As Ned climbed out of the little excavation Alan held the candle
down. To the astonishment of the boys a beautiful blue sheen met
their gaze.
"Turquoise flooring!" shouted Ned.
It was true. The entire "khiva," so far as the boys subsequently
uncovered its floor, was a crude mosaic of the most perfect
turquoise, the pieces, varying in size, being laid in a lime-like
cement.
A general survey of the room and its connecting tunnels showed that
each radiating arm led, with about twenty feet of passageway, into a
smaller room. In each of these rooms were nine column placed in a
rectangle. The main chamber was circular in form, forty-eight feet
in diameter, and the smaller apartments were twenty-four feet
square.
Ned while at work examining the floor, suddenly ceased and rushed to
one of the columns.
"You remember," he exclaimed, "the Spaniard said these columns were
of gold and silver."
But in this the ancient record was wrong. The inner six supports
were painted a faded yellow and the second row, twelve in number,
was colored red, as the boys discovered later when they brushed and
cleaned some of them.
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