I stood on the brink of a great chasm whose bottom must have been miles, even, below sea level. The farther walls of the circular pit--they must have been forty miles away--were still black in the shadow of the morning. Clouds of red and purple mist hung in the infinities of space the chasm contained, and completely hid the farther half of the floor. Beneath me, so far away that it was as if I looked on another world, was a deep red shelf, a scarlet plain weird as the deserts of Mars. To what it owed its color I could not tell. In the midst of the red, rose a mountain whose summit was a strange crown of scintillating fire. It looked as though it were capped, not with snow, but with an immense heap of precious jewels, set on fire with the glory of the sun, and blazing with a splendrous shifting flame of prismatic light. And the crimson upland sloped down--to "the Silver Lake." It was a lake shaped like a crescent moon, the horns reaching to the mountains on the north and the south. In the hollow of the crescent beyond, low hills rose, impenetrable banks of purple mist lying back of them to the dark wall in the distance. The lake gleamed like quicksilver and light waves ran upon it, reflecting the sunlight in cold blue fire. It seemed that faint purple vapors were floating up from the surface. Set like a picture in the dark red landscape, with the black cliffs about, the argent lake was very white, and very bright. CHAPTER III Down the Silver Ladder For a long, long time I gazed into the abyss, lost in the wonder and the mystery of it. Meanwhile the sun climbed over and lit the farther rim, which still was black or dully red, because of the dark colors of the volcanic rocks of which it is composed. The scene was so vast, so strange, so wildly beautiful and unearthly, that it seemed almost a dream, instead of an ominous reality. It was hard to realize that somewhere upon the red plain, or along the shores of the Silver Lake, or perhaps beneath the banks of mist beyond, Austen was--or had been--alone, and in distress. I wondered, too, from what part of this strange world had come the thing of the whistling sound and the red light, which had taken the ponies. It was well after noon before I ate a little lunch and took thought of the matter of descent. I saw that a second ladder led down in a fine line of silver until it disappeared above the crimson upland, miles below. I climbed over the brink and started down. Descending was easier than climbing had been, but I had infinitely farther to go. The soles of my shoes were cut through, and my hands became red and blistered on the rungs. Sometimes, when I was too tired to go on, I slung myself to the ladder with a piece of rope from my pack, while I rested. Steadily the black walls rose higher about me. The red plateau beneath, the mountain with its crown of flaming gems, and the strange white lake beyond, came nearer and nearer.