“There is no need to trouble further,” I said, “this rock has been cut with copper chisels, for here is the green of the copper. Without doubt we have found the mouth of the mine. Now give me the hammer and candles, and bring the leather bag for samples, and we will enter.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE LEGEND OF THE HEART
When I had gone a few paces down the hole, it widened suddenly, so that we were able to stand upright and light our candles. Now there was no doubt that we were in the tunnel of an old mine, a rudely-dug shaft that turned this way and that as it followed the windings of the ore body.
Along this tunnel we went for thirty or forty paces, creeping over the fallen boulders, and twisting ourselves between the brown stalactites that in the course of ages had formed upon the roof and floor, till presently we reached an obstacle that barred our further progress; a huge mass of rock which at some time or other had fallen from the roof of the tunnel and blocked it. I looked at it, and said:
“Now, señor, I think that we shall have to go back. You remember the writing tells us that this mine, although so rich, was unsafe because of the rottenness of the rock. Doubtless they propped it in the old days, but the timbers have decayed long ago.”
“Yes,” he answered, “we can do nothing here without help, and, Ignatio, I don’t like the look of the roof, it is full of cracks.”
As these last words left his lips a piece of stone, the size of a child’s head, fell from above almost at his feet.
“Speak softly,” I whispered, “the ring of your voice is bringing down the roof.”
Then I stooped to pick up the fallen stone, thinking that it might show ore, and, as I did so, my hand touched something sharp, which I lifted and held to the candle. It was the jawbone of a man, yellow with age, and corroded by damp. I showed it to the señor, and, kneeling down, we examined the bed of the tunnel together, and not uselessly, for there we found the remainder of the skull and some fragments of an arm-bone, but the rest of the skeleton lay under the great boulder in front of us.
“He was coming out of the mine when the rock fell upon him, poor fellow,” whispered the señor. “Look here,” and he pointed to a little heap of something that gleamed in the candle-light.