Grasping the round of the ladder where it rose slightly above the floor, the Captain, our guide, with that air of assurance which practice bestows, swings himself from sight. To him succeeds the Colonel. Next comes my own turn. This is not the first time my feet have tried ladder-bars; in the country-spent vacations of my school-days, how many times have I alertly scaled the highest leading to granaries, to barn-lofts, to bird-houses, to all quasi-inaccessible places, whither my daring ignorance--reckless, because unconscious of danger--had tempted me! But mounting a clean, strong, wide ladder, in the full flood of day, light below, above, around, promising you security by its very fulness of effulgence, is a far different thing from groping your way, step by step, down a slimy, muddy frame which hangs in a straight line from the very start. I shake off a first tremor, draw a full breath, and with fortitude follow my leader carefully. As I look above, after fairly getting committed, I can behold _Mon Amie's_ feet, whose arched in-steps cling round each bar with a pretty dependence that is in the highest degree appealing. Above her I hear the deep voice of the Agent. And so the quintette, in grim harmony of enterprise, go down, down, down, like so many human buckets, into a bottomless well. Alas, and alas! our own arms, with their as yet untried muscles, must be our only windlass to bring us to the surface again! Down, down, down, deeper, deeper, deeper! Will this first ladder never end? Ah, at last! At the foot, on either side, stand the Captain and the Colonel, like sentries. We have reached a shelf of rock, and we may rest. Here we perch ourselves, like sea-birds on a precipice that overlooks the sea. By the light of our flickering candles we behold each other's faces, and we can talk together. We are but two hundred feet under ground. A desolate stillness reigns here; no sound reaches us, either of labor or the steps of passing workmen. A cold stream of water trickles from a cleft rock behind us; we bathe our foreheads in it, and betake ourselves to the ladder again. From our next resting-place we proceed through a gallery, an exhausted vein, kept open as a passage from one shaft to another. As we turn a corner, we seem to plunge into a rocky cavern; our feet tread on roughly imbedded rocks; the sides of the cave jut out in refuse boulders,--harsh, dark-colored, ashen; overhead are beams of hard wood, bracing and strengthening the excavation. We traverse this gallery hastily.