"It is the echo returning to our ears Sumichrast's answer," I hastened to tell him. "They are in another chamber; you call them now!"
The boy, agitated, raised his voice. Immediately the dark vaults seemed to repeat his words; and the sound increased, as it moved away, as if a thousand persons, placed at intervals, were repeating some watch-word. A sonorous "Hiou! hiou!" prevailed over the uproar, and the face of l'Encuerado appeared on our right before the echo of the call had died away.
"Come and see a beautiful church!" cried the Indian. "A church made of diamonds, Chanito!"
We moved towards the entrance by an inclined passage, down the slope of which we followed l'Encuerado. The distance between the walls gradually increased, and soon we found ourselves in a vast hall studded with stalactites; in it Sumichrast arranged the lighted torches.
"The wildest dreams could not picture a stranger . . . style of architecture."
The Indian was not far wrong; we might easily have fancied ourselves in a Gothic cathedral. The wildest dreams could not picture a stranger, more original, or more fantastic style of architecture. Never did any painter of fairy scenes imagine any effects more splendid. Hundreds of columns hung down from the roof and reached the ground below. It was a really wonderful assemblage of pointed arches, lace-work, branchery, and gigantic flowers. Here and there were statues drawn by nature's hand. Lucien particularly remarked a woman covered with a long veil, and stretching out over our heads an arm which a sculptor's chisel could scarcely have rendered more life-like. There were also shapeless mouths, monstrous heads, and animals, appearing as if they had been petrified, in menacing attitudes. The illusion was rendered more or less complete according to the play of the light; and many a strange shape was but caught sight of for a moment, to as rapidly vanish.
While we were moving about the cave, some long needles, hanging from the roof, touched our heads.
"They are stalactites," said I to the astonished Lucien. "The rain-water, filtering through the mountain above, dissolves the calcareous matter it meets with, and produces, when it evaporates, the beautiful concretions you are now looking at."