First came Harry; but hope did not enter.  It was inconceivable that he, too, should have escaped that fearful torrent; stupendous luck alone had saved me from being dashed senseless against the rocks and guided me to the ledge on which I rested.

Then he was gone!  I had no thought of my own peril.  I had gone through the world with but little regard for what it held; nothing had been sacred to me; no affection had been more than a day’s caprice; I had merely sucked amusement from its bitter fruit.

But I loved Harry; I realized it with something like astonishment.  He was dear to me; a keen, intense pain contracted my chest at the thought of having lost him; tears filled my eyes; and I raised up my voice and sang out wildly: 

“Harry!  Harry, lad!  Harry!”

The cavern resounded.  The call went from wall to wall, then back again, floating through black space with a curious tremor, and finally died away in some dim, unseen corridor.  And then—­then came an answering call!

Owing to the conflicting echoes of the cavern, the tone could not be recognized.  But the word was unmistakable; it was “Paul.”

I sprang to my feet with a shout, then stood listening.  Out of the blackness surrounding me came the words, in Harry’s voice, much lower, but distinct: 

“Paul!  Paul, where are you?”

“Thank Heaven!” I breathed; and I answered: 

“Here, Harry boy, here.”

“But where?”

“I don’t know.  On a ledge of rock at the edge of the water.  Where are you?”

“Same place.  Which side are you on?”

“The right side,” I answered with heartfelt emphasis.  “That is to say, the outside.  If it weren’t for this infernal darkness—­Listen!  How far away does my voice sound?”

But the innumerable echoes of the cavern walls made it impossible to judge of distance by sound.  We tried it over and over; sometimes it seemed that we were only a few feet apart, sometimes a mile or more.

Then Harry spoke in a whisper, and his voice appeared to be directly in my ear.  Never have I seen a night so completely black as that cavern; we had had several hours, presumably, for our eyes to adjust themselves to the phenomenon; but when I held my hand but six inches in front of my face I could not get even the faintest suggestion of its outline.

“This is useless,” I declared finally.  “We must experiment.  Harry!”

“Yes.”

“Turn to your left and proceed carefully along the edge.  I’ll turn to my right.  Go easy, lad; feel your way.”

I crawled on my hands and knees, no faster than a snail, feeling every inch of the ground.  The surface was wet and slippery, and in places sloped at an angle that made me hang on for dear life to keep from shooting off into space.

Meantime I kept calling to Harry and he to me; but, on account of our painfully slow progress, it was half an hour or more before we discovered that the distance between us was being increased instead of lessened.