"Blind fish! You are jesting, my friend," Don Miguel exclaimed, and stopped.
"I am wrong: blind is not the word I should have employed, for these fish have no eyes."
"What! No eyes?"
"None at all; but that does not prevent them being very dainty food."
"That is strange."
"Is it not? But stay—we have arrived."
In fact, they found themselves in front of a gloomy, gaping orifice, about ten feet high by eight wide.
"Let me do the honours of my mansion," Valentine said.
"Do so, my friend."
The two men entered the grotto: the hunter struck a match, and lit a torch of candlewood. The fairy picture which suddenly rose before Don Miguel drew from him a cry of admiration. There was an indescribable confusion: here a gothic chapel, with its graceful soaring pillars; further on, obelisks, cones, trunks of trees covered with moss and acanthus leaves, hollow stalactites of a cylindrical form, drawn together and ranged side by side like the pipes of an organ, and yielding to the slightest touch varied metallic sounds which completed the illusion. Then, in the immeasurable depths of these cavernous halls, at times formidable sounds arose, which, returned by the echoes, rolled along the sides of the grotto like peals of thunder.