully an hour's time. I became hopeless, and even
thought of trying to find my own way out of the cavern, that I
might summon help from Crua Breck. But still I was urged by some
inward feeling to go onward yet a little further.

Passing at length round an abutting angle of ragged wall, I entered
what appeared to be the extreme chamber of the cavern; and here my
eyes were for a moment dazzled by the appearance of a bright though
thin beam of golden sunlight, which shone from the west through a
narrow fissure in the rock, and glittered upon the unruffled
surface of a large and deep pool of water. With renewed hope I
again called Thora; but not far from where I was standing the water
curled in a cascade over its rocky bed, so to continue its
subterranean course into the sea, and the noise it made in falling
rendered my voice inaudible. The sight of that dark water gliding
smoothly to the edge of rock, and there tumbling over into greater
depths, seemed to tell me only too plainly what Thora's fate had
been.

I now began to despair of being able to escape into the outer air
before the night came on; the changing hues of the stream of light
that entered the cave already indicated the setting of the sun. But
by the welcome help of such light as remained I carefully surveyed
the chamber