More of them? Of course there were. The exploration could wait a little longer. An accident might cut him off from this spot—might cut him off from such a chance forever. The hands of the seasoned adventurer trembled like those of a palsied old woman as he turned over the loose soil with his foot, for instrument of any kind he had none; and indeed, his agitation was not surprising, for in less than an hour Laurence was in possession of eight more splendid stones as large as the first, besides a number of small ones. He knew that he held that which should enable him to pass the remainder of his life in wealth and ease, could he once get safe away.
Could he? Ah, there came in the dead weight—the fulfilling of that strange irony of fate which well-nigh invariably wills that the good of life comes to us a trifle too late. For his search had brought him quite into the open day once more. Before him lay a valley—or rather hollow—of no great size, and—it was shut in—completely walled in by an amphitheatre of lofty cliffs.
Cliffs on all sides—at some points smooth and perpendicular, at others actually overhanging, at others, again, craggy and broken into terraces; but, even with the proper appliances, probably unscalable; that detail his practised eye could take in at a glance. How, then, should he hope to scale them, absolutely devoid, as he was, of so much as a stick—let alone a cord.
A cord? How had he been brought there? Had he been let down by a cord—or brought in by some secret entrance? the latter appeared more probable; and that entrance he would find,—would find and traverse, be its risks, be its terrors what they might. He had that upon him now which rendered life worth any struggle to preserve.
He stepped forth. The sky was over his head once more, clear and blue. That was something. By the slant of the sunrays he judged it must be about the middle of afternoon. The floor of the hollow was bumpy and uneven. Sparse and half-dry grass bents sprung from the soil, but no larger vegetation—no trees, no brush. Stranger still, there was no sign of life—even of bird or insect life. An evil, haunted silence seemed to brood over the great, crater-like hollow.
The silence became weighty, oppressive. Laurence, in spite of himself, felt it steal upon his nerves, and began to whistle a lively tune—as he walked slowly around, examining the cliffs, and every crack and cranny, with critical eye. The echoing notes reverberated weirdly among the brooding rocks. Suddenly his foot struck something—something hard. He looked down, and could not repress a start. There at his feet, grinning up at him, lay a human skull—nay, more, a well-nigh complete skeleton.
It was a gruesome find under the circumstances. Laurence, his nerves unstrung by the effects of the drug, and recent alternations of exultation and what was akin to despair, felt his flesh creep. What did it mean? Why, that no way of escape did this valley of death afford. This former victim—had he been placed there in the same way as himself, and, all means of exit failing, had succumbed to starvation when his provisions were exhausted? It looked that way. Bending down, he examined this sorry relic of humanity—examined it long and carefully. No bone was broken, the skeleton was almost complete; where it was not, the joints had fallen asunder without wrench, and the smooth round cranium showed not the slightest sign of abrasion or blow.
With sinking heart he pursued his search; yet somehow his attention now was given but languidly to potential means of exit which the faces of the cliffs might afford. Something seemed irresistibly to draw it to the ground. Ha! that was it. Again that horrid gleam of whitened bones. Another skeleton lay before him—and look, another, and another, at short distances apart. All these, like the first, were unshattered, uninjured; but—the whole area here was strewn with skulls, yellow and brown with age,—was strewn with bones also, mossy, mahogany-hued, and which crackled under his tread.
No one could be more ruthless, more callous; no man could view scenes of cruelty and bloodshed more unmoved than Laurence Stanninghame,—as we have shown,—or bear his part more coolly and effectively in the fiercest conflict; yet there was something in these silent human relics lying there bloodless; in the unnatural, haunted silence of this dreadful death-valley that caused his flesh to creep. Then he noticed that all were lying along the slope of a ridge which ran right across the hollow, dividing the floor of the same into two sections. He must needs go over that ridge to complete his explorations, yet now he shrank from it with awe and repugnance which in any other man he would have defined as little short of terror. What would await him on the other side?