The passage seemed to run on endlessly—just a high stone drain with a floor of hammered earth driving straight into the hill. No other diverged from it, nor did any ruin block our path; and we were beginning to move quite merrily, when suddenly the end came in a flight of half a dozen steps going down, and at the bottom a great door torn off its hinges and shivered into splinters.
At the sight we drew back on the very brink, and stood gaping and dumbstruck, afraid for the moment to proceed.
“Dicky,” said Harry, staring over my shoulder, “here comes the tug, don’t it?”
I did not answer. Suddenly he dipped under my arm and ran down, and, terrified at the thought of being left alone, I followed him.
The fragments of the door stood wrenched at any angle; but through the black gaps in the wreck flowed the sense of shattered spaces beyond.
“Now for it!” said Harry. “Hand me the light when I’m in, and follow yourself.”
I would have lingered yet, but he broke from me, and, fearing to precipitate I knew not what nameless ruin, I let him go with only a show of interference.
He was through in a moment, and calling back to me, “Pass the light, and come on. It’s all serene.”
And then in an instant I had followed him.
The draught was still strong enough here to flutter the candle flame, so that for a little we could make out nothing of our surroundings. But stepping cautiously to one side, away from the door, we found the light to stand suddenly steady, and immediately before our eyes there grew into grotesque and shadowy being a vision of enormous destruction.