“I can’t even see the walls,” said Joe. “Here, Grip, where are you?”
The dog barked in answer some distance away, and then came scampering back.
“Oh, here’s one side, sir,” said Hardock, taking a few steps to his left, and once more holding up his light against a rugged mass of granite veined with white quartz, and glistening as if studded with gems.
“How beautiful!” cried Joe.
“Let’s throw a light on the subject,” said Gwyn, merrily. “Open your lanthorn, Joe;” and as this was done he lit the end of a piece of magnesium ribbon, which burned with a brilliant white light and sent up a cloud of white fumes to rise slowly above their heads.
The light brightened the place for a minute, and in that brief interval the two friends feasted their eyes upon the crystal-hung roof and walls of the lovely grotto, whose sides rose to about forty feet above their heads, and then joined in a correct curve that was nearly as regular as if it had been the work of some human architect. A hundred feet away the roof sank till it was only two or three yards above the irregular floor, and the place narrowed in proportion, while where they stood the walls were some fifty feet apart.
Then the ribbon gave one flash, and was dropped on the floor, to be succeeded by a black darkness, out of which the lanthorns shed what seemed to be three dim sparks.
“What do you think of it, gen’lemen?” said Hardock, from out of the black darkness.
“Grand! Lovely! Beautiful! I never saw anything like it,” cried Gwyn.
“Why, it must be the most valuable part of the mine,” cried Joe.