"I knew it! I knew it!" he cried, greatly excited; "it's perfectly hollow. There's a natural castle in it!"
"Where? in your head?"
"No, in the cliff here; it's all hollow—a regular old castle! Come on! come on, Luff! We're bound to explore it. May be we'll rake up something worth seeing yet!" Saying which, he bounded down a narrow ledge on the left, and I, as a matter of course, followed. Our path was not the most secure, winding as it did over an abyss some hundreds of feet in a direct fall; but our previous experience enabled us to spring over the rocks with wonderful agility, and work our way down the more difficult passes in a manner that would have done credit to animals with four legs. Portions of the earth formed a kind of narrow stairway, so distinct and regular that we almost thought it must be of artificial construction. In about ten minutes we reached a broad ledge underneath the brow of the cliff. Turning our backs to the precipice, we saw a spacious cavity in the rocks, shaped a good deal like an immense Gothic doorway, all overhung with vines and wild fern.
"I knew it!" cried Abraham, enthusiastically. "A regular old castle, by all that's wonderful! Crusoe's cave is nothing to it! Just see what a splendid entrance; what ancient turrets; what glorious old walls of solid rock!"
"Verily, it does look like a castle," said I. "We must call it the Castle of Abraham, in honor of the discoverer."
"Yes, but it strikes me there may be another discoverer already. Look at these marks on the rock!"
"True enough; goats never make marks like these!" Near the mouth or entrance of the grotto, traced in black lines, evidently with a burnt stick, we saw a number of curious designs, so defaced by the dripping of water from above that we were unable for some time to make out that they had any meaning. At length, by carefully following the darkest parts, we got some clew to the principal objects intended to be represented, which were very clumsily drawn, as if by an unskillful hand. There was a figure of a man, lying upon a horizontal line, with his face turned upward; the limbs were twisted and broken, and the expression of the features was that of extreme agony; the eyes were closed, the back of the head crushed in, the mouth partly open, and the tongue hanging out. One hand grasped a jagged rock, the other a knife with a part of the blade broken off. Close by, with its head upon his feet, was the skeleton of a strange animal, so rudely sketched that we could hardly tell whether it was intended for a goat or not. It had the horns of a goat, but the eyes, turning upward in their sockets, looked like those of a child that had died some horrible death. Waving lines were drawn some distance off, as representing the sea in a storm; a large ship under sail was standing off in the foam from a pile of rocks that rose out of the sea like a desolate island. The body of a man could be seen under the waves, struggling toward the ship; a shark was tearing the flesh from his legs, and the hands were thrown up wildly over the water. Underneath the whole were several rude sketches of human hearts, pierced through with knives. A hand pointed upward at the figure first described. It had a ring on the forefinger; the tendons of the wrist hung down, as if wrenched from the arm by some instrument of torture. Around these strange designs were numerous others, representing the heads of eagles; a famished wolf, gnawing its own flesh; and the corpses of two children, strangled with a rope; besides other rude sketches of which we could make nothing; and, indeed, some of these already mentioned were so indistinct, that we were forced to depend a good deal on conjecture in order to come to any conclusion in regard to what they were intended to represent; so that I have given but a vague idea, at best, of the whole thing.
"There's something strange about this," said Abraham, trembling all over; "something more than we may like to see. Let us go into the cave, and try if we can solve the mystery."
"I don't think there's much mystery about it," said I; "evidently some sailor who ran away from a ship has occupied this as a hiding-place; these strange designs he has doubtless made in some idle hour, to represent scenes in his own life. The fellow had a bad conscience—he has left the mark of it here."
"He may have left more than that," said Abraham, seriously; "he may have fallen from one of these rocks, and lain here for days, helpless and dying: in the agonies of thirst, driven delirious by fever, he tried, perhaps, to tell by these signs how he died. If I'm not mistaken, we'll find some farther clew to this affair within there. Let us see, at all events."