What if he had slipped on the wet clay, and having injured himself, was lying unconscious in the darkness?
The men wished to turn back, but I insisted that we go as far as the broken column which lies in a little gallery above Crystal Lake.

That was the place where the coat had been left, and we could at least find out if either the Colonel or Mose had returned for it.

We set out in single file along the damp clay path, the light from our few candles only serving to intensify the blackness around us.

The huge white forms of the stalactites seemed to follow us like ghosts in the gloom; every now and then a bat flapped past our faces, and I wondered with a shiver how anyone could get up courage to go alone into such a hole as that.
"Crystal Lake" is a shallow pool lying in a sort of bowl.

On the farther side the path runs up seven or eight feet above the water along the broken edge of a cliff.