Part 9 (2/2)

As ere puddling leisurely along Good remarked upon the extraordinary deep blue colour of the water, and said that he understood fro their principal food--that the lake was supposed to be wonderfully deep, and to have a hole at the bottoreat fire that was raging below

I pointed out to hi fro the people which dated back to the time when one of the extinct parasitic volcanic cones was in activity We saw several round the borders of the lake which had no doubt been working at a period long subsequent to the volcanic death of the central crater which now formed the bed of the lake itself When it finally becaine that the water fro fire below, h it was constantly fed by strea from the snow-tipped peaks about, there was no visible exit to it

The farther shore of the lake we found, on approaching it, to consist of a vast perpendicular wall of rock, which held the water without any interly we paddled parallel with this precipice, at a distance of about a hundred paces fro our course for the end of the lake, where we knew that there was a large village

As e began to pass a considerable accuhs of trees, and other rubbish, brought, Good supposed, to this spot by some current, which he wasabout this, Sir Henry pointed out a flock of large white swans, which were feeding on the drift some little way ahead of us Now I had already noticed swans flying about this lake, and, having never coly anxious to obtain a specimen I had questioned the natives about them, and learnt that they ca at certain periods of the year in the early , when it was very easy to catch them, on account of their exhausted condition

I also asked theed their shoulders, and said that on the top of the great black precipice was stony inhospitable land, and beyond that were mountains with snow, and full of wild beasts, where no people lived, and beyond the mountains were hundreds of miles of dense thorn forest, so thick that even the elephants could not get through it, much less men Next I asked the on the farther side of the hed But afterwards a very old worandfather had told her that in his youth _his_ grandfather had crossed the desert and the mountains, and pierced the thorn forest, and seen a white people who lived in stone kraals beyond Of course, as this took the tale back some two hundred and fifty years, the inforain, and on thinking it over I grew firmly convinced that there was some truth in all these rumours, and equally firuess in what an alratified

Well, we set to work to stalk the swans, which kept drawing, as they fed, nearer and nearer to the precipice, and at last we pushed the canoe under shelter of a patch of drift within forty yards of the for a chance, got two in a line, and, firing at their necks, killed thehty splashi+ng; and, as they did so, he gave the, and I saw the leg of another drop and a few feathers start out of his back; but he went on quite strong Up went the swans, circling ever higher till at last they wereprecipice, when I saw thele and head off for the unknown north-east Meanwhile we had picked up our two dead ones, and beautiful birds they were, weighing not less than about thirty pounds each, and were chasing the winged one, which had scrambled over aa difficulty in forcing the canoe through the rubbish, I told our only re Wakwafi servant, whom I knew to be an excellent swimmer, to ju that as there were no crocodiles in this lake he could co, the ed swan in fine style, getting gradually nearer to the rock wall, against which the water washed as he did so

Presently he gave up swi carried away; and, indeed,that, though he i drawn slowly to the precipice With a few desperate strokes of our paddles we pushed the canoe through the crust of drift and rowed towards the man as hard as we could, but, fast as ent, he was drawn faster to the rock Suddenly I saw that before us, just rising eighteen inches or so above the surface of the lake, hat looked like the top of the arch of a subed cave or railway tunnel Evidently, froenerally entirely subed; but there had been a dry season, and the cold had prevented the snow fro as freely as usual; so the lake was low and the arch showed Towards this arch our poor servant was being sucked with frightful rapidity He was not more than ten fathoms from it, and ere about twenty when I saw it, and with little help froled bravely, and I thought that we should have saved him, when suddenly I perceived an expression of despair come upon his face, and there before our eyes he was sucked down into the cruel swirling blue depths, and vanished At the sahty hand, and propelled with resistless force towards the rock

We realized our danger now and rowed, or rather paddled, furiously in our atteet out of the vortex In vain; in another second ere flying straight for the arch like an arrow, and I thought that ere lost Luckily I retained sufficient presence ofmyself into the bottom of the canoe, 'Down on your faces--down!' and the others had the sense to take the hint In another instant there was a grinding noise, and the boat was pushed down till the water began to trickle over the sides, and I thought that ere gone But no, suddenly the grinding ceased, and we could again feel the canoe flying along I turned my head a little--I dared not lift it--and looked up By the feeble light that yet reached the canoe, I couldjust over our heads, and that was all In another ht had ed into shadow, and the shadows had been sed up in darkness, utter and co to lift our heads for fear lest the brains should be dashed out of them, and scarcely able to speak even, on account of the noise of the rushi+ng water which drowned our voices Not, indeed, that we hadthat ere overwhelmed by the awfulness of our position and the iainst the sides of the cavern, or on a rock, or being sucked down in the raging waters, or perhaps asphyxiated by want of air All of these and ination as I lay at the botto waters which ran whither we knew not One only other sound could I hear, and that was Alphonse's inter from the centre of the canoe, and even that see overpowered an to believe that I was the victihtmare

CHAPTER X THE ROSE OF FIRE

On we flew, drawn by the hty current, till at last I noticed that the sound of the water was not half so deafening as it had been, and concluded that this must be because there was more room for the echoes to disperse in I could now hear Alphonse's howls much more distinctly; they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the Supreme Power and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible to conceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved them fro up a paddle Ithat the end had come, howled louder than ever Then I slowly and cautiously raised myself on my knees and stretched my hand upwards, but could touch no roof Next I took the paddle and lifted it above h as I could, but with the saht and left, but could touch nothing except water Then I bethoughtpossessions, a bull's-eye lantern and a tin of oil I groped about and found it, and having a ot a hold of the wick I turned it on down the boat As it happened, the first thing the light lit on was the white and scared face of Alphonse, who, thinking that it was all over at last, and that he itnessing a preliave a terrific yell and ith difficulty reassured with the paddle As for the other three, Good was lying on the flat of his back, his eyeglass still fixed in his eye, and gazing blankly into the upper darkness Sir Henry had his head resting on the thwarts of the canoe, and with his hand was trying to test the speed of the water But when the beahed I think I have said that we had put a roast quarter of water-buck into the canoe Well, it so happened that e all prostrated ourselves to avoid being swept out of the boat and into the water by the rock roof, Uaas's head had come down uncommonly near this roast buck, and so soon as he had recovered a little from the first shock of our position it occurred to hiry

Thereupon he coolly cut off a chop with Inkosi-kaas, and was now e it with every appearance of satisfaction As he afterwards explained, he thought that he was going 'on a long journey', and preferred to start on a full stoed, and who are generally reported in the English daily papers to have made 'an excellent breakfast'

As soon as the others saw that I had ht the lamp, we bundled Alphonse into the farther end of the canoe with a threat which cal the darkness hideous with his cries ould put hi him to join the Wakwafi and wait for Annette in another sphere, and began to discuss the situation as well as we could First, however, at Good's suggestion, we bound two paddles ive us warning against any sudden lowering of the roof of the cave or ay It was clear to us that ere in an underground river or, as Alphonse defined it, 'main drain', which carried off the superfluous waters of the lake Such rivers are well known to exist in many parts of the world, but it has not often been the evil fortune of explorers to travel by theht from the bull's-eye lantern failed to reach froh occasionally, when the current swept us either to one side or the other, we could distinguish the rock wall of the tunnel, which, as far as we could make out, appeared to arch about twenty-five feet above our heads As for the current itself, it ran, Good estiht knots, and, fortunately for us, was, as is usual, fiercest in the e that one of us, with the lantern and a pole there was in the canoe, should always be in the bows ready, if possible, to prevent us froainst the side of the cave or any projecting rock U already dined, took the first turn This was absolutely, with one exception, all that we could do towards preserving our safety The exception was that another of us took up a position in the stern with a paddle by means of which it was possible to steer the canoe more or less and to keep her from the sides of the cave Theseitin rather better spirits I gave my opinion that, serious as it undoubtedly was, I did not consider our position altogether without hope, unless, indeed, the natives were right, and the river plunged straight down into the bowels of the earth If not, it was clear that it e somewhere, probably on the other side of the mountains, and in that case all we had to think of was to keep ourselves alive till we got there, wherever 'there' ubriously pointed out, on the other hand we ht fall victio on winding away inside the earth till it dried up, in which case our fate would indeed be an awful one

'Well, let us hope for the best and prepare ourselves for the worst,'

said Sir Henry, who is always cheerful and even spirited--a very tower of strength in the time of trouble 'We have coether, that somehow I almost fancy we shall come out of this,' he added

This was excellent advice, and we proceeded to take it each in our separate way--that is, except Alphonse, who had by now sunk into a sort of terrified stupor Good was at the hel left for Sir Henry and myself to do except to lie down in the canoe and think It certainly was a curious, and indeed al, as ere, through the bowels of the earth, borne on the boso after the fashi+on of souls being ferried by Charon, as Curtis said And how dark it was! The feeble ray from our little lamp did but serve to show the darkness There in the bows sat old Uaas, like Pleasure in the poe, the pole ready to his hand, and behind in the shadow I could just ht in order to make out how to steer with the paddle that he held and now and again dipped into the water

'Well, well,' thought I, 'you have come in search of adventures, Allan ot theht to be ashamed of yourself; but somehow you are not, and, awful as it all is, perhaps you will pull through after all; and if you don't, why, you cannot help it, you see! And when all's said and done an underground river will -place'

At first, however, I areat It is trying to the coolest and most experienced person not to know from one hour to another if he has fivein this world that one cannot get accustoet accustoh no doubt natural, was, strictly speaking, illogical, seeing that we never knohat is going to happen to us the next minute, even e sit in a well-drained house with two police we have to live It is all arranged for us, ?

It was nearly midday e made our dive into darkness, and we had set our watch (Good and Ureed that it should be of a duration of five hours At seven o'clock, accordingly, Sir Henry and I went on, Sir Henry at the bow and I at the stern, and the other two lay down and went to sleep For three hours all ell, Sir Henry only finding it necessary once to push us off fro was required to keep us straight, as the violent current did all that was needed, though occasionally the canoe showed a tendency which had to be guarded against to veer and travel broadside on What struckabout this wonderful river was: how did the air keep fresh? It was y and thick, no doubt, but still not sufficiently so to render it bad or even reest is that the water of the lake had sufficient air in it to keep the atnation, this air being given out as it proceeded on its headlong way Of course I only give the solution of the mystery for what it is worth, which perhaps is not much

When I had been for three hours or so at the hele in the te warmer At first I took no notice of it, but when, at the expiration of another half-hour, I found that it was getting hotter and hotter, I called to Sir Henry and asked hiination 'Noticed it!' he answered; 'I should think so I am in a sort of Turkish bath'

Just about then the others woke up gasping, and were obliged to begin to discard their clothes Here Ue, for he did not wear any to speak of, except a moocha