The sergeant rested his rifle against the wall, picked up a block of stone, and reaching in, threw it to his left so accurately, by good chance, that it must have dropped right in the middle of the opening and gone down clear for some distance before it struck against stone, and then rebounded and struck again, rumbling and rolling down for some distance before it stopped.
“Cheerful sort of place to have gone down,” said Denham. “Tell you what; that’s the way down to the wine-cellars. The old races were rare people for cultivating the grape and making wine.”
“I believe it’s the way down to the vaults where they buried their dead,” I said.
“Ugh! Horrid,” cried my companion. “Here, let’s light another match.”
He struck one, held it low, and stepped in and then to his right, and stood at the very edge of a hole in the rough floor of crumbled stone. Then, to my horror, the light flashed in the air as if it was being passed through it rapidly.
Then Denham spoke.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You can step across. It’s only about three feet over. Wait till I’ve lit another match. Yes,” he said as the light flashed up, “it’s just as wide as it is across. I believe that originally the place was quite dark, and this hole was a pitfall for the enemies who attacked. There, come on.”
It was easy enough to spring over, and the next minute Briggs followed, and we continued our way down a narrow passage whose roof was open to the sky at the end of a couple of dozen yards, so that there was no risk of our stumbling upon a pitfall; and, after passing along this passage for a time in a curve, we came upon what seemed to be its termination in a doorway, still pretty square, but whose top was so low that we had to stoop to enter a kind of building or room of a peculiar shape, wider at one end than at the other, in which there was a rough erection; while at one corner, some ten yards away, there was another doorway leading, probably, to another passage.
“Why, it must be a temple,” I said, “and that built-up place was the altar.”
“Does look like it,” said Denham thoughtfully.