Delancy agreed; the two stepped into the opening. Immediately a great stone was rolled to the mouth of the passage with a noise like thunder which shut out all but a single ray of daylight.

"What is that!" exclaimed O'Donell.

"I cannot tell," replied Delancy "but never mind. I suppose it is only some genius playing tricks."

"Well, it may be so," returned O'Donell and they proceeded on their way.

After travelling for a long time, as near as they could reckon about two days, they perceived a silvery streak of light on the walls of the passage, something like the light of the moon. In a short time they came to the end of the passage, and, leaping out of the opening which formed, they entered a new world.

They were at first so much bewildered by the different objects which struck their senses that they almost fainted, but at length recovering they had time to see everything around them. They were upon the top of a rock which was more than a thousand fathoms high. All beneath them was liquid mountains tossed to and fro with horrible confusion, roaring and raging with a tremendous noise and crowned with waves of foam. All above them was a mighty firmament, in one part covered with black clouds from which darted huge and terrible sheets of lightning, in another part an immense globe of light like silver was hanging in the sky and several smaller globes which sparkled exceedingly surrounded it.

In a short time the tempest which was dreadful beyond description ceased, the large black clouds cleared away, the silver globes vanished, and another globe whose light was of a gold colour appeared. It was far larger than the former and in a little time it became so intensely bright that they could no longer gaze on it, so after looking around them for some time they rose and pursued their journey.

They had travelled a long way, when they came to an immense forest, the trees of which bore a large fruit of a deep purple colour of which they tasted and found that it was fit for food. They journeyed in this forest for three days and on the 3rd day they entered a valley or rather a deep glen surrounded on each side by tremendous rocks, whose tops were lost in the clouds. In this glen they continued for some time and at last came in sight of a mountain which rose so high that they could not see the summit though the sky was quite clear. At the foot of the mountain, there flowed a river of pure water bordered by trees which had flowers of a beautiful rose colour. Except these trees nothing was to be seen but black forests and huge rocks rising out of a wilderness which bore the terrible aspect of devastation and which stretched as far as the eye could reach. In this desolate land no sound was to be heard, not even cry of the eagle or the scream of the curlew, but a silence, like the silence of the grave, reigned over all the face of nature unbroken except by the murmur of the river as it slowly wound its course through the desert.

[[5]]

CHAPTER THE III