“‘I hear you, Master,’ and the snake-like coils began to recede, to grow small, and finally to disappear. The slack had been taken up. ‘What now, Master?’ came the voice and I knew from the tension in it that the sight of the slack rope had told its own story.
“‘Send me down Manuel and José.’ (They were the lightest and most agile of the men.) I had no more than spoken before they came sliding down the other ropes and shortly I was descending as slowly and carefully as I had planned to do, until the pilot light of the lamp touched ground beneath me, standing as firmly erect as though placed by unseen hands. I glanced at the two men beside me on the ropes and we all nodded our heads approvingly.
“Below, clearly seen in the light of the lamp, was a pure-white vessel which had fallen apart, and from it streamed gleaming, shining objects. We landed as carefully as though stepping on a mound of eggs. Before taking our feet from the nooses we called to the men above to make the ropes fast and to be ready for our signals. Leaving the lantern standing as it was and no longer troubled by air-currents, we lit our candles. Directly in the center of the pit was a large mound and crowning it was the white vase, made of translucent material like alabaster, carved from a solid block and engraved with a leaf design in highly conventionalized meanders, combined with geometrical designs around the rim and sides. It was broken into several pieces, but these were large and the whole was quickly and easily fitted together into the original shape.
“The vase, which had a capacity of about a quart, contained a quantity of exquisite jade beads and pendants, a large plaque with surfaces richly carved and representing conventionalized human figures with religious regalia, a polished jade globe over an inch in diameter and shining clear in spite of the ages of dust, oblong pendants, and thin, minutely carved ear-ornaments. This was but a tenth of what the vessel had once held. The rest we found later in the heaped-up material beneath it.
“At a signal anxiously expected, the other men came swirling down the ropes like firemen sliding down a brass pole to answer an alarm. Then we all went to work. Each of the men had had long experience in similar labors under my supervision. Occasionally was heard a swift intake of breath and a man would hold up some interesting find and then settle back to his task. While they worked I made notes, numbered the specimens, and helped to pack them in the safety-boxes. Thus the work went on. Occasionally we had to stop to kill a tzeentum, a big, flat, crab-like spider. Tzeentum spiders can give an ugly sting producing a fever hard to subdue, and at times they seem to swarm out of hidden crevices. By reason of their flat bodies and quick movements, killing them is not always easy.
“We found temple vases, incense-burners, tripod vessels, cylindrical urns, some of which are perfect, others marred, and many broken. We obtained fragments of large, hard-baked earthen vessels of complicated design. Unbroken, these must have been at least thirty-six inches high. We secured, also, chipped flints of fine workmanship and of unknown use. All these and many other finds came to us from this mound, and after it had been gone over carefully by hand and had then been screened we decided we had left nothing of value and as with one mind we began to think of supper. Pedro swarmed up one of the ropes hand over hand, followed by his brother, and they hoisted the specimen cases and tools. The rest of the workers followed one by one. I was the last to leave the mysterious burial-chamber, which seemed to name itself by occult suggestion ‘The Sepulcher of the High Priest.’ And as I left its dark depths behind me, the mysterious atmosphere, which no one, probably, will ever be able to dissipate, seemed to cling to me.
“When we arrived at the top of the square-walled shaft it was eleven o’clock at night and all the people of the plantation were there, anxiously awaiting us. The families of the men who accompanied me were in a hysterical state. Ropes had been brought and an attempt was about to be made at our rescue. With our specimen cases held aloft and in the midst of a rejoicing crowd we returned to the plantation house and soon the noise died away and we all slept.
“I am asked why I call this shrine upon the mound with the crypt beneath it the Temple of the High Priest. That is a fair question.
“I believe there comes to most sentient beings, after protracted periods of intense observation and deep interest in a given subject, a certain mental domination over the subject beyond a mere recognition of the facts which have been encountered. One becomes possessed of a clarity of vision not psychic but reaching farther than cold logic. Call it intuition or what not; it so frequently arrives at the right answer, spanning the gap that cannot be spanned by the chain of facts, that I have great respect for it when it is honest, genuine, and strongly felt.
“As I left behind me the black depths of the pit, its haunting mystery seemed to permeate me. I had had the same strange feeling come over me before, in research work among the burial-places of Labna and also during and after my discovery of the ruined city of Xkickmook. Never had it been so potent, so definite as when I ascended this wonderful old burial-shaft and came into the moonlight of the living world.