rward. I don't mean
for us all to be drowned like rats in a tank."

"You two wouldn't need to be," said Brace coolly, "for you would stop at
once if you should hear me go down."

"Oh, of course," said Briscoe, with a sneer: "we shouldn't try to save
your life. 'Tisn't likely, is it, Lynton?"

"Not a bit," was the gruff reply; "but I say, Mr Brace, hold hard now.
I'll go back and send a man down below to bring up some pieces of
pine-wood to burn."

"I have stopped," said Brace, whose voice sounded to the rest of the
party hollow and echoing, dying away in the distance like a peculiar
whisper. "There's a great pillar here, and the passage branches off to
right and left."

"Well, let's have lights."

"I don't think we shall want them if we take the passage to the left,
for I can see light shining in through a hole. Yes, and there's another
hole farther on. It's a passage going down at a slope. Why, it's all
steps."

"Steps?" cried Briscoe, as he heard the tap, tap of the steel plate
covering the butt of Brace's gun as he felt his way.

"And so it is away here to the right: steps going down into black
darkness. I know! down to the great tank, into which the water falls
from ever so high up."

"Then you stop, young fellow," cried Briscoe hoarsely, "or you'll be
falling too from ever so high up, and I daresay that's a big stone
cistern half a mile deep, and full of water-snakes and polligoblins."

"Listen," said Brace; "I'm going to feed them. Be quiet, everybody," he
added, for the passage behind was now being filled up, the captain and
Sir Humphrey in front.

"What are you going to do now, sir?" asked Lynton.

"Here's a great mass of stone that seems to have fallen down from the
roof close to my feet. Hold my gun."

He passed his piece to the mate, who could faintly make out the
speaker's shape by the feeble light which came from beyond him to the
left.

"Heavy," panted Brace, "Hah!"

He raised the stone right above his head and heaved it from him, the
expiration of his breath being plainly heard by the listeners in the
painful silence which followed for a couple of seconds. Then there were
sparks emitted from somewhere below, where the stone struck with a crash
and bounded off into space.

The crash was echoed, and seemed to reverberate round and round some
great vault, and then came directly after a dull, solemn, weird-sounding
_plosh_! evidently not many feet below where they were standing