But she would not listen.

“My uncle,” she said, “with you, the experienced mountaineer, why should I be afraid?  If the Doctor here, who is old enough to be the father of either of us” (so far as Joshua was concerned this remark lacked truth), “is willing to go, surely I can go also?  Moreover, if I remained behind, you would wish to stay to guard me, and never should I forgive myself if I deprived you of such a great adventure.  Also, like you, I love climbing.  Come, let us waste no more time.”

So we were roped up.  First went Shadrach, with Quick next to him, a position which the Sergeant insisted upon occupying as his custodian, and several of the Mountaineers, carrying ladders, lamps, oil, food and other things.  Then in a second gang came two more of these men, Oliver, Maqueda, myself, and next to me, Joshua.  The remaining mountaineers brought up the rear, carrying spare stores, ladders, and so forth.  When all was ready the lamps were lit, and we started upon a very strange journey.

For the first two hundred feet or so the stairs, though worn and almost perpendicular, for the place was like the shaft of a mine, were not difficult to descend, to any of us except Joshua, whom I heard puffing and groaning behind me.  Then came a gallery running eastward at a steep slope for perhaps fifty paces, and at the end of it a second shaft of about the same depth as the first, but with the stairs much more worn, apparently by the washing of water, of which a good deal trickled out of the sides of the shaft.  Another difficulty was that the air rushing up from below made it hard to keep the lamps alight.

Toward the bottom of this section there was scarcely any stair left, and the climbing became very dangerous.  Here, indeed, Joshua slipped, and with a wail of terror slid down the shaft and landed with his legs across my back in such a fashion that had I not happened to have good hand and foot hold at the time, he would have propelled me on to Maqueda, and we must have all rolled down headlong, probably to our deaths.

As it was, this fat and terrified fellow cast his arms about my neck, to which he clung, nearly choking me, until, just when I was about to faint beneath his weight and pressure, the Mountaineers in the third party arrived and dragged him off.  When they had got him in charge, for I refused to move another step while he was immediately behind me, we descended by a ladder which the first party had set up, to the second level, where began another long, eastward sloping passage that ended at the mouth of a third pit.

Here arose the great question as to what was to be done with the Prince Joshua, who vowed that he could go no farther, and demanded loudly to be taken back to the top of the cliff, although Shadrach assured him that thenceforward the road was much easier.  At length we were obliged to refer the matter to Maqueda, who settled it in very few words.