As I slowed and halted I noticed that the drip and trickle from the roof had ceased. The cave was widening and deepening into a space that the feeble light of our candles refused to fill. We were in the midst of a growing emptiness.
I looked above me. The roof was lost in gloom. A thick, velvety blackness was over us, and no answering flash from ice walls came as I waved my light. We had strayed from under the glacier, and were overhung by some huge escarpment of the mountain-side. On the one side of us was the wall of ice; on the other the sullen gray cliff of granite. The floor was smooth. The stream oozed along the foot of the ice-wall with a silent, splashless flow.
We walked half aimlessly forward, hesitating for a direction in this uniform emptiness. Then the light passed uncertainly upon a yellowish mass a few fathoms before us—a vague breaking of the dimness of the void. We drew toward it, and the shadows danced and played upon clean-cut blocks; there was no mistaking their nature. They were quarried—the squared masonry of a buried city.
Parsons crept closer again.
“’Anged if it ain’t a ’ouse,” he whispered, and it seemed to me that I could hear the throb of his pulses in the stillness. “A bloomin’ ’ouse,” he repeated, with the evident desire to prove to himself that this was no delusive dream.
We both breathed hard as we continued staring at the yellow gable, watching the waverings of the dip-light across its stones. Emotions that varied only in degree filled our minds alike. We were, without any doubt, horribly afraid. For half a minute we stood unstirring. Then by a common and inquisitive impulse we advanced shoulder to shoulder to the doorway.
There was no door. A fungus-smelling pile of sodden pulp showed what might have been wood long centuries before. Beside the postern lay a metal bucket, dull and dirt-colored; opposite the doorway was an open hearth. The floor was inches deep in a curious, strong-smelling, fungoid litter. Among it lay half-a-dozen or more utensils, all of the same dull-colored metal. In the ingle nook was a stone seat.
IT WAS THE FACE OF ONE ALONE WITH DEATH.
Page [177].
Another entrance gave upon an inner room. To this we strode delicately. At our entry we stayed our oncoming with a great gasp. I stepped back upon Parsons—shuffling and mowing at him unseeingly. My eyes were glued upon the far side of the room, while my feet with automatic intelligence endeavored to carry me out of it.