It is impossible to convey to the reader the eerie effect of that sudden, strange transition. One moment we were in the gallery; the next we had issued from it and stood in a most tremendous cavern, or, rather, we stood on a ledge or a shelf high up on one of the walls of that cavern. The opposite side was but dimly visible. The roof swept across a hundred feet or more above our heads. And the bottom? I gazed at the edge of the rock-shelf on which we stood, out and down into that yawning abyss, and I felt a shudder run through me and one through my heart. The roar of the falling waters came from our right. We turned the rays of our lights in that direction, but nothing was visible there, save the dark limestone rock and Cimmerian blackness. We then moved to the edge and turned our lights down into those awful depths--to depths perhaps never before touched by ray of light since time began. Far down the beams went plunging and farther still; but we could not see the bottom. Bottom there was, however, for the water was tumbling and growling down there. I was glad to draw back from the edge, and I leaned against the rock-wall and gazed upon the dark scene in wonder, amazement and in awe. In a few moments Rhodes joined me. "Well, what do you think of it, Bill?" "Milton, this is awful." "It is. I have never seen a sight more strange and terrible." "And the angel?" I queried. "What about her, Bill?" "How on earth did she make her way through this awful place?" "Why, along this ledge on which we are standing. There is no other way." I glanced along that shelf, and I did not like what I saw. "She's got a better head," I told him, "than I have got. Why didn't we bring along an airplane? I wonder if the way lies down or up, up towards the fall." We bent over and examined the rock. "Down," I observed. "Down," Milton nodded. Whilst I stood there pondering this and wondering what was down there in the blackness of that frightful chasm, Rhodes moved off to the right and examined the ledge there. "And _up_ too," he announced. "Somebody or some thing, or both, has gone up towards the fall." "Great Heaven, if we get caught between them!" "The programme _is_ becoming interesting," Milton Rhodes admitted. For a time we stood in silence, then he said: "I suggest, Bill, that we go up and take a look-see." I nodded. So far as I could perceive, one way was just as good--I mean just as bad--as the other. That shelf was, as a whole, not an easy thing to negotiate, and some spots made my head swim and made me wish mightily that I was somewhere else. Undoubtedly, some thousands of years in the dim and mysterious past, the stream once flowed at this level; at any rate, this is the only theory that, in my opinion, will explain that ledge, and something which we were soon to discover. Not that I ever spent much time in worrying about theories and hypotheses; the facts themselves gave me enough to think about, enough and to spare.