The next morning we packed our effects in the canoe, and this being done, we carried my lady's pets from the conies' cave (as I call it) to the wood, and there set them free; but, Lord, to see these dumb things at the water's edge (the conies on their hind-legs), looking after their mistress, as if they had a notion they should never see her again, touched our hearts with sad regret.
"Farewell, you dears!" says my lady tearfully; and then, as we glided past our cavern, "Farewell, little home!" but she could say no more.
So in silence we neared that cavern where we were about to venture our lives; for I now perceived how serious and grave a business lay before me.
Before entering the grotto, I lit one of the cuati-nuts, and stuck it in a fork of green hard wood I had fixed to the prow of the canoe for that purpose. Then, my lady having a pole out on one side, and I one on the other, we recommended ourselves to Providence, and pushed into the darkness.
For some time we went gently down with the current, only using our poles to keep us head foremost, and as nigh the middle of the stream as we could judge. And here it was admirable to see how the rocks on either hand and above flashed back the light from our flaming nuts, for all the world like cut diamonds; but after a while, upon looking back, the opening of this cavern (through which we had come) looked no bigger than the flame of a penny candle, and the glitter of the rocks grew less perceptible, from which we concluded that the grotto, instead of diminishing, was increasing in capacity. At first this was no matter of regret, but rather the contrary; but by-and-by, when we could descry no light at all behind us, nor any reflection from the rocks around, a strange feeling crept upon me, for which I can find no name. Save the reflection of the burning nut upon the black water, and our own figures as we stood up in the canoe (which were shadowy enough for creatures of another world), we could see nothing. The water under the fire lay as still and smooth as any polished mirror; for aught we could tell, the current had ceased to flow, and we had come to a standstill. I thrust my pole out on either side; it touched nothing. I slid it downwards into the water, and my arm also up to the elbow, without striking the bottom. Then I struck upward as far as I could reach, without meeting any resistance. And on this I looked in my lady's face, and saw it white as a ghost's, and full of awe.
"We seem to have drifted into the world of nothing," says I sportively.
She lifts up her finger in silence a moment, and then in a whisper says she:
"There is no echo."
This indeed impressed me, more deeply than all the rest, with a sense of that vastness and obscurity in which we stood; and I could not speak, for fear of I know not what. And then, as we stood in that wondrous silence, there came a hollow voice from the immensity above, echoing my words after all this interval, but in such a hollow, muffled sound as you may hear after dropping a stone into a deep well.
"Are we moving, Benet?" says my lady, drawing a little nearer to me.