The Glyphs/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
Fortunately for our further exploration, there were rawhide reatas sufficiently long to reach the fifty-foot depth at which I had been suspended when attracted by the black spot, or shadow. And it was as much to conquer my own cowardly fears as to continue the work that I insisted upon being the one to make the second descent. But I will admit this—that I am no hero. I’ll admit that, remembering the narrowness of my previous escape, I was afraid when it came time to descend once more. I’m rather proud of the fact that I compelled myself to the test.
“You said about thirty yards to the left of where you were,” commented Wardy, “Well, I’ve measured that distance off along the edge of this cursed hole, and find that it brings us squarely up against the wall on that side. That is, so far as the roadway goes. It looks to me as if the cavern, however, is circular beyond that edge. It’s impossible to see around a big corner there.”
And his surmise proved correct, for again I found myself being lowered from a shelf and the cavern extended to an indefinite distance to my left after a single wall was passed; but this time I noted that I was so close to a wall on the left hand that I could reach out and touch it. I began to fear that this wall had thrown the shadow I had seen and that it would prove nothing after all. I tried to estimate the distance of my descent as I was lowered. At fifty feet there was still the unbroken rock; at fifty-five feet there was still nothing different, and then, flashing my light downward, I saw not five feet below my feet a shelf of stone plainly the work of human hands, and a handhold cut in the solid rock. So ingeniously was it arranged that I could almost reach the shelf without stepping from my boatswain’s chair; but in the end I was compelled to do so and stretch a leg far out to make contact with it. A slight shove outward sent me into a pendulum motion, a second shove widened the arc, and I landed on the shelf of rock with ease and steadied myself with the handhold. There was a single moment of trepidation lest the shelf beneath my feet or the handhold give way; but it was a needless terror, for both were as firm as on the day they were hewn by the long-dead hands of their maker. I moored my line, shouted to those above that I had found something, and turned toward the wall behind. There, so cleverly concealed that it might have escaped detection save by sheer accident of shadow and the powerful ray of a modern electric torch, was a passageway.
Cautiously, I turned into it to discover that probably it had originally been a natural one, enlarged later by the handiwork of man until it was possible for me to advance with head erect as through a tunnel in a modern mine. It led upward, and now I was aware that through either natural or artificial passages the air was sweet and cool. For perhaps fifty feet I followed it and then came to two flights of steps cut into the rock. Up one of these I ascended to discover three other openings. I paused to consider my situation. Perhaps I was entering a place honeycombed by those ancient workers. It did not seem wise to invade these many ways with no means of retracing my steps.
I went back out and shouted my information to those anxiously waiting above, my voice coming back in numerous and repeated echoes from that great cavern surrounding us and the abyss beneath.
“What do you suggest?” Wardrop’s voice called.
“That some one come down bringing some spare torch batteries and chalk or something with which to make guiding marks,” I called back.
“Good!” he replied, and then I heard a confused lot of echoes and sounds as if they were discussing something, followed by a shout of encouragement from above and Wardy’s voice, asking: “Do you wish to remain there, or shall we hoist you up?”
“I’ll wait here,” I replied. “But mark this: Whoever comes down had best bring a pole or a piece of rope with him so that he can throw it to me and I can pull him over to this footing.”
“All right. We understand,” was his reply, and I released the boatswain’s chair and saw it disappear upward from sight. I sat down and smoked a cigarette until, remembering the necessity for economizing the battery in my lamp, I extinguished it, threw away what was left of my cigarette, and sat in a stygian and overpowering darkness. Time lengthened until I became impatient and wondered, in all that silence, what could have happened. And then I heard voices above me as if some unusual preparation was being made. It continued at intervals for quite a while and then came Wardy’s voice from above: “All right, down there?”
On my affirmative answer I heard more noises, and a harsh creaking, then in a few moments a shape came within the light from my torch. It was James Dalrymple Wardrop, and the tough rawhide reatas were straining and stretching as if at any moment likely to part under his weight. In his hand he carried a pole that he reached out for me to grasp and I gave a mighty tug and pulled him over to the shelf, wondering it if would bear his weight, then fairly dragged him inside.
“Of all the reckless things I ever knew of a man doing, your trusting yourself to that line is the worst!” I declared with a heat that was merely the reaction from anxiety.
“By Jove, old chappy!” he said, readjusting his monocle. “I thought when I felt that rawhide spring and bound that I was done for. However, here I am!”
“But how on earth did the other three lower you?”
“Oh, we rigged up a sort of windlass,” he said unconcernedly. “You see, I had to come. Rum place down here—what?”
The line had disappeared and now it came down again, this time carrying a wicker pannier from one of the mule’s equipment.
“I thought it might be wise to have some food and water and a lantern, as well as the extra batteries,” Wardy explained, and I snorted in derision. Had I known what was to follow I should not have been so merry.
For a long time we wound round and upward until we came to circular steps that twisted spirally as if climbing up the shaft of a monument. There were hundreds of them, and we began to think these must lead us to the top of one of the peaks. Our legs ached by that continuous and unchangeable motion. We rested at intervals, and then, when about to discuss the advisability of returning, came to a singular feature.
There was an open door with stone bars across it as if to guard something beyond. The bars lifted easily and with great caution I advanced, now using my electric torch. Suddenly I paused and involuntarily drew back a pace and then fell to my knees and crawled forward. I had come to a great void so enormous that my light would not penetrate it.
I crawled cautiously out and looked over its edge. Away off beneath me, appearing small, was something like a flickering star. While I looked it leaped into a great blaze, and to my astonishment I made out figures moving around a fire and replenishing it. Pygmies they looked from that height; but it was certain they were our companions. I shouted loudly to them, and saw them pause and flash their torches hither and yon. Their voices came back with multiplied echoes. I could not distinguish their words, but flashed them signal after signal until they looked upward and waved a response. Wardy took his turn and then we examined our surroundings.
Enormous triangular stone posts with the apexes of the triangles leaning inward from the cavern for a time puzzled us, and then we discovered that the perpendicular sides of these were shielded with bronze and that these betrayed wear. We could not imagine the object of these and so turned back and resumed our search. For a time we passed along a level gallery and then came to another side entrance and another set of those peculiar and massive posts. A third set was reached, and we were at the end of the gallery.
Disappointed, we retraced our steps and descended the tiresome stairs and called up to our comrades above. The voice of Juan answered and explained that he had been, left alone and that the doctor and Ixtual had gone outside to study the guardhouses. We made a lunch from the pannier, smoked, and then took the opening that led to our right. Again we made the toilsome climb and again we found three sets of posts, and the end of the gallery.
“That makes their reason plain,” said Wardy. “They had some sort of a bridge suspended across that hole and held up by cables of some kind that were fastened here.”
“Either that or else there was some sort of mining carried on in this shaft under us and this was a mechanism for hoisting,” I conjectured; but it was useless to waste time in surmise, because we had gained nothing thus far by our discoveries.
It was growing late in the evening and we decided after a short consultation to postpone our further search until the next day. It was not until then that I remembered the risk of my companion’s weight on that rawhide line, and was somewhat troubled thereby.
“I think,” I suggested, “that I had best go up first and personally get together all the spare straps and pack ropes and strengthen that line before you trust your weight on it. What do you think?”
“Strikes me as a most excellent idea,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a bit about that confounded rubber string since we got back here.”
In the light of the lanterns I could see his calm grin; but I am certain he would have run the risk without betraying fear had I not voiced an apprehension for him.
I called up to Juan but got no response. I called again and then Wardy joined his bellowing voice to mine. A sleepy voice answered, recognizable as the doctor’s.
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” muttered Wardy. “That old cuss has been left on watch and has calmly gone to sleep! What do you think of that!”
“What’s the matter?” I called upward.
“Nothing,” the doctor’s voice replied, and we could hear him vent a great yawn. “Ixtual and Juan are tucking the animals in bed in one of the guardhouses to keep them safe from those devilish jaguars. Find anything?”
“Not much,” I replied. “We have done all we can to-day and want to be hoisted up.”
“All right. I’ll lower the line and then call them to help,” said Doctor Morgano; and then a moment later: “I can’t get the blamed contraption to work. The rope just coils around this drum-thing we fixed up. Wait, I’ll tie a big rock on the end of it, then it’ll come down.”
We could indistinctly hear him fumbling around and occasionally yawning like an old hyena, and then his voice, triumphantly: “I’ve got a rock on now that’ll pull that rope tight. Only one I could find, and it weighs about two hundred pounds; but I can roll it over.”
“Stop! Stop!” I cried in alarm; but too late. With a rush of wind that warned me that something had fallen so closely that had I been leaning outward at that moment I must inevitably have been smashed, something fell past me. I clung to the rock handle, momentarily panic-stricken with suspense, and my voice was tremulous and weak as I called: “Morgano! Doctor Morgano! Are you safe?”
“I’m safe enough,” came the reassuring but lugubrious reply from above, “but that infernal rawhide line has broken off where it was fastened and—dear me!—how on earth are we ever to get you up again?”
“The damned old imbecile!” growled Wardy. “Wants to know how we are to get back up again. That’s something I’d rather like to know myself!”