"Peters was at the moment standing some fifteen feet from the edge of the chasm, the chasm being at this point about twenty feet in width--twenty feet in width, and even here, where it was two thousand feet less in depth than it was a mile higher up, at least eight thousand feet in descent--sheer to the raging torrent and the huge, jagged lava-bowlders below. It was all done so quickly that none of the party had time to become alarmed. Peters, whose arms when he hung them reached to within four inches of his feet, stooped just enough to bring his hands to the ground. Then, as a lame man using crutches might swing himself along, but with lightning-like swiftness, Peters took two rapid jumps toward the edge of the chasm, the second jump landing him directly on its edge. Then he shot up and out into the air over that awful abyss, and landed on the opposite side as gently as a cat lands from a six-foot leap; and it did not seem to require of him an unusual effort. He received his tobacco, and turned to make the leap back. "When Peters mentioned to me the circumstance of this leap, it was only because he had at the time it was made been so interested in the incident of getting the tobacco, that he never forgot the occurrence; in fact, it seems to have impressed his mind and memory almost as deeply as did the old man with the 'snow-drift beard and the eyes of a god.' "I attempted to get out of Peters just how he made the leap--whether with the legs, or the arms, or both as an impelling force; but it was no use. I believe that he does not himself know--he did it by an animal instinct, and that is all there is to be said. The old fellow does not really know his age, but I should place it, at the present time, at from seventy-eight to eighty years, which, if correct, would indicate that he was twenty-eight or thirty at the time he was in Hili-li. He must have been as strong generally as three average men, and in the arms as strong as five or six such men. You remember telling me yourself how he twisted that iron poker, and broke the oak pole; and that was the act of an invalid nearly eighty years of age. Oh, he must have been a Samson at twenty-eight, and as agile as a tiger. What I could draw out of him concerning the leap, reminded me of descriptions I have read of the _Simiidae_--particularly of the Borneo orang-outang. "But to return: The party separated from Medosus, who, when about two hundred feet away, shouted back, 'You'd better stay with us, Diregus. We do not here have to hide away when we play--or at--' (mentioning the names of two very rough games prohibited by law on all the islands of the Hili-li Kingdom--games corresponding to our foot-ball and our wrestling). The party continued up the mountain-side, resting as they felt the need of rest. No preparation for the darkness of night was necessary; for here the crater-light was very bright--in some unshaded spots it was even painfully brilliant.