Two or three times we were for going back, so arduous was the ascent; but determined to see our adventure to the end we pressed on and on, ever higher, till the noise became almost deafening, a cold dank wind too made our lights to flutter, and once they threatened to become extinct. But five minutes after the passage widened and the draught was not so fierce, while bright veins running through the rock at my side whispered of some rich metal or other for him who would venture thus far in its search.
“We’re a-coming to it now, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom shouting, for the noise was deafening.
The very next moment we were standing in a vast vault stretching out as far as our feeble light would show us, while about fifty feet to our left, in one black, gloomy, unbroken torrent, fell from some great height above, a cascade of water, black as night, till it reached the basin below us, which, even with our trembling lights, shone forth in a silvery, iridescent foam.
We could hardly hear the words we uttered from time to time, but we felt but little inclination to speak, so awe-inspiring was the scene before us; and it was not until we had been gazing for some time that we ventured to climb down lower and lower, to find that the bottom of the cavern was a basin of restless water, from which it was evident some portion escaped through a natural conduit to the vault below, while probably the rest made its way to the vast gulf we had before seen.
Then up and down—now near the great foaming basin, then with arduous climbing close to the dome that formed the roof—I searched about, well aided by Tom, who seemed to think that I was looking for something precious, though he said nothing. At one time we approached so near the waterfall that we could distinguish, high up, the narrow archway through which it gushed. It seemed, too, that by a little management any one daring enough might have passed round the rocky amphitheatre in which we were, right beneath the waterfall to the other side, where rifts and faintly-discerned chasms whispered of further wondrous passages unexplored, and I felt sure—for the more I searched the more the feeling came home to me—that we were the first human beings who had ever entered this stronghold of nature.
With the exception of the bright veins I have mentioned there was no trace of gem or precious metal. The sides and roof sparkled and glistened again and again, but it was only with some stalactitic formation—beautiful to the eye, but worthless; and at last I felt that this was labour in vain—the treasure was no more here than in the vast chasm where we had hurled the stone; and, shouting to Tom my intentions, we stood and had another look, and then lit upon a mass of rock a large piece of oily oakum which we had brought for the purpose.
Our oakum burned brightly, but it was of little avail, giving us not much more than a glimpse of the wonders of the grand chamber in which we stood; and then we turned to go, but only to encounter an unexpected difficulty. The chamber was so vast and the rift by which we had entered the sloping side so high up amidst crags resembling one another that we had great difficulty in finding it, and I remember shuddering as I thought of the consequences of being lost there in the dark.