Our hiding-place was still undiscovered, and the troops were not more than two hundred yards away. We watched the line of lights break into two and circle round the yawning gulf; we saw a few troopers advance into the subdued light below the crater's mouth, and then disappear again into the darkness. Then Graham covered one of the dusky forms, and after taking careful aim, pulled the trigger and missed! The line was unbroken. A second afterwards, Sandy's piece went off with no better luck, the light being too uncertain for accurate aim. The awful echoes that our exploding rifles raised are beyond the powers of language to describe them. The vast vault seemed to be cracking in twain, and the reverberations appeared never going to subside. For a moment the troops were filled with panic; but we heard voices as of commanders cheering and encouraging their faltering men, and a moment after we were literally blinded by a vivid flood of brilliant light which gleamed out from behind us. Dazzled and blinded though we were, we saw at once that we were surrounded by enemies, another detachment having surprised us from the rear. We were now as exposed to view as if we had been in the open air, under the blazing sun of noonday, and before one of us could recover from his astonishment and fire a shot in defence, our position was stormed, our rifles and revolvers wrenched from our hands, and we were helpless as babes in the power of our enemies. What the light really was, whence it came, or how it was produced, we knew not, but it continued burning until we and our captors reached the open air. The wild, savage scene of grandeur, revealed when the hollow mountain was made to disclose its hidden splendour by the penetrating light, can never fade from our memory. Though captives, and bowed down with hopeless despair, we were compelled to look, nay, even to admire! The misery of our position was forgotten in the glory of that cave, whose appearance bore eloquent and silent testimony to the stupendous forces of volcanic action. The brilliant light lit up even the very highest parts of the lofty mountain dome, showing hollows, and jagged points, and enormous icicle-shaped masses of gold and silver, and other richly-coloured but, to us, unknown metals, which had formed there as the molten interior of the volcano had suddenly cooled in rest. Some of the half-burnt rocks scintillated with unconsumable crystals; others were ground smooth as marble by the troubled action of a seething sea; and great masses formed of a dozen different metals were to be seen here and there, wedged in between the ruin of rocks. So rugged and loose was the roof in some places, that it looked as if the very echoes of our footsteps would dislodge acres of boulders and send them tumbling down in mad confusion. But we were marched as quickly as possible out of the mountain, and, in spite of our cruel fate, in our hearts we were thankful to leave this terrible chasm behind us, and