The air was filled with strange noises, such a whirring and snapping as not one of them had heard before.
“Wha—what is it?” Kirk’s hand trembled as he gripped Pant’s arm.
“Bats,” said Pant. “Stand perfectly still. They will settle.”
For a single second he threw on his flashlight and allowed it to play across the space before them. The other boy’s eyes went big with wonder. Even Pant, who had seen much of Central American life, was astonished. Bats, a million of them it seemed, circled the air. And such bats! No tiny mouse-like creatures were these, but great gray monsters with broad spreading wings, gleaming eyes and teeth that shone white in the perpetual night about them.
“Don’t.” Kirk’s hand was on his arm. The light flashed out.
“May as well go ahead,” said Pant. “Doubt if they go far back into the cave.”
They had not gone a hundred yards before they came to a very narrow passage. Once more they were obliged to take to the bed of the stream. This lasted only a moment. As they emerged there came over them a sense of vastness. Was it the quality of silence that was there? Was it the changed sound of their footsteps? Or was it some sixth sense that told them? As Pant threw the gleam of his powerful flashlight before them, an exclamation escaped every lip.
Nothing they had seen in any land could compare with the splendor of the masonry of the vast cathedral that lay before them.
Masonry? This indeed they at first thought it, the work of some great lost race. In time they came to realize that the splendid gleaming pillars were the work of time and a great Creator, the Master Builders of all ages. The pillars were great stalagmites, formed by the dripping of water through a thousand thousand years.
Strangest of all, as they listened they caught from afar a sound that was like music.