The boys each took one of the circular windows and peered out. To their astonishment they looked into a vast cavernous chamber, lighted from the summit which admitted sunshine, the roof of which was supported by pillars. It was so vast that it took the breath away almost, to gaze into its great distances and heights.
The floor of this place was marked with a circle, about which were inscribed signs at regular intervals.
“Must have been their equivalent for the signs of the zodiac,” breathed Nat, awestruck at the enormous spaces before him.
“Then this was a temple,” said Joe looking down from his window at the great floor, which was fully twenty feet below where the boys stood peering.
“It must have been,” gasped out Nat, “and—and—Joe, we are in the very holy of holies of this island.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see? Look below you. We are peering out of the eyes of a huge idol made out of the rock. That stuff at the head of the stairs must have been the apparatus the priests used to make the idol speak and utter terrifying noises.”
There was no question but that Nat was right. Both boys could now make out beneath them, the rounded outlines of a huge squatting figure. In the head of this monstrous figure—its eyes, in fact—were the two circular holes through which they were looking.
“Gracious, what a sight it must have been when that temple was full of people of the vanished race, adoring this great idol,” murmured Nat, in awestruck tones.
“And what a job the priests must have had fooling them through that megaphone and that big bellows,” said Joe, the practical.