After toiling up in this way for some time we came to a hollow place of many chambers. Here also was a lever-like structure similar to the great spar in the lower part of the cavern, though very much smaller and more delicately fashioned. Upon the arm of the lever I saw, by the light of the torch, some peculiar figures. I drew Te Makawawa’s attention to them and asked him what they signified.
“There is an ancient tradition,” he said doubtfully, “that this stone will be raised when Hinauri returns, and that when it is done all the ways of the temple will be closed; but its secret has been lost. See! the end hangs over an abyss—the secret is hidden in the depths.”
It was balanced on a breast-high ridge of rock, and beyond was a gulf which the light of the torch could not span.
“Remain here, O white people,” said the chief, after we had wondered at this strange contrivance; “wait here in the Place-of-Many-Chambers, and I will go and speak with Miriami, and bring her to you. But,” he added, drawing me aside, “I will say nothing of the little maiden. I cannot face the stars in her eyes.”
Leaving us the torch, he vanished through another tunnel, and left us in this Place-of-Many-Chambers to await his return with the lost Miriam Grey. Crystal stood with her hand on the tapering end of the stone lever, which stretched its arm horizontally into the centre of the chamber in which we stood.
“It would be easy to raise this,” she said. “I wonder that no one of the long line of priests, which you say has guarded the secrets of this place for ages, has had enough curiosity to try it.”
“According to Te Makawawa,” I said, “it seems to be a means of hiding the temple and its secrets for ever when the ancient queen returns, the reason being perhaps that there is immense wealth hidden somewhere here. Let us see what the other end of the lever is like.”
I held the torch over the barrier, and we peered into the gloom. Resting in the hollow of the head of the lever, some little distance out, we discerned a large round stone of many tons in weight, its outline dimly defined against the blackness beyond. Below this yawned a pit, in which the rays of the torch were lost.
“It seems to me like a system of rolling stones,” I said. “If this lever were raised and that stone launched into the gulf below, there is no telling in what way it might carry out some design originated by the founders of this strange place. No doubt there are levers below, balanced in such a way that this stone would move them and liberate other rolling stones, which would run in grooves prepared for them to execute some errand connected with the various openings into the mountain. Why not? Could anything be more gigantic and wonderful in design than the great levers in the cavern below?”
“There were giants in those days,” said Grey, joining us and glancing round as he spoke. “This must all have been hewn out with design. There are six little caves, I have counted them by matchlight, all opening into this larger one, and some of them contain the openings of other tunnels leading goodness knows where.”