Most of the hovels had been torn down to within about eight feet of the ground. The small boards which had served to barricade their windows were scattered about like the fallen slabs of graves, while here and there a door, evidently unhinged by violence, lay flat against the earth, as though, if raised, it would reveal the entrance to a subterranean vault. The roofs, which were but the ceilings of the first stories, yawned wide to the sky, save where a few mouldering, worm-pitted rafters deepened the inner gloom. Melons grew about walls and thresholds in rotting profusion, while a hoard of parasitic weeds and wild grape-vines ran in and out between the logs. Some of the cabins, having fared yet worse, were now but black heaps of charred timber, half covered with long green tendrils, as if the fingers of Nature were striving to drag them back to life. And near the middle of the clearing a large pile of logs, rafters, bricks, and stone blocks showed that a fortress had been razed to the ground.
The three men walked on with few words, until Vytal, standing at the margin of the oval, called Marlowe’s attention to a narrow pathway almost concealed by shrubs and fallen leaves. It led through the dense forest. Impulsively, Marlowe started to follow it, but the governor would have restrained him. “Have a care, Sir Poet; mayhap this is an Indian trail, and leads to danger!”
“No,” called Marlowe, who, unheeding the other’s protest, had hastened along the path to a distance of several rods. “Come.”
They followed him and, to their surprise, came presently out on a second clearing, much smaller than the first. Here a cabin, entirely unobservable from the main opening, stood more boldly than all the rest, despite its isolation. It was entirely encircled by trees, save on the western side, where a broad breach in the line of foliage admitted a flood of relentless sunlight.
The three men started forward eagerly, for this house might even then have contained a tenant. Its door was closed, its windows barred. The roof had not entirely fallen, for a willow’s branches swept across it with a thousand restless whispers, as though to a being within. But here, too, lank weeds clawed the walls, and melons rotted before the threshold.
Vytal tried the door. It resisted his strong pressure. But Marlowe, raising to the level of his shoulder a large stone, not unlike a cannon-ball in shape and size, flung it against the oaken barrier. It crashed through a decayed board and fell inside, first with a dull thud, and then, as it rolled, a crackling sound like the snapping of dry twigs. Vytal looked through the aperture, but could distinguish nothing for the gloom, and Marlowe peered in with no better success. “It holds all the shadows of the forest in its heart,” he said, thrusting a hand through the hole. “There is a bar of iron across the doorway.” He dislodged the metal rod, and letting it fall, pulled open the door, whose rusty hinges creaked remonstrance as he entered.
Vytal and the governor, following him, found themselves standing on hard, cold earth, to which the stone and iron bar had fallen.
A sudden gust of wind slammed the door behind them. Vytal stepped back to reopen it and admit light into the gloomy interior, but the last rays of sunshine crept now almost horizontally through a rift in the western wall. “They desecrate a tomb,” said Marlowe, “by revealing its contents. Look!” He pointed to a number of white streaks in a corner on the earth. The sunbeams frolicked across them.
“They are the bones of a fellow-creature,” exclaimed the governor, leaving the cabin with horror.