We walked on for about a hundred paces, threading our path through piles of boulders that lay at the foot of the precipice till we came to where Zibalbay stood, leaning against the wall of rock in which we could see no break or opening.
“Although I trust you, and, as I believe, Heaven has brought us together for its own purposes,” said the old cacique, “yet I must follow the ancient custom and obey my oath to suffer no stranger to see the entrance to this mountain gate. Come hither, daughter, and blindfold these foreigners.”
She obeyed, and as she tied the handkerchief about the señor’s face I heard her whisper,
“Fear not, I will be your eyes.”
Then we were taken by the hand, and led this way and that till we were confused. After we had walked some paces, we were halted and left while, as we judged from the sounds, our guides moved something heavy. Next we were conducted down a steep incline, through a passage so narrow and low that our shoulders rubbed the sides of it, and in parts we were obliged to bend our heads. At length, after taking many sharp turns, the passage grew wider and the path smooth and level.
“Loose the bandages,” said the voice of Zibalbay.
Maya did so, and, when our eyes were accustomed to the light, we looked round us curiously to find that we stood at the bottom of a deep cleft or volcanic rift in the rock, made not by the hand of man but by that of Nature working with her tools of fire and water. This cleft—along which ran a road so solidly built and drained that, save here and there where snowdrifts blocked it, it was still easily passable after centuries of disuse—did not measure more than forty paces from wall to wall. On either side of it towered sheer black cliffs, honeycombed with doorways that could only have been reached by ladders.
“What are those?” I asked of Zibalbay. “Burying-places?”
“No,” he answered, “dwelling-houses. They were there, so say the records, before our forefathers founded the City of the Heart, and in them dwelt cave-men, barbarians who fed on little and did not feel the cold. It was by following some of these cave-men through that passage which we have passed that the founder of the ancient city discovered this cleft and the good country and great lake that lie beyond it, where the rock-dwellers, whom our forefathers killed out, used to live in the winter season. Once, when I was young, with some companions I entered these caves by means of ropes and ladders, and found many strange things there, such as stone axes and rude ornaments of gold, relics of the barbarians. But let us press on, or night will overtake us in the pass.”
By degrees the great cleft, that had widened as we walked, began to narrow again till it appeared to end in a second wall of rock.