a foot wide is easy enough if you put it on firm ground, but makes you dizzy if there is space below. below. It is noticeable that monkeys do not feel this difficulty-a fact hard to reconcile with Darwinism.

However, Tom Jones crossed easily enough, and standing midway, offered his hand to Miranda, and landed her safely. Cincinnatus the poet, having ascended Mount Tyndall in the Sierra Nevada, had no difficulty. Tachbrook disdained the plank and leaped the chasm. Leary and Manly and Loraine had some slight hesitations. When they were across, the scene was superb. The entrance-hall of this great cavern, or series of caverns, was about three hundred feet from floor to roof, and instead of being dark, as they anticipated, was suffused with a tender light. For high in the mountain peak there was a natural skylight, catching the meridian sun-and half way up the wall of the cavern was a noble window, of whose form a Gothic architect might be proud, through which poured the

western sunset.

"This is a palace for a King of the Sea," said Cincinnatus Meunier.

CHAPTER X.

THE BIG SHIP.

"Nequicquam Deus abscidit

Prudens Oceano dissociabili

Terras, si tamen impiae

Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada."

WHILE our exploring party were cheerily seeking adventure, and realising Mr Disraeli's favourite apophthegm, that "adventures are to the adventurous," Captain Grainger was doing his duty, not without considerable trouble. He had to provide sustenance for crew and passengers, to keep the former in order, to console the latter. Can you not imagine Mr Edward Wilson, knight in futuro, pompously delivering himself?

"I am very much annoyed, Captain Grainger; we are all very much annoyed. I

was to have been presented to Her Most Gracious. Majesty early in August, and to have received the honour of knighthood; and here we all are on a desert island-most inconvenient for Lady—I mean Mrs Wilson and the Misses Wilson—and it is impossible to say when she shall reach England. You know, sir, it is not pleasant to disappoint the Queen!"

Grainger, with less troubles on his broad shoulders, would probably have laughed. As it was, he simply said, with the uttermost gravity

"You may thank God, Mr Wilson, that you have disappointed the sharks."

The Mighty Metropolis, jammed by the gale between two rocks, moved not perceptibly either with wind or tide. She lay high out of the water, and her stern sank a little at first, but now she was stedfast; and Grainger said to himself that it would take a fleet of steamers to haul her off. She was safe enough—only too safe.

Nothing less than as

strong a gale from the opposite quarter could drive her back into the sea.

first business was to land

So the captain's

provisions and

articles of comfort-canvas for tents, and mattresses for sleeping. All hands worked hard at this business, and the afternoon saw the beach a complete encampment, and cookery going on over many fires, and everybody willing to look cheerfully at the situation. Except Mr Edward Wilson, who strutted up and down like an injured turkey-cock, pining for his accolade.

One of the Captain's most efficient helpers was the surgeon, Mr Brett; and one of the surgeon's earliest proceedings was to go to the snug little corner known as the surgery, in order to collect necessary medicines. A very small den was the surgery, opening from the surgeon's private cabin, fitted up with cases and chests for various kinds of drugs, and with no furniture except a heavy sofa, designed to serve as a basis of operation in case anybody wanted a tooth extracted, or anything worse. When Brett entered this snuggery, he was amazed to see a man apparently asleep on the sofa. It was Captain Stuart. He lay prone, with a phial clutched in his left hand. The Doctor looked at the phial, and felt the Captain's pulse- and came to a

rapid conclusion, which turned out to be

correct.

When the gale struck the ship with such awful suddenness, Stuart was below in the saloon. He made a rush toward his own cabin, but was unable to reach it. He fell through a door, and found himself in the surgery. He held on to the sofa, white with terror; he heard the mad conflict of wind with sea, and felt the great ship trembling in every plank as she was driven through the water. Stuart, a man of no faith, and not much reason, was disgusted with his situation. He remembered how, when he went out rabbiting in his boyhood, he pitied the poor devil of a rabbit, caught in his hole, the ferret behind him, and the terrier waiting at the mouth.

"I'm in a hole now, by Jove," said Stuart to himself, "and there's no getting out of it. No ship can live in this gale. We shall all go down; and where the deuce shall we find ourselves? I wish it was over."

Stuart was not a coward. In active daring he had few equals; but he had no power of passive endurance. Each moment made him