It took us a second to realize about what he was exclaiming. The stream split into two branches, and twenty yards farther on these two branches disappeared into tunnels in the rock, low, square tunnels, perhaps three feet high by two broad, obviously the work of man, cut foursquare out of the solid limestone.
“Now I wonder what they did that for?” said Wrexham. “It doesn’t look as if these were springs. It seems rather as if somewhere higher up they had deliberately diverted the water.”
We studied the little tunnels, but there was nothing to show who had made them. Unornamented, they might have been of any date. Just plain tunnelling through the rock much as you can see in Northern India to-day, where the tribesmen tunnel along in the river-banks to lead water off to fields lower down, up above the natural water-level of the stream.
In front the valley continued its sinuous course, but dry now. We followed for about one hundred yards, and then Wrexham stopped and sniffed. He has a keen nose.
“Something dead about these parts,” he said at last.
There was just a faint movement of air, and undoubtedly, as Wrexham said, it was bringing down to us odours that evoked other scenes back in the war years. Two minutes later, rounding another bend, we were aware of brighter light in front.
“Steady,” said I; “I think we’ve come to the end. Stop here a minute while I look ahead.”
Another fifty yards round a still sharper and narrower bend, and then I drew back quickly into the shadow of the valley, which had suddenly widened, and was partly filled with some masses of fallen rock. I drew in my breath as I looked, and then, stepping back, waved up the others, signalling silence as I did so. When they came up, I motioned them behind the rocks and pointed. As they craned their heads cautiously up, I heard Wrexham give a low whistle of surprise.
For there, straight in front, was the open clearing and the rock gate, cut into the solid face of the cliff just as the old diary described it. And on the white stones of the clearing were bones, in large numbers—gaunt ribs and rounded skulls—and a pervading smell of death. While, most ominous of all, in the centre of the clearing a huddle of draggle-winged vultures jostled and flapped and writhed their foul necks about something hidden beneath them.
We crouched there, staring breathlessly across the clearing at the gate on the far side.