Una would have felt a stronger confidence in their mission, a keener enthusiasm, had Narva been more definite as to the identity of the man to whose rescue she believed they were hastening, or had she given some hint of the kind of danger to which he was actually exposed. But it was all so vague, she feared that some mistake had been made, a mistake easily growing out of the fervid imagination that, any one could see, quite controlled Narva's mind. While there was no shaking the old sibyl's reticence, however, the calm determination with which she set about her task proved, in a measure, inspiring. Una might feel an occasional doubt as to the outcome of their venture, but this doubt finally disappeared altogether before the faith, growing stronger with the changing aspect of the scene through which they were passing, that in some unlooked-for way she was about to attain the main object that had brought them into this ancient home of a vanished race. They had now entered a portion of the cave where the dim half-light to which Una was accustomed turned, by comparison, almost to the light of day. This light appeared to come from a fixed point directly in front of them. No central globe, or body of fire, to which this appearance might be traced was visible; but, in the far distance, where the light reached its greatest intensity, over the top of a dark ridge of rock rising before them like the summit of a mountain, thin streamers of white radiance shot upward, rising and falling in the unequal flashes and subsidences generated by an electric battery. This luminous appearance, however, was too stupendous in its effects to be attributable to a mere electric battery. To Una's dazzled vision it rather resembled the first onrush of the morning sun, when the presence of that luminary just below the horizon is proclaimed by advancing rays of light. Here, however, an effect of greater motion was produced than in the steady and gradual illumination of the heavens heralding the coming of the sun. The sparkles and flashes neither grew nor shrank in intensity. If they were produced by a central body corresponding to the sun that shone upon the outside world, it was a stationary sun, fixed in some mysterious, invisible recess of the cave.