And indeed they could see that the snow-slip, now grown colossal, was making for a projecting point of rock which was dwarf-like in comparison. Every other sound was lost in the thunder of the avalanche. And now the huge snow-ball bounded upon the obstructive rock, and fell prone across it with a terrific thud, which shook the whole mountain to its very base. For a moment the whole region was enveloped in a cloud of steam-like snow-spray, and after the final crash the thunder of the avalanche ceased. But immediately afterwards it began again with a frightful crackling; the weight of the snowy mass had uprooted the obstructing rock, and whirling down with it in dizzy rotations, plunged perpendicularly into the lake below. The agitated lake, lashed out of its basin on both sides, rose in an enormous wave, three hundred feet high, up to the very spot where the bold climbers were clinging to the naked rock, and after poising in the air for a second, like a huge transparent green column, broke and fell back into the lake, which very slowly subsided. "Now we will go on our way," said Sange Moarte. "The rock is moist now, and the descent will be all the easier." After the lapse of half-an-hour, the wanderers found themselves at the mouth of a stream. A wondrous corridor lay open before them. The brook sprang from a hot spring, which, after racing down the deep valleys, buried itself beneath icebergs and snowdrifts. But the hot water had bored a passage through the ice, constantly melting the frozen mass around it with its warm stream, so that only the thick outermost layer remained, which, constantly renewed by the cold air without, and as constantly dissolved by the hot stream within, grew into a sort of transparent crystal arcade with huge dependent glittering stalactites above the stream. Through this channel Sange Moarte now led his companions. Clement could not but call to mind the fabulous fairy palace where spellbound mortals only see the light of day through transparent waters. Wading thus in the bed of the stream, they reached a point where the bright arcade began to grow dark. Its transparent roof grew thicker and thicker, passing gradually into an ever deeper blue, till at last it became quite black, and the murmuring of the stream was the wanderers' only guide. As they advanced, with their hose tucked up to their knees, into the ever-darkening darkness, they felt the water getting hotter and hotter, till at last they heard a hissing sound and saw once more the daylight streaming through the rocky chasm, through which the brook rushed down into its subterraneous cave. Here, with the help of some dangling shrubs, they scaled the hillside to avoid the onslaught of the boiling spring, and after a brief exertion found themselves on the other side of the mountain, in a deep, well-like valley. This is the _Gradina Dracului_.