m yonder in the direction from which that sound of
falling water comes. Let me lead now, Cross. I think I can manage
without a light."

"Better feel about well, sir, with your stick," said the carpenter.
"That hole I trod in was rather awkward."

"I'll mind," said my uncle; "follow me close," and he began to wade in
the direction of the faint gleam of light.

"Did you get wet, Pete?" I said.

"Wet, sir? He pulled me right under water. It's buzzing in my ears
now."

"Better than being pulled under by a water-snake, Pete," I said, and he
gave a shivering shudder as we followed on without either coming across
the hole, and at the end of a quarter of an hour the light ahead was
rapidly growing plainer, while the roar of falling water became louder
and echoed through the vast cavern over whose watery floor we
progressed.

In another half-hour's slow wading, we were able to make out our
position, one which now became more striking minute by minute, for we
could see that we were in a vast chasm whose bottom was the rushing
foaming river along which we were wading. It was some fifty feet wide,
and the roof overhead nearly as much, while right in front, at the
distance of a couple of hundred yards, and facing us as it now sent
ever-changing flashes and reflections of light into the cavern, was the
great fall whose waters thundered as they dived from somewhere out of
sight into a huge basin whose overflowings formed the underground river
along which we journeyed.

The scene became more beautiful minute by minute, the noise more
deafening; and at last we stopped short, warned by the increasing depth
of the water, and the sight of the great pool into which the cascade
thundered down.

We were standing in the beautiful green twilight water to the middle,
but no one for a time wished to stir, the scene was so grand, made more
beautiful as it was from time to time by a gleam of sunshine shooting
down across the faint mist of spray which floated upwards, and wherever
this bright light fell we had glimpses of what seemed like fragments of
a broken rainbow.

"Very beautiful, Nat," said my uncle at last, "but the floor here is
rather damp; I am tired and hungry; and we have to get out. Which way
shall we try?"

"Not go back, uncle," I said quickly. "Let's get into the sunshine
again."

"Certainly; but how? We can't wade any farther without risk of
drowning. What do you say, Cross?"

"Yonder's an awful pit, sir,