“At last!” shouted Van Dusee.
We hurried forward, breathless with interest, and found ourselves confronted by a high but very narrow stile, consisting of six steps of some twenty-four inches each, and glaring down, with jaws wide-open and huge paws outstretched immediately over the apex, was a towering sculptured monster with brilliant green eyes.
The sight of that crouching beast, obviously placed there as a guard, was one to appall the stoutest heart. In turn, we passed under the stupendous overhanging paws, all save Gomez, making way with a display of confidence that we were far from feeling.
In a moment our blinking eyes beheld that for which we came: a gigantic cavern, nearly light as day. I think the wonder of that moment, as I became accustomed to the peculiar radiance of the light and my eyes took in the many evidences of an extinct, yet highly cultivated, life, will never leave me.
Row on row of seats in the form of a huge amphitheater lay in cathedral silence before our fascinated gaze. At the sides there extended beautifully-cut galleries, hewn out of the solid crystal rock and giving mute testimony of a civilization at least as ancient as that of the Greeks. Here and there the fresco-work was interrupted to give place to heroic-sized figures in pure white marble as marvelously sculptured as anything that ever left the mallet of Praxiteles. There were scores of them!
High above, I was interested to note that the ceiling was of the same rock-formation that had crystal clearness, which accounted for the plentitude of light, as I was certain we were not more than a hundred feet below the surface.
Slowly we began a circuit of that wonder-home of a lost people. To the right lay a vaulted passage, and we came presently to that. It was darker here, and young Anderson and I, detaching ourselves from the rest of the party, made our way along it. We came soon to a circular series of highly ornamented chambers. Anderson was slightly in advance of me, and as he peered into the central and larger one of these I heard him draw in his breath sharply.
“Look at that!” he exclaimed, awe-struck.
My eyes followed his into the beautifully tapestried room, and there, seated in a high-backed, canopied, thronelike chair, extravagantly adorned with glistening jewels, was the figure of a man!
He was apparently in the full vigor of existence. The cast of his face was Mongolian. And he was smiling!