And then,
suddenly, we came out from among the trees, on to a great open space,
where, not six paces in front of us, yawned the mouth of a tremendous
chasm, from the depths of which the noise appeared to rise, along with
the continuous, mistlike spray that we had witnessed from the top of the
distant bank. For quite a minute we stood in silence, staring in bewilderment at the
sight; then my friend went forward cautiously to the edge of the abyss. I followed, and, together, we looked down through a boil of spray at a
monster cataract of frothing water that burst, spouting, from the side
of the chasm, nearly a hundred feet below. "Good Lord!" said Tonnison. I was silent, and rather awed. The sight was so unexpectedly grand and
eerie; though this latter quality came more upon me later. Presently, I looked up and across to the further side of the chasm. There, I saw something towering up among the spray: it looked like a
fragment of a great ruin, and I touched Tonnison on the shoulder. He
glanced 'round, with a start, and I pointed toward the thing. His gaze
followed my finger, and his eyes lighted up with a sudden flash of
excitement, as the object came within his field of view. "Come along," he shouted above the uproar. "We'll have a look at it. There's something queer about this place; I feel it in my bones." And he
started off, 'round the edge of the craterlike abyss. As we neared this
new thing, I saw that I had not been mistaken in my first impression. It
was undoubtedly a portion of some ruined building; yet now I made out
that it was not built upon the edge of the chasm itself, as I had at
first supposed; but perched almost at the extreme end of a huge spur of
rock that jutted out some fifty or sixty feet over the abyss. In fact,
the jagged mass of ruin was literally suspended in midair. Arriving opposite it, we walked out on to the projecting arm of rock,
and I must confess to having felt an intolerable sense of terror as I
looked down from that dizzy perch into the unknown depths below us--into
the deeps from which there rose ever the thunder of the falling water
and the shroud of rising spray. Reaching the ruin, we clambered 'round it cautiously, and, on the
further side, came upon a mass of fallen stones and rubble. The ruin
itself seemed to me, as I proceeded now to examine it minutely, to be a
portion of the outer wall of some prodigious structure, it was so thick
and substantially built; yet what it was doing in such a position I
could by no means conjecture. Where was the rest of the house, or
castle, or whatever there had been? I went back to the outer side of the wall, and thence to the edge of the
chasm, leaving Tonnison rooting systematically among the heap of stones
and rubbish on the outer side. Then I commenced to examine the surface
of the ground, near the edge of the abyss, to see whether there were not
left other remnants of the building to which the fragment of ruin
evidently belonged. But though I scrutinized the earth with the greatest
care, I could see no signs of anything to show that there had ever been
a building erected on the spot, and I grew more puzzled than ever. Then, I heard a cry from Tonnison; he was shouting my name, excitedly,
and without delay I hurried along the rocky promontory to the ruin. I
wondered whether he had hurt himself, and then the thought came, that
perhaps he had found something. I reached the crumbled wall and climbed 'round. There I found Tonnison
standing within a small excavation that he had made among the _débris_:
he was brushing the dirt from something that looked like a book, much
crumpled and dilapidated; and opening his mouth, every second or two, to
bellow my name. As soon as he saw that I had come, he handed his prize
to me, telling me to put it into my satchel so as to protect it from the
damp, while he continued his explorations. This I did, first, however,
running the pages through my fingers, and noting that they were closely
filled with neat, old-fashioned writing which was quite legible, save in
one portion, where many of the pages were almost destroyed, being
muddied and crumpled, as though the book had been doubled back at that
part. This, I found out from Tonnison, was actually as he had discovered
it, and the damage was due, probably, to the fall of masonry upon the
opened part. Curiously enough, the book was fairly dry, which I
attributed to its having been so securely buried among the ruins. Having put the volume away safely, I turned-to and gave Tonnison a hand
with his self-imposed task of excavating; yet, though we put in over an
hour's hard work, turning over the whole of the upheaped stones and
rubbish, we came upon nothing more than some fragments of broken wood,
that might have been parts of a desk or table; and so we gave up
searching, and went back along the rock, once more to the safety of
the land. The next thing we did was to make a complete tour of the tremendous
chasm, which we were able to observe was in the form of an almost
perfect circle, save for where the ruin-crowned spur of rock jutted out,
spoiling its symmetry. The abyss was, as Tonnison put it, like nothing so much as a gigantic
well or pit going sheer down into the bowels of the earth. For some time longer, we continued to stare about us, and then, noticing
that there was a clear space away to the north of the chasm, we bent our
steps in that direction. Here, distant from the mouth of the mighty pit by some hundreds of
yards, we came upon a great lake of silent water--silent, that is, save
in one place where there was a continuous bubbling and gurgling. Now, being away from the noise of the spouting cataract, we were able to
hear one another speak, without having to shout at the tops of our
voices, and I asked Tonnison what he thought of the place--I told him
that I didn't like it, and that the sooner we were out of it the better
I should be pleased. He nodded in reply, and glanced at the woods behind furtively. I asked
him if he had seen or heard anything. He made no answer; but stood
silent, as though listening, and I kept quiet also. Suddenly, he spoke. "Hark!" he said, sharply. I looked at him, and then away among the trees
and bushes, holding my breath involuntarily. A minute came and went in
strained silence; yet I could hear nothing, and I turned to Tonnison to
say as much; and then, even as I opened my lips to speak, there came a
strange wailing noise out of the wood on our left.... It appeared to
float through the trees, and there was a rustle of stirring leaves, and
then silence. All at once, Tonnison spoke, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Let us
get out of here," he said, and began to move slowly toward where the
surrounding trees and bushes seemed thinnest. As I followed him, it came
to me suddenly that the sun was low, and that there was a raw sense of
chilliness in the air. Tonnison said nothing further, but kept on steadily.