Lessaution ran round and round it and in and out of it like a monkey exploring a new cage. He chattered and swore away to himself, paying no sort of attention to our doings. It was left to Gerry to make the next discovery. He was standing gaping down into the crevasses of the glacier edge.
“Great Heavens!” he ejaculated suddenly. “Look here, you chaps.”
Ready for any further astonishment, we flocked to him greedily. He pointed to the unsullied sides of the ice-wall, and therein we saw a wonderful sight. Plain to the view, as if cased in a crystal casket, were more huge blocks of stone, the ice arching over them transparently. Most evidently they were the masonry that had formed the facade of this building, which the glacier must have in part destroyed. They had been swept down into a sort of bay or basin in the rock. In this hollow they were only covered by a shallow of the mighty river of ice, and it had rolled its slow current over them for centuries. But lying, as they did, beneath its sluggish current, they had remained flung up as in a sort of backwater, and free from injury. And here lay the wonder of the thing. For carved on these great monoliths were a hundred cabalistic figures in myriad combinations, every one, as we could clearly trace, formed of the same symbol that figured in my wonderful scroll.
When you are beaten, the grace of a neat surrender will turn tongues from your defeat. I went up to Lessaution with an outstretched hand and an ingratiating smile. He greeted me triumphantly, and with many joyous outcries, but I will say was handsome enough to forego all superior airs of patronage. He made no allusion to my previous scepticism.
I told myself that, in some ways, this discovery was a great misfortune as matters had now turned out. True enough, we had come here to investigate the possible remains of such a race as was now conclusively proved to have existed. Had matters gone as we intended we should have been gratified beyond measure at this result. But as circumstances were, the discovery of a suitable shore for launching our boat was preferable to all the antiquities south of the equator. I ventured on a modified résumé of these sentiments, but the Professor snapped at me like an angry parrakeet.
“What!” he exploded. “Shall we leave these fine and perfect palaces? Are we to desert them to search for a beach—a muddy bank of sand? No, it is not possible. Here we can delve into a buried past, and explore the relics of a royal race. I plant myself here, and Beelzebub shall not tear me from the spot. Under correction you must see as I do. A beach now—but that is absurd,” and he turned to his investigations, waving aside my suggestions superbly.
Gerry and Denvarre were a bit flushed and excited over the matter. The former opined that an hour or two’s pottering round these walls might be interesting, and that discoveries worth making might be made. He suggested that the mid-day halt for food should now take place, and that if necessary Lessaution should remain afterward while we strolled forward on our way. We could pick him up on our return.
I agreed to this compromise sulkily, and marched down to where Parsons still smoked patiently among the packs. He rose to his feet, and stood at attention.
“Put up the little cooking tent,” said I, “and light the little stove. We’re going to camp and lunch.”
He began to unfold the canvas and erect the shelter for our little oil oven. I busied myself in getting out the meat pie that Baines had provided, and extracting knives and forks from their various receptacles. Then I sat down upon a boulder and watched Parsons’ further operations with a dreamy content in mere idleness and in the sunshine.