How are you ?" "Hot." "Then let's have a look round." Raising the lanthorn, the two prisoners cautiously advanced for about twenty feet, and then were stopped by solid rock, forming a sharp angle, where the two walls of the cave met.

Their way had been up a slope of deep, shelly sand, which crushed and crunched beneath their feet, these sinking deeply at every step.

Then the light was held higher, with the door open; and by degrees they made out that the pool was about fifty or sixty feet broad, and touched the rock-walls everywhere but out by this triangular patch of sand, which was wet enough where the seals crawled out, the hollows here and there showing where one had lain; but up towards the angle it was quite dry, and the walls were perfectly free from zoophyte or weed--ample proof that the water never rose to where they stood.
"Well," said Vince, setting down the lanthorn close to the wall, "we've won the day, the enemy is turned out of its castle, and the next thing, I say, is to get off our wet, cold things." "I can't take matters so coolly as you do," said Mike bitterly.

"I was only thinking of getting away out of this awful place." "Oh, it isn't so awful now you know the worst of it," said Vince coolly, though a listener might have thought that there was a little peculiarity in his tone.

"One couldn't help fancying all sorts of horrors, but when you find there is nothing worse than seals--" "And horrible congers: I felt them." "So did I," said Vince; "but I've been thinking since.