“How many paces?” asked the Professor.

“Sixty!” I roared; and then, seized with temporary insanity, I chanted the song of the Maori at the top of my voice: 

  “Sixty paces to the left,
   Sixty paces to the left,
   That’s the way to heaven,
   That’s the way to heaven,
   That’s the way to heaven out
   Of Black Fernando’s hell.”

“And here’s the waterfall!” cried Holman, “Go easy now!  It must be flowing into some hole, and we don’t want to fall into an abyss just as Verslun has discovered the way out.”

We advanced cautiously toward the spot where, as Edith had said, the water sparkled like fireflies in the darkness.  It was an eerie place.  We knew that the water was there by the sound it made flowing over the rocks, but, except for the tiny sparks of phosphorescent light that seemed to fly out from it, we could not see it.  The spectacle thrilled us.  A million sparks of light seemed to rise from the bed of feldspar over which the water leaped, and the peculiar quality of the rock gave to it the weird brilliancy which held us spellbound as we advanced with extreme caution.  It wasn’t white by any means, but in those inky depths it would not require a great effort of the imagination to call it white.  The faint luminous flashes were the only particles of light that we had seen since Leith had thrown the half-extinguished torch into the hole that morning, and we could hardly turn our eyes from the novelty.

The water fell into an opening in the rocky floor, and gurgled away into depths that made us shiver as the distant tinkle came up to us as we crept forward on hands and knees.  We were all thirsty at that moment, but we wished to put the directions of the Maori to an immediate test, and we were satisfied to let our longing for a cool drink stay with us till we could prove whether the strangely luminous waterfall before us was the one about which the two natives chanted the strange song.

“They said to the left, didn’t they?” asked Holman.

“Yes,” I answered.  I hardly recognized my own voice as I jerked out the word.  I couldn’t see the faces of the girls, but I understood what skyscrapers of hope they had built upon the announcement I had made when Edith had told of her discovery.  Now, as we moved around the hole in the floor, I understood what a tremendous shock it would be to them if we discovered that there was no connection between the falling water and the chant.

“I suppose the left side will be the one upon our left hand when facing the fall?” said Holman.

“I suppose so,” I stammered.  “Let us move up close to the side of the water.”

We edged along till we could touch the flashing stream that dropped from some point high up in the immense roof of the place, and then we started to step the distance, the Professor chattering along behind us, while the two girls brought up the rear.

Holman chanted the numbers aloud, and a cold sweat broke out upon me as he counted.  A fear of my own sanity came upon me.  I thought that this connection between the song and the luminous water might have been suggested by a brain that had suddenly lost its balance under the torture of the preceding three days.