Children are never allowed to. Only a man's
strength could get him free again if he once struck the eddy."
"Would anything floating down from the falls be apt to strike this eddy?"
"Very apt. It would be a miracle if it didn't. That is why we all turned
out so willingly the first day. We knew that if Mrs. Ransom's body was to
be found at all, it would be found then; another day it would be beyond
our reach."
"You say that no one has ever sounded the depths of that hole. Has any
one ever tried to?"
"More than once. Scientific men and others."
"Did they ever emerge--any of them?"
"Yes, one, a powerful sort of chap with Indian blood in him. But he
didn't advise any one to try it; said the knowledge wasn't worth the
strain to heart and muscle."
"What was the knowledge? We can imagine the strain."
"Oh, he said as how the walls of the vortex--didn't he call it a
vortex--was all stone, and he spoke of a ledge--I didn't hear what
else."
"To go down there a man would have to take his life in his hand, I see.
Well, I don't think I will try," dryly observed the lawyer as he left the
room.
He could no longer hide his excitement at the thought that Hazen
meditated this undertaking.
"How he must want money!" thought he. That a man should face such a
horror for another man's profit did not seem likely enough to engage his
consideration for a moment.
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