muscle of his countenance.
The preparations for our departure were not long in making, and we were soon on our way down a passage inclining two feet in seven. In an hour we had gone a mile and a quarter, and descended two thousand feet.
Then I began to hear distinctly quite a new sound of something running within the thickness of the granite wall, a kind of dull, dead rumbling, like distant thunder. During the first part of our walk, not meeting with the promised spring, I felt my agony returning; but then my uncle acquainted me with the cause of the strange noise.
“Hans was not mistaken,” he said. “What you hear is the rushing of a torrent.”
“A torrent?” I exclaimed.
“There can be no doubt; a subterranean river is flowing around us.”
We hurried forward in the greatest excitement.