rooding
back as he stood to hearken.

As his eyes dilated to better discernment, he suspected that an aisle
withdrew, from a faint pallor, narrowing as it tended towards his height,
explicable if water receded there, gathering vague translucence from some
unseen source of light. To verify, he was advancing when a considerate
notion turned him about. He left the dim cavern, returned in the blinding
sunshine to the footprints, knelt by the last, and set his fingers in the
sand for inscription. For a long moment he considered, for no words
seemed effectual to deliver his complexed mind. When he wrote it was a
sentence of singular construction, truly indicative of how vague awe and
dread had uprisen to take large standing beside simple humane solicitude.
He traced three large crosses, and then three words. Simple construing
would read thus: 'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost
at your service.' Moderately content with that rendering, he transcribed
it thrice on the rocks, graving with the branch of coral. At either end
of the entrance gorge he set it, and again large and fair above the
hidden mouth of the cave.

Back into darkness he dived to take up research, and wading towards the
tremor of light, entered a long recess that led under low arches of rock,
till light grew more definite, and the water-way ended, closed in by a
breastwork of rock. But, this surmounted, the boy saw water again, of
absolute green, dark as any stone of royal malachite. The level was lower
by several feet, perhaps the true tide-level, perhaps yet another limited
reservoir that the sea replenished daily. He slid down the scarp and went
on, heartened by the increase of light.

The depth of the water varied, and the boy swam more often than he waded.
The colour of the water varied; now it strengthened into a lucent green,
now darkness threatened it, and he swam warily till it altered again,
unaccountably. As his passing troubled the placid water, and ripples of
colourless light, circling away from him, sent wavering lines of dim
light rippling in response upon the sides of the passage, he caught
vague, uncertain glimpses of dark rich colour mantling the rocks.

Suddenly, when light and colour were strongest, his way was barred, a
wall of rock closing it abruptly. Baffled and perplexed, the boy swam to
and fro in vain quest of an outlet, till his wits leapt on a fair surmise
that inlets for light there must be submerged. Down he