Broad chambers receded into blackness beyond the white light of his lamp and these he hastily explored before going on. Labyrinthine passageways were revealed as he turned the light this way and that, each opening inscribed with strange symbols carved in the rock at the sides.
“A gold mine of records!” Abington exclaimed to himself in the whisper that was his habit when alone. “The ancient people who lived here seem to have had a Scribblers’ Club of very active members! An ancient catacomb, or I’m mistaken. That, or else these symbols were carved with the express purpose of misleading one. H’m! An attempt to confuse the devil and thwart him in his search for the souls of the dead! Now here’s a pretty problem for an archaeologist. Let’s see if I am smarter than the devil!”
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT CHAIN OF EVIL
Ordinarily John Abington thought fairly well of himself and he felt certain that these misleading characters could not prevent him from finding the way to the actual burial place. For one thing, he discovered that many of the passages—a miner would have called them drifts—had been hacked out by hand, with stone hammers and wedges. How long and arduous a task that had been, he could only conjecture.
In several of the drifts he found implements to prove his theory. After a glance or two that identified them with the early people he had been tracing, he went on and left the implements lying there for the present, knowing that he could return at any time and get them if he wished to do so.
It cost him several fruitless trips down long, winding ways that finally ended in blank walls, before he learned to mistrust the man-made passageways, which had evidently been cunningly constructed to deceive the devil himself—and any other unwelcome intruder.
He began to study more carefully the carvings placed at the openings of these zigzag passages, but after a while he was forced to admit to himself that he could make nothing of them. So far as he could determine with a cursory examination they all looked much alike, though he knew there must be some secret differentiation. He could only avoid such corridors as seemed to him the work of human hands, and go on.
Going on was not a simple thing, however. Many times he was forced to crawl on hands and knees along an old water channel with fine red sand packed hard and smooth, and at such times he caught himself looking for human footprints. That he found nothing of the kind in any of the old water channels seemed to him a proof that the ancient ones had traversed these black passages before the time of copious rainfall, else the sand would not have been so smooth and untrodden.
Frequently he was forced to climb up through crevices where the rocks were worn glossy—always, wherever rock lay underfoot, the same smoothness prevailed —until it seemed to him that he must soon emerge upon the crest of the high-turreted ridge which formed that wall of the cañon.
After a time that to Abington had been timeless, so absorbed was he in the fascinating quest of a final destination which these signs seemed to promise, he was recalled to practical things by the dimming of his carbide lamp. He held it close to his ear and shook it, but heard no sloshing sound in the small water compartment above the carbide.