Here Kandata was rising and sinking with the other sinners in the Pond of Blood on the floor of Hell.
It was pitch black everywhere, and when sometimes a glimpse was caught of something rising from that darkness, it turned out to be the gleam of the needle of the dread Hari-no-Yama, so it was inexpressibly forbidding. Moreover the stillness of the grave reigned everywhere, and the only thing that could at times be heard was the faint sighing of the sinners.
This was because such sinners as had come down to this spot had already been tired out by the other manifold tortures of Hell and had lost even the strength to cry aloud.
So, great robber though he was, Kandata, also suffocated with the blood, could do nothing but struggle in the pond like a dying frog.
But his time came. One day when Kandata lifted his head by chance and looked up at the sky above the Pond of Blood, he saw a silver spider’s thread slipping down toward him from the high, high heavens, glittering slightly in the silent darkness just as if it feared the eyes of man.
When he saw this, his hands clapped themselves for joy. If, clinging to this thread, he climbed as far as it went, he could surely escape from Hell.
Nay, if all went well, he might even enter Paradise. Then he would never be driven on to Hari-no-Yama nor sunk in the Pond of Blood.
As soon as these thoughts came into his mind, he grasped the thread tightly in his two hands and began to climb up and up with all his might.
Because he was a great robber, he had long been thoroughly familiar with such things.