“So down from a sheer precipice we found that tinted water falling with a din, such that the ear had soon thereby been so”
. . . . .
The poets near a waterfall at the edge of the third round of Circle VII, and they can hear the rumbling of its water falling into the next circle. The main dramatic action in Canto XVI is the tossing of Dante's cord into the pit. This cord seems to come from nowhere; it is not mentioned previously and there is no reason why Dante should be wearing a cord. Dante needed a dramatic device at this moment of the poem to aid in the calling of Geryon, who will deliver the poets to the eighth circle. He mentions that he hoped to use the cord at one time to snare the leopard with the gaudy pelt, one of the beasts from the beginning of the journey, which is the symbol of the Fraudulent and the Malicious (the residents of the Circle VIII, which the poets are about to enter).