The stream came down in a series of cascades, varied by steep stretches where it sluiced along through deep channels in the rock. At one place they came to a veritable waterwheel where the whole torrent raced down a slope into a shallow basin scooped out of the solid basalt, and it shot up in a roaring pinwheel of water through which not even Sadok’s sumpitan could be driven. Above it the walls of the gorge closed in to a narrow cleft, with high, vertical sides. There was no getting past, on either side! “Case of swim!” ejaculated the curator, as they all stopped and looked in at the deep pool filling the cleft from wall to wall like a black ribbon. “Get out your flashers, boys. There’s one grain of comfort in it, anyway--no one would ever dream that we’d come up this way!” They undressed and did up the bundles in the tent flies. “Glory be to Mike, there are no anacondas in New Guinea!” shivered Nicky, looking at the black pool and thinking of former Guiana jungle days. Still, it took courage to negotiate that pool! They scanned every inch of the wall for snakes and then plunged in, close together for mutual protection, the flashlights tied atop the boys’ heads with their bandannas, and the packs strapped on their shoulders. It seemed that that pool would never end! Its narrow ribbon of still water wound on and on through the cleft, with here and there a ledge or a rock shelf over which the water tumbled in a silent spillway, and where they could get out and rest. From ahead came, louder and louder, the roar of a waterfall. The curator listened uneasily. Such a cascade would be a catastrophe, for, if there was no way around it, by no possibility could they get up farther. They hurried on eagerly, now, anxious to learn their fate, fear of some unknown thing seizing them from under water forgotten. A final pool showed up in the glare of the flashlights. The curator heaved a huge sigh of relief, for the head of the pool was a foaming suds of eddying water into which the stream of the cascade tumbled from above, and--blessed sight!--sticking up out of it was a huge tree, jammed in there by some freshet, its upper end jutting out into the stars which shone through the opening of the cleft! “Praise be!” ejaculated the curator, plunging in. “Come here, tree--I love you!” They all swam over, and one by one crept up the log. A low hail from the curator, and the hissed caution, “Lights out!” told them that he had arrived safely in the ravine above. They found him already dressing. They were in a steep, rocky ravine, filled with jungle growth, and out of the bare rocks at last. Hastily the boys dressed and made up their packs again. Sadok and Baderoon had merely to shake themselves and they were ready for further adventures.