“He! Monsieur VESQUIER!” I shout.  I have taken a wrong turning; that is, I have taken some turning or other to the right, and there is no sign of my guide.  My fears have come true.  My forebodings are realised.  I stumble on—­over the tram-way lines—­against the casks—­“He, la bas!  He! M. VESQUIER!!”—­O dear!—­“Home Sweet Home!” What was that negro melody that now recurs to me as a sort of singing in my ears—­“Home once more!  Home once more!  Shall I ever see my home once more!!”—­A shout in the distance—­or is it an echo—­no!  Is it VESQUIER!  I shout in return—­then in the far distance I descry a light ... it grows bigger ... a shriek ... a wild waving of a blazing garish torch, and again I have to compress myself against the barrels as another trolly whizzes past at full speed, carrying two cheerful-looking, and except for that one shout, silent demons.  “Hey trolly lolly!” I cannot stay there—­they have gone like a flash—­and the obscurity is becoming oppressive....  Shall I retrace my steps?  It isn’t a question of “shall I,”—­it is “can I"? Through how many turnings have we come?  No—­I should never find my way back again.  Better push on.  I shout again:  desperately but nervously.  There is not even an echo.  And now my candle, which has been guttering and sputtering for the last few moments, is threatening dissolution.  It is the beginning of the end—­of the candle-end.  If the candle goes out before I do—­Heavens! but I must move very cautiously.  What a subject for a Jules-Verne novel! Ah, how I should enjoy reading about it in a story!! But as a personal experience ...  Where am I?  Is it straight on? or to the left?—­I think there is a left passage—­or to the right?  I peer down in the hopes of seeing some evidence of life, at all events the glimmer of a light, which may probably mean my guide.  No; not a sign.  Are there rats here?  If so.... the candle-end is sputtering worse than ever ... it is flickering ...  What’s to be done?...  I shout “Hullo!” at the top of my voice.  Yes, at the top of my voice, but at the bottom of the caves.  Then the question occurs to me, of what use is it to shout in English?  No one will understand me.  The candle-end is making a final struggle for life.  So must I. “He’, la bas!” I shout “with all my might and main,” like the celebrity of the old nursery tale, who jumped into a quickset hedge as an infallible remedy for blindness.  No result.  I think of the man in the dungeon who was eaten by rats.  Well-known case, but quite forget the gentleman’s name.  Political prisoner probably whose offence had been “ratting”—­and so his punishment was made “to fit the crime,” as Mr. GILBERT’s Mikado used to observe.  Why do such grimly comic reminiscences occur to me now, when I am in so really awful a situation?  So, once more I shout with desperation in my lungs, “He! la—! bas!”

And—­oh, the joy—­oh, the rapture!—­there comes back to me—­“He, la bas! Blass the Prince of WAILES!”