“Shall we go back?”
“No, but I cannot help being a little alarmed.”
Yussuf laughed softly.
“No wonder,” he said. “I feel a little strange myself. But listen, Lawrence; what we have to fear is a hole or crack in the rock into which we might fall, so keep your eyes on the ground.”
But their path proved very easy, always a steep descent, sometimes cut into stairs, sometimes merely a rugged slope, and always arched over by big uncemented stones.
No vault came in sight, no passage broke off to right or left; it was always the same steep descent—a way to some particular pine made by the ancients, who had utilised the crevice or split in the rock, and arched it over to make this rugged passage.
“I think I understand,” said Yussuf, when they had gone on descending for quite three hundred yards.
“What is it?” said Lawrence; “a tomb?”
“No.”
“A treasure chamber?”