John Ball wished them to be friends, and he had brought this offering! In the firelight Rod saw that it was a curious looking, dark-colored fish, covered with small scales that were almost black.

It was the size of a large trout, and yet it was not a trout.

The head was thick and heavy, like a sucker's, and yet it was not a sucker.

He looked at this head more closely, and gave a sudden start when he saw that it had no eyes! In one great flood the truth swept upon him, the truth of what lay behind the cataract, of where John Ball had gone! For he held in his hands an eyeless creature of another world, a world hidden in the bowels of the earth itself, a proof that beyond the fall was a great cavern filled with the mystery and the sightless things of eternal night, and that in this cavern John Ball found his food and made his home!.