We raced over to the shelter of the concave rock, but here the ground fell away sharply at our feet, and the rain draining off the lip of the chasm fell in a cataract before us. Dodging under the stinging curtain, I had at last the satisfaction of finding myself in a space that was relatively dry. Hermione and Hector were right behind me. We stood for an indeterminate time, dripping and gasping.
Behind us the water fell in a luminous sheet. Before us lay only a repellent and impermeable gloom. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the dimness. A hundred feet below us, at the base of the sheer cliff face, yawned the entrance to a cave. We were perched on a steep slope, obstructed by rubble and the rotting trunks of toppled trees. Here and there naked saplings reached up from the sparse undergrowth toward the light, clinging to plausible life. Though there was no well-defined path, the way ahead was at worst negotiable.
“What do you say?” Caves have ever held a fascination for me. They are there to be explored; and this one, for all its unappealing aspect, refused to be ignored. I turned to Hermione.
“Rather,” she smiled at me, “I’m with you all the way.” Good girl.
Then I noticed, with a start, the ragged bundle of bones and black feathers that had been a chicken, at my feet.
Was this mere mishap, or sacrificial offering to appease the raksasa or demon that lurked within the cave? Hector made some crack about black magic, affecting a mockoccultist tone.
“It is the sacred symbol of the Kabbalah for a ritual invocation,” he concluded. “Whatever you do, don’t step on it, for God’s sake, or rather that of his Satanic Majesty.”
Whether it held some significance or not, and although it was quite plain that Hector was joking, I found myself unable to suppress a shudder. Even Hermione looked a bit grim. We threaded our way over and under and round various obstacles, until we were on a level with the mouth of the cavern.
This was vast, far greater than it appeared when viewed obliquely from above. Roughly rectangular in shape, with apex finely vaulted, it must have been well over twenty feet in height by ten feet wide. And this was strange, the cave was evidently no natural phenomenon, but man-made. The walls and roof bore a pattern of grooves that were chiselled by the hand of man. They reminded one of the immense crayères, or quarries, now utilized as storage in Champagne, which were formerly carved from the calcareous rock by the Christian prisoners of the Roman legions two thousand years ago. Or were they—the walls of this cavern that confronted us—fashioned only by the agency of man? Had not the intervention of a superhuman force caused the sculpting of this rock? Local legend has it that each hermit’s cell and funerary tjandi in the land was originally gouged out and hollowed from the stone by the living fingernails or talons of the giant, Kbo Iwa, who was sent by Indra, Lord of Heaven, to punish mankind for its overweening arrogance, and who terrorized the earth and its inhabitants, killing and consuming them at will. Examining the structural scars and sheer dimensions of this awesome passage, it seemed a not unlikely tale.
Surely no irrigation tunnel could have been constructed on such lines: the proportions were simply too large. Further the edifice was too meticulously sculpted, too exquisitely symmetrical: it exhibited no traces of erosion caused by water flowing through.
To gain the entrance was no easy matter, for the lower portion of the approach became a scree, composed of fragments sheered off the cliff, and inclined at a gradient of two paces in every three or an angle of forty-five degrees. The slope seemed to terminate in a perpendicular drop of several feet; a measure that was hard to calculate precisely in a space so absolutely black. We hesitated on the edge of the void.
Hermione broke the tangible and pregnant hush. “Watch me!” was all she said, as she slid down on her bottom, and disappeared over the side. What a gallant girl she was! Her lovely face beamed on the instant back at us, as she stood head and shoulders above the brink.
“Piece of cake! Come on you wets!” she shouted.
At once shamed and galvanized into action by Hermione’s taunting and salutary example, Hector and I sat down and let go simultaneously, careering down the slope to a soft landing on the cavern’s floor. The drop had been four feet at most. A minor avalanche of shale and soil, dislodged by our passage, rained down on our heads.
“That wasn’t too terrible now, was it?” Hermione admonished. “Look ahead; there is light!”
And indeed, peering into the recesses of that dark corridor, I perceived an area of illumination which appeared to have its source in an opening from above. Which was decidedly as well. I wondered aloud whether any one of us had had the presence of mind to bring along a flash-light. I certainly had not. Nor, it transpired, had the others. Then I remembered that I did have a box of matches in my pocket, although I knew before I attempted to strike one what the result would be. Of course the things were soaked.
In silence we proceeded cautiously toward the light, with each footstep searching the ground for some sign of subsidence. But the going was level and perfectly free of obstruction; and very soon we had arrived at the circle of luminosity.
At the moment of our entering therein, with a violent commotion of wings beating and voices shrilling, a colony of bats erupted into life, milling furiously over our heads and swooping down so closely as to fan our faces. Hermione shrieked and fell on her knees, arms raised to protect her head, in case one of these fleeting creatures should become entangled in her flowing tresses. They were not, it should be pointed out, the little flittermice that are almost indistinguishable from swiftlets as they flutter in the fading light of day. These were monstrous fruit-bats, or flying foxes as they are sometimes called, and I care not to think what would have happened had one been caught in Hermione’s hair. But after a minute or two the flock had dispersed, either shooting through the tunnel behind us, or swirling aloft and exiting through the aperture above.
Looking up with relief at the last of the departing vampires, the light now beamed down into our eyes through a chimney or vertical shaft cut in the rock. This was ten feet square and the width of the cavern, extending upwards a distance of about forty feet, the sides slightly indented here and there, and hung with roots and vines. It provided welcome ventilation as well as light. Rain pattered down through the opening.
Beyond us the passage stretched a distance equal to that traversed, resolving in a further pool of light. Was anyone not in favour of continuing?
“Heavens no!” exclaimed Hermione, now fully recovered from her brush with the bats.
“Lead on Themistocles!” said Hector.
Coming to the half-way mark in the second section of corridor, I noticed the dim outlines of black holes gaping on either side. Evidently we were moving along the main artery of a labyrinth. These secondary tunnels seemed to invite further investigation, but we were ill-equipped to enter where not the least glimmer of light was manifest. I noticed also that the going now was wetter, as we were sloshing through a stream of water ankle-deep. But whether this was the result of normal seepage or increased flow due to the heavy rainfall, was very hard to judge.
As we intruded into the next patch of brightness, there came again the same sensation of scurry and uproar. Once more we cowered under the thrust and flurry of a hundred pairs of membranaceous wings. Gradually the turmoil subsided, and we found ourselves gazing up into a similar, if somewhat deeper, shaft hewn through the rock strata, a steady trickle of water descending to augment the stream flowing underfoot. On the far side of the illumined space, the passage-way became much narrower, whilst the ceiling seemed to retreat: the way must take an unexpected turn, for nothing but an eery darkness was now to be descried.
“I’m not sure if I like the look of this.” The sound of my voice, somehow sepulchral and remote, came as a distinct shock to me. Did I really say that? Surely I could not have been the author of such a statement.
“Come on now chaps!” It was Hector who spoke: that much was unmistakable. “We’ve got this far: we really shouldn’t give up yet, at least not before we’ve seen what happens round the next bend.” He looked closely