The Argosy — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE RIVER OF DARKNESS. 335 and now he told himself he would show them the way to safety. He fumbled in his clothes for a match, and striking it deliberately, lita flash torch. The pale, haggard faces that looked into each other as the bright light shone over the water were ghastly and unnatural. Abject misery and hope- lessness were stamped ‘on each one. The colonel and Forbes faced Guy calmly. Canaris looked up witha shudder and then dropped his head again. Sir Arthur lay among the rugs as though asleep. At that instant the canoe struck some obstacle with a slight tremor and stopped. The colonel with a slight gesture pointed to the right, and there before them lay the /sle of Skeletons. A strange fatality had drifted them a second time to this awful spot. Guy shuddered, but the colonel rose, and brushing past him stepped on shore. , Forbes followed him in silence, and then Canaris staggered. blindly past. Aftera brief hesitation Guy stepped out, and dragged the canoe half way up the sand. Sir Arthur never moved. He was sleeping and no one dared disturb him. ‘They sat down in a row on the sand. . ‘‘ It’s as good a place as any to die,’’ said Forbes hoarsely. ‘‘ The bones will soon have company.’’ He paused, frightened at his own voice, and no one replied. For a while they sat in silence. Guy stuck the torch in the sand and it blazed away with a merry light. Somehow or other the ray of hope that had animated him a little while be- fore had vanished, leaving only a dull despair, a reluctance to face the horror of the situation. ‘Is there noa—no chance—for us?’’ he ventured to say timidly. ‘“‘ Absolutely none,’’ replied the colonel, in a firm voice. ‘‘ You told us a while ago, Chutney, that our doom was sealed. I have faced the situation as calmly and clearly as possible from every conceivable aspect, and I now tell you on my own responsibility that we will never leave this cavern. The fatal error was made when we took the right hand channel of the two, or rather when the current led us to the right. That was not our blunder, of course. We were in the hands of destiny. We are now, as you know, on the bottom of a vast lake. Water of an unknown depth is beneath us. Overhead is a vaulted dome of great height, probably the hollowed interior of a mountain ; on all sides are massive and perpendicular walls of rock, im- pregnable and insurmountable. “The lake is undoubtedly ten miles or more in circumference, and, as you know too well, there is no surface outlet. There is an entrance, but we can no more force our way back through that entrance than we could swim up through the Falls of Niagara or ride the Nile Cataracts in a Rob Roy canoe. As long as our provisions last we shall live. When we no longer have any- thing to eat we shall die, and the next explorer who enters this lake will find our bones mingled with those lying behind us.”’ ComicloolK< (S@)