I turned to the craggy face of the mountain. There, surely, must
be the entrance to the cave! For hours I clambered among the
rocks, risking mangled limbs and sunstroke--and found no cave. I
came back at last, wearily, to the grave. There lay the dust of
the brain that had known all--and a wild impulse came to me to tear
away the earth with my bare hands, to dig deep, deep--and then with
listening ear wait for a whispered word.
I put the delirious fancy from me and moved away to the edge of the
cliffs. Looking down, I saw a narrow sloping shelf which dropped
from the brink to a distance of ten or twelve feet below, where it
met a slight projection of the rock. I had seen it before, of
course, but it had carried no significance for my mind. Now I
stepped down upon the ledge and followed it to its end in the angle
of the rock.
Snugly hidden in the angle was a low doorway leading into blackness.
Now of course I ought in prudence to have gone back to the hut and
got matches and a lantern and a rope before I set foot in the
darkness of that unknown place. But what had I to do to-day with
prudence--Fortune had me by the hand! In I went boldly, Benjy at
my heels. The passage turned sharply, and for a little way we
walked in blackness. Then it veered again, and a faint and far-off
light seemed to filter its way to us through a web woven of the
very stuff of night.
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