the cave, and these shellfish are good enough eating, I believe.  How he managed to keep Thora alive for so long without other food was, however, a thing I could with difficulty understand, unless she fed upon the sea-birds’ eggs.  Thora, herself, remembered nothing of having been in the cave before, but she was very anxious to reach its furthest limits, and, trusting to me to follow her, she went fearlessly onward.

Sometimes she would stoop to lift a stone, and would throw it in front of her to discover if there was a clear passage, for the light burned but dimly.  Once when she did so the stone fell upon something that gave a peculiar hollow sound, as though some wooden box or barrel had been struck.

I took little notice of this, for I was at the moment groping my way into a side chamber of the cave.  I was feeling my way back towards the torch, when Thora called me to her as though she had made some new discovery.  But as I hurried in the direction whence her voice sounded, I was startled by a loud and piercing scream which filled the cavern and re-echoed through the empty corridors.  For a moment I fancied it was the shrieking of some monster inhabitant of the cave and was about to beat a retreat when I heard my name called again.

“Halcro!  Halcro!  Help! help!”

And then the whole place was in utter darkness, and I heard nothing but the dying echoes, and a strange purling of running water.

I made my way as speedily as I could to where I had last seen the lighted torch, and as I got further and further into the cave, the sound of running water grew more distinct, until I heard it just at my feet.  It was not the singing ripple of a shallow rivulet, but the sonorous sound of a deep stream that, so far as I could make out, ran athwart the cavern.  I went down on my knees and put my hand in the water to feel which direction it took, for I did not now doubt that my companion had fallen in, and was even now struggling somewhere in the dark water that was rushing past me.

My first impulse was to throw myself into the stream and swim about until I found her, but this I considered would be vain, and I tried to first find where she was by getting her if possible to answer me.  I called her several times by name, at the same time following, as well as I could in the darkness, the direction taken by the current.  Oh, how I wished we had brought two torches instead of only the one that was now lost!

As I crawled about from rock to rock, guiding myself by the indistinct sounds I heard, I blamed myself for not having listened to Thora’s words of expressed fear at the opening of the cave.  That she had the viking’s stone in her possession was a matter of small comfort to me when I seriously reflected upon the extreme danger of the situation, and I feared that, in spite of the supernatural aid, she might even now be drowned, and that I would never again see her fair face in life.