let him who is wise learn wisdom from it—­yet I would not have it otherwise.  I mean that I am content to give what I have given and must always give, and take in payment those crumbs that fall from my mistress’s table, the memory of a few kind words, the hope one day in the far undreamed future of a sweet smile or two of recognition, a little gentle friendship, and a little show of thanks for my devotion to her—­and Leo.

If that does not constitute true love, I do not know what does, and all I have to say is that it is a very bad state of affairs for a man on the wrong side of middle age to fall into.

XXVII

WE LEAP

We passed through the caves without trouble, but when we came to the slope of the inverted cone two difficulties stared us in the face.  The first of these was the laborious nature of the ascent, and the next the extreme difficulty of finding our way.  Indeed, had it not been for the mental notes that I had fortunately taken of the shape of various rocks, I am sure that we never should have managed it at all, but have wandered about in the dreadful womb of the volcano—­for I suppose it must once have been something of the sort—­until we died of exhaustion and despair.  As it was we went wrong several times, and once nearly fell into a huge crack or crevasse.  It was terrible work creeping about in the dense gloom and awful stillness from boulder to boulder, and examining it by the feeble light of the lamps to see if I could recognise its shape.  We rarely spoke, our hearts were too heavy for speech, we simply stumbled about, falling sometimes and cutting ourselves, in a rather dogged sort of way.  The fact was that our spirits were utterly crushed, and we did not greatly care what happened to us.  Only we felt bound to try and save our lives whilst we could, and indeed a natural instinct prompted us to it.  So for some three or four hours, I should think—­I cannot tell exactly how long, for we had no watch left that would go—­we blundered on.  During the last two hours we were completely lost, and I began to fear that we had got into the funnel of some subsidiary cone, when at last I suddenly recognised a very large rock which we had passed in descending but a little way from the top.  It is a marvel that I should have recognised it, and, indeed, we had already passed it going at right angles to the proper path, when something about it struck me, and I turned back and examined it in an idle sort of way, and, as it happened, this proved our salvation.

After this we gained the rocky natural stair without much further trouble, and in due course found ourselves back in the little chamber where the benighted Noot had lived and died.

But now a fresh terror stared us in the face.  It will be remembered that owing to Job’s fear and awkwardness, the plank upon which we had crossed from the huge spur to the rocking-stone had been whirled off into the tremendous gulf below.