narrow beach with all the eagerness begotten of a final chance. Up to
the very brink it looked hopeless enough, but, looking downwards when
that was reached, instead of a sheer drop the slope seemed to be a wild
"staircase" of rocks and icy ledges with here and there a little patch
of sand on a cornice, and far below, five hundred feet or so, a good
big spread of gravel an acre or two in extent close by where the river
plunged out of sight into the nethermost cavern mouth.

It was so hopeless up above it, it could not possibly be worse further
down, and there was the ugly black flood running into the hole to trust
myself to as a last resource; so slipping and sliding I began the descent.

Had I been a schoolboy with a good breakfast ahead the incident might
have been amusing enough. The travelling was mostly done on the seat of
my trousers, which consequently became caked with mud and glacial loam.
Some was accomplished on hands and knees, with now and then a bit down
a snow slope, in good, honest head-over-heels fashion. The result was
a fine appetite for the next meal when it should please providence to
send it, and an abrupt arrival on the bottom beach about five minutes
after leaving the upper circles.

I came to behind a cluster of breast-high rocks, and before moving
took a look round. Judge then of my astonishment and delight at the
second glance to perceive about a hundred yards away a brown object,
looking like an ape in the half light, meandering slowly up the margin
of the water towards me. Every now and then it stopped, stooping down
to pick up something or other from the scum along the torrent, and it
was the fact that these trifles, whatever they were, were put into a
wallet by the vision's side--not into his mouth--which first made me
understand with a joyful thrill that it was a MAN before me--a real,