They soon detected a curiously subdued clamor from the inner recesses of the cleft. At first almost indistinguishable, it gradually assumed the peculiar attribute of immense volumes of distant sound, and filled the ear to the exclusion of all else. It was like nothing any of them had heard before; now it recalled the roar of a mighty waterfall, and again its strange melody brought memories of a river in flood. But the dominant note was the grinding noise of innumerable mill-stones. It cowed them all. Even the dog was afraid. “Guess we tied up just in time,” exclaimed Gray, feeling the need of speech. A little sob answered him. Elsie was beginning to admit the sheer hopelessness of her undertaking. “Now, cheer up, Miss Maxwell,” said he. “All the water that is going in must come out by the same road. At the worst, we can skate back the way we came and take our chance. But it will soon be broad daylight, and I’ll answer for it that if Captain Courtenay is yet alive he is not between us and the mouth of the inlet, or he would have contrived some sort of racket to let us know his whereabouts. Now, I propose that our friend in the bows be asked to shin up the cliff and prospect a bit. He ought to know how to crawl through this undergrowth. Fifty feet higher he will be able to see some distance.” Elsie agreed miserably. She was crushed by the immensity of the difficulties confronting them. Expedients which looked simple beforehand were found lamentably deficient to cope with wild nature on the stupendous scale of this gloomy land. Suarez, too, was very reluctant to leave the boat, but the American adopted a short cut in the argument, offering him the alternative of climbing ashore or of being thrown overboard. So the Argentine adopted the less hazardous method, and climbed to the bank. A splash, and a scramble, and a slight exclamation from Elsie told that the dog had followed. Soon the swish of leaves and the crackling of rotten wood ceased. Suarez might be out of earshot or merely hiding for a time, intending to return with news of an impassable precipice. There was a crumb of comfort in the absence of the terrier. Joey would either go on or come back to them at once. Gray felt that the girl was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches’ cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer of silver.