For there, in those blurred footmarks, the whole drama was revealed.
_Five had gone down, but only three had returned_.
None shall ever know the details of that strange tragedy.

There was no mark of struggle nor sign of attempt at escape.

We knelt at the edge of the Hole and endeavoured to pierce the unfathomable gloom which shrouded it.

A faint, sickly exhalation seemed to rise from its depths, and there was a distant hurrying, clattering sound as of waters in the bowels of the earth.
A great stone lay embedded in the mud, and this I hurled over, but we never heard thud or splash to show that it had reached the bottom.
As we hung over the noisome chasm a sound did at last rise to our ears out of its murky depths.

High, clear, and throbbing, it tinkled for an instant out of the abyss, to be succeeded by the same deadly stillness which had preceded it.
I did not wish to appear superstitious, or to put down to extraordinary causes that which may have a natural explanation.