The descent, though it was not very long, took time, but close to the walls the rocks were reasonably firm, and after perhaps thirty feet the staircase became a slope, down which it was easy to walk. Occasionally the roof dipped suddenly, making it necessary for them to stoop, and once a long stalactite knocked Chirk’s hat off. The cold was intense, and a faint sound of rushing, steadily increasing, did nothing to add to Chirk’s enjoyment.
“Hear that noise?” John said, in a satisfied voice. “I told you there would be a river! Now what have we come to?”
The ground had ceased to slope downwards, and the passage suddenly widened. The sweep of John’s lantern failed to discover the walls, and when he turned it upwards it only dimly illuminated the roof.
“We must have reached the main cavern. Jupiter, what a place! Stay where you are. I want to find how big it is, and whether it leads on farther still.” He moved to one side as he spoke, playing the lantern before him. In a moment it lit up the rock-face, jagged and gleaming. Chirk, standing at the entrance to the huge chamber, watched it travel on, and then swing round to light the wall opposite to where he stood. A black cavity yawned, and the Captain said, his words resounding eerily: “I’ve found another passage!”
“I see you have,” replied Chirk.
To his secret relief, the Captain moved on, and presently rounded the corner of the chamber, and began to make his way slowly back towards the entrance, his lantern playing all over the rock-face. “Chirk, this is a wonderful place!” he declared. “Come over here! The rock’s honeycombed with galleries above our heads! I wish we had a ladder! There’s no reaching them without one!”
“I don’t doubt you’d like to go crawling along a lot of galleries,” said Chirk tartly, walking towards him, and gazing up with revulsion, “but we’ve got no call to do so, because if there ain’t no ladder here it stands to reason no one—” He broke off, with a startled oath, almost losing his balance, as his foot came up against some obstacle. He recovered it, and brought the beam of his lantern downwards. His voice changed; he said with careful calm: “Never mind the galleries! Just you come over here, Soldier!”
John turned. “What—” Then he too stopped abruptly, for Chirk was holding the storm-lantern high, and by its golden light he saw a number of corded chests ranged along the side of the cavern. “Good God!” he ejaculated.
Three or four strides brought him up to Chirk, who, finding one chest standing on end, set his lantern down on it, and said: “That’s a coach-wheel I owe you. Lordy, I’d have laid you any odds there’d be nothing here! But what the devil’s in them?”
The Captain was on his knee, closely scrutinizing one of the chests. “Chirk!” he said, rather oddly. “Unless I’m much mistaken—this is an official seal!”