"Let's drink first!" I said.
My voice sounded strangely hollow in the vaulted place. I turned and led her to the rock. The water was dead cold and delightfully fresh to the touch. The girl put her lips to the wall and drank. I followed her example. She finished before I was through; for it seemed to me that the sun on that ledge outside had drained every drop of moisture out of my system and I drank and drank again. But suddenly she plucked my sleeve and whispered in an awed voice:
"What.... What is that?"
She pointed at the stone slab of which I have spoken. It resembled a rough altar built up of big stones laid together like an Irish wall. And on it lay three or four long and shrunken-looking packets. The rays of my candle picked out a round substance that gleamed brightly through the wrappings of the nearest of these objects.
Even before I stepped up to the stone table to get a closer inspection I knew what they were. Here lay the bones of that forgotten race which had once inhabited Cock Island, the sculptors of the idol which had frowned at us across the valley. We had blundered into one of the island burial-places scooped out of the heart of the rock. The high light which my candle had caught up came from a hip-bone which had worn its way through the bark envelope. The girl saw it, recognised it for what it was, and shrank away.
"Let's get away quickly from here!" said Marjorie, nervously. "These.... these mummies frighten me dreadfully. Desmond, take me out into the sunshine again."
Her voice pleaded piteously and it went to my heart. For I was wondering....
"Good Lord!" I said, "they're naught but a handful of dust. There's nothing to be frightened of! Come and sit at the bottom of the shaft while I see about finding a way up!"
I sat her down on a pile of débris and gave her the candle to hold while, mounting as high as I could on the heaped-up rubbish, I sought for a means of scaling the shaft. But the face of the rock, from which the stairs had broken away under my weight, was now overhanging and so high that I could not see the top. The rest of the shaft was smooth and hard, and try as I would I could not get hand or foot-hold anywhere.
My initial surmise had proved all too correct. To return by the way we had come was impossible. To reach the top we should require to be hauled up by a rope. But, in order not to frighten the girl, I kept on trying to find a way to clamber aloft. And all the time I was thinking that, failing any other egress, those blackened mummies were to be our companions until....