“Dearest,” he murmured, “dearest, speak to me!”

His hand sought her swelling bosom gropingly; and his eyes, as they looked pleadingly even into mine, shot into my heart and unnerved me.

I rose to my feet, scarcely able to stand, and moved away.

But the fate that had finally intervened for us—­too late, alas! for one—­did not leave us long with our dead.  Even now I do not know what happened; at the time I knew even less.  Harry told me afterward that the first shock came at the instant he had taken Desiree in his arms and pressed his lips to hers.

I had crossed to the other side of the passage and was gazing back toward the chasm at the Incas on the other side, when again I felt the ground, absolutely without warning, tremble violently under my feet.  At the same moment there was a low, curious rumble as of the thundering of distant cannon.

I sprang toward Harry with a cry of alarm, and had crossed about to the middle of the passage, when a deafening roar smote my ear, and the entire wall of the cavern appeared to be failing in upon us.  At the same time the ground seemed to sink directly away beneath my feet with an easy, rocking motion as of a wave of the ocean.  Then I felt myself plunging downward with a velocity that stunned my senses and took away my breath; and then all was confusion and chaos—­and oblivion.

When I awoke I was lying flat on my back, and Harry was kneeling at my side.  I opened my eyes, and felt that it would be impossible to make a greater exertion.

“Paul!” cried Harry.  “Speak to me!  Not you, too—­I shall go mad!”

He told me afterward that I had lain unconscious for many hours, but that appeared to be all that he knew.  How far we had fallen, or how he had found me, or how he himself had escaped being crushed to pieces by the falling rock, he was unable to say; and I concluded that he, too, had been rendered unconscious by the fall, and for some time dazed and bewildered by the shock.

Well!  We were alive—­that was all.

For we were weak and faint from hunger and fatigue, and one mass of bruises and blisters from head to foot.  And we had had no water for something like twenty-four hours.  Heaven only knows where we found the energy to rise and go in search of it; it is incredible that any creatures in such a pitiable and miserable condition as we were could have been propelled by hope, unless it is indeed immortal.

Half walking, half crawling, we went forward.

The place where we had found ourselves was a jumbled mass of boulders and broken rock, but we soon discovered a passage, level and straight as any tunnel built by man.

Down this we made our way.  Every few feet we stopped to rest.  Neither of us spoke a word.  I really had no sense of any purpose in our progress; I crept on exactly as some animals, wounded to death, move on and on until there is no longer strength for another step, when they lie down for the final breath.