Here at last must be human beings: savages maybe, but still flesh and blood like myself; and if they were in the crater there must be a way down.
That night I walked as I had never walked before, following the brink of the chasm, and scarcely taking my eyes from the tiny flame that meant so much to me. A way out, a way back to civilization, to life among beings like myself, all this it would mean to me, even if I found but savages by the fire for they could put me in the right path . . . and it never occurred to me to fear them.
Now as the broad moon rose higher I could see into the crater's depths, and this, besides being more vast, was not as the others I had seen. Its floor appeared to be quite level, and looked to be of pure white sand; but everywhere it sparkled in the bright moonlight. Diamonds surely?
I was near the fire now, though far above it, and now I could see there was a path, a broad white path, down a steep slope, it must be broad to show so plainly, for I was still a mile or more away!
In my eagerness I forgot my fatigue, and hastened panting towards this first blessed sign of man's handiwork that I had seen for so long.
Here it was at last; a broad white road, running straight as an arrow away across the sands in the one direction and leading down into the pit on the other a road paved apparently with round white stones all of one size.
Something in their appearance struck me: a loose one lay beside the path, and I stooped to examine it.
It was a skull a human skull, the whole road was paved with them as far as the eye could reach, there were thousands upon thousands myriads of them.
And as I realized what they were, fear seized me, and I turned away from this terrible pathway.
At last I threw myself down in the black shadow of some rocks, still trembling and agitated, and tried to compose myself to think. What manner of men were these I had found at last, and who watched there below by the fire: what race was this that thus made grim mockery of their dead?