the cave here
must have been forty feet high. Blessed heaven! I was saved!

But alas! they did not begin till some six feet above my head, and the
wall was sheer. How was I to reach the lowest rung? The rock was too
sheer for me to cut steps in, as I had done farther back. I looked about
me. Again the luck was with me. In one of the caves I had noticed some
broken pieces of fallen rock. They were terribly heavy, but despair lent
me strength, and after an hour or two's work, I had managed to roll
several of them to the foot of the ladder, and--with an effort of which
I would not have believed myself capable--had been able to build them
one on top of another against the wall. So, I found myself able to grasp
the lowest rung with my hands. Then, fastening the lantern round my
neck with my necktie, I prepared to mount.

The climb was not difficult, once I had managed to get my feet on the
first rung of the ladder, but there was always the chance that one of
the rungs might have rusted loose with time, in which case, of course,
it would have given way in my grasp, and I should have been precipitated
backward to certain death below.

However, the man who had mortised them had done an honest piece of work,
and they proved as firm as on the day they were placed there. Up and up
I went, till I must have been forty feet above the floor, and, then, as
I neared the roof, instead of coming to a trap door, as I had
conjectured, I found that the ladder came to an end at the edge of a
narrow ledge, running along the ceiling much as a clerestory runs near
the roof of some old churches. On to this I managed to climb. It was
barely a yard wide, and the impending roof did not permit of one's
standing erect. It was a dizzy situation, and it seemed safest to crawl
along on all fours, holding the lantern in front of me. Presently it
brought me up sharp in a narrow recess. It had come to an end.

Yes! but imagine my joy! it had come to an end at a low archway rudely
cut in the rock. Deep set in the archway was a stout wooden door. My
first thought was that I was trapped again, but, to my infinite surprise
and gratitude, it proved to be slightly ajar, and a vigorous push sent
it grinding back on its hinges. What next! I wondered. At all events, I
was no longer lost in the bowels of the earth; step by step, I was
coming nearer to the frontiers of humanity.

But I was certainly not prepared for what next met my eyes, as I pushed
through the