The fact was that our spirits
were utterly crushed, and we did not greatly care what happened to us.
Only we felt bound to try and save our lives whilst we could, and indeed
a natural instinct prompted us to it. So for some three or four hours,
I should think--I cannot tell exactly how long, for we had no watch
left that would go--we blundered on. During the last two hours we were
completely lost, and I began to fear that we had got into the funnel of
some subsidiary cone, when at last I suddenly recognised a very large
rock which we had passed in descending but a little way from the top.
It is a marvel that I should have recognised it, and, indeed, we
had already passed it going at right angles to the proper path, when
something about it struck me, and I turned back and examined it in an
idle sort of way, and, as it happened, this proved our salvation.
After this we gained the rocky natural stair without much further
trouble, and in due course found ourselves back in the little chamber
where the benighted Noot had lived and died.
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