"Don't go, massa, don't go; you'll fall down deep well and nebber come up again," shrieked the guide. Archie and his companions, notwithstanding this warning, pushed forward, holding their torches well before them. The passage became more and more contracted, till they reached an upright ledge of rock rising like a parapet wall almost breast high. They climbed up it, but on the other side it sloped rapidly down, and Archie, bold as he had become, thought it prudent to draw back; but instead of doing so he found himself slipping forward, and would have been unable to stop had not one of the other book-keepers caught hold of his coat and assisted him to scramble up again. Just then the guide came up. "Massa, you not know what you escape," he exclaimed. "See." And he threw a stone, which, after descending for some seconds of time, was heard to plunge into water, the noise echoing backwards and forwards amid the rocks which formed the side of the chasm. Archie shuddered as he thought of his merciful escape. Other stones of larger size being thrown in produced a loud, hoarse sound which reached to a considerable distance. "What a fearful uproar you would have made, Archie, if you'd taken a leap into the chasm!" said one of his companions. "Don't talk of it, man; it is a lesson to me for the future to look before I leap," was the answer. "No, massa, as I say, you nebber come up again, unless you pop up in de sea," observed the guide. "Dat hole full ob salt water and full ob big fish; but I nebber gone down, and nebber intend to go--he, he, he!"