“Don’t say ‘Where am I?’” said Harry, “because we don’t know.  How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, still gasping for breath.  “What was it?  What did we do?”

I left them then, turning to survey the extent of our damage.  There was absolutely none; we were as intact as when we started.  The provisions and spears remained under their straps; my oar lay where I had fallen on it.  The raft appeared to be floating easily as before, without a scratch.

The water about us was churned into foam, though we had already been carried so far from the cataract that it was lost behind us in the darkness; only its roar reached our ears.  To this day I haven’t the faintest idea of its height; it may have been ten feet or two hundred.  Harry says a thousand.

We were moving slowly along on the surface of what appeared to be a lake, still carried forward by the force of the falls behind us.  For my part, I found its roar bewildering and confusing, and I picked up my oar and commenced to paddle away from it; at least, so I judged.

Harry’s voice came from behind: 

“In the name of goodness, where did you get that oar?”

I turned.

“Young man, a good sailor never loses an oar.  How do you feel, Desiree?”

“Like a drowned rat,” she answered, but with a laugh in her voice.  “I’m faint and sick and wet, and my throat is ready to burst, but I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.  It was glorious!  I’d like to do it again.”

“Yes, you would,” said Harry skeptically.  “You’re welcome, thank you.  But what I want to know is, where did that oar come from?”

I explained that I had taken the precaution to fall on it.

“Do you never lose your head?” asked Desiree.

“No, merely my heart.”

“Oh, as for that,” she retorted, with a lightness that still had a sting, “my good friend, you never had any.”

Whereupon I returned to my paddling in haste.

Soon I discovered that though, as I have said, we appeared to be in a lake—­for I could see no bank on either side—­there was still a current.  We drifted slowly, but our movement was plainly perceptible, and I rested on my oar.

Presently a wall loomed up ahead of us and I saw that the stream again narrowed down as it entered the tunnel, much lower than the one above the cataract.  The current became swifter as we were carried toward its mouth, and I called to Harry to get his spear to keep us off from the walls if it should prove necessary.  But we entered exactly in the center and were swept forward with a rush.

The ceiling of the tunnel was so low that we could not stand upright on the raft, and the stream was not more than forty feet wide.  That was anything but promising; if the stream really ran through to the western slope, its volume of water should have been increasing instead of diminishing.  I said nothing of that to Harry or Desiree.