Leith grinned as he surveyed the questioner. "No, we didn't come for the view," he answered. "It happens to be on the way to our destination."
Holman looked around at the basalt walls that hemmed us in on both sides, and then glanced at the pit in front.
"But we can go no farther," he said.
Leith's smile spread across his ugly flat face. "You are too young to know everything," he sneered.
The youngster's eyes opened as he looked again at the circular pit with its brilliantly tinted sides. The answer perplexed him, and he waited anxiously for an explanation.
"But how can we?" he asked.
Leith stood for a moment before replying, then he moved closer to the edge of the crater and pointed down.
"The road is directly beneath you," he remarked. "If you come closer to the edge you can see it." Holman glanced at me in amazement, and moved by the one impulse we stepped toward the ledge. The rim of the vast pit, at the point where Leith was standing, was composed of porphyry of a dark-green shade, and as we neared the edge we noticed that this had been worn to that peculiar velvety smoothness that one notices on the pillars of Indian temples, where the sweaty hands of millions of worshippers have helped in the polishing process through unnumbered centuries.
Leith noticed that our glances were directed upon the peculiar polished portion of the rim, and his grin broadened.
"You won't be the first to go over on to the track below," he drawled. "If I had a dollar for every man who slipped over here since the world began I wouldn't bother with specimens for American and European museums. See, the ledge is directly beneath, and it leads away to the right."