Here, then, was the source of the river, which rose from springs somewhere far below—springs which caused the bubbling we saw, making our little raft to rock terribly in one part we passed over, so that we gladly sought the sandy shore and there remained listening to the lapping of the water and the faint distant roar.
“There must be another cavern beyond this, Tom,” I said after a thoughtful pause.
“Ain’t a doubt about it, Mas’r Harry,” he replied. “It’s my belief that if any one would do it he might go on for ever and ever, right through the inside of the earth to find it all full of places like this.”
“Look!” I said eagerly, as I stood on the sandy slip of land and held up the light above my head, pointing the while to the end of the vault; “there’s a rift up there, Tom, if we could climb to it, and that’s where that roaring noise comes through.”
“Mean to try it, Mas’r Harry?”
“Yes,” I said, “if we can climb to it; otherwise we must come again with something we can fit together like a ladder.”
“Oh! I can get up there, Mas’r Harry, I know,” said Tom. “I’ve been up worse places than that in Cornwall after gulls’ eggs.”
Tom sprang ashore, and I gave a cry of horror, for the little raft was moving off; but with a leap Tom was back upon it and drew it ashore by a piece of line, which he tied to one of the poles after forcing it well down into the sand.
“That won’t get away now, Mas’r Harry,” he said.
And then stepping cautiously along over the sand, which gave way and seemed to shiver beneath our feet, we reached the end of the vault, and with very little difficulty climbed from cranny to cranny till we gained the opening—a mere slit between two masses of rock—through which we had to squeeze ourselves, and then wind up and up between block after block, that looked as though they had been riven asunder in some convulsion of nature.