When Captain Horn had cautiously advanced a couple of yards into the interior of the rock, he stopped, raised his lantern, and looked about him.  The passage was about two feet wide, the floor somewhat lower than the ground outside, and the roof but a few feet above his head.  It was plainly the work of man, and not a natural crevice in the rocks.  Then the captain put the lantern behind him, and stared into the gloom ahead of them.  As Ralph had said, it was not so dark as might have been expected.  In fact, about twenty feet forward there was a dim light on the right-hand wall.

The captain, still followed by Ralph, now moved on until they came to this lighted place, and found it was an open doorway.  Both heads together, they peeped in, and saw it was an opening like a doorway into a chamber about fifteen feet square and with very high walls.  They scarcely needed the lantern to examine it, for a jagged opening in the roof let in a good deal of light.

Passing into this chamber, keeping a good watch out for pitfalls as he moved on, and forgetting, in his excitement, that he might go so far that he could not hear Maka, should he call, the captain saw to the right another open doorway, on the other side of which was another chamber, about the size of the one they had first entered.  One side of this was a good deal broken away, and through a fracture three or four feet wide the light entered freely, as if from the open air.  But when the two explorers peered through the ragged aperture, they did not look into the open air, but into another chamber, very much larger than the others, with high, irregular walls, but with scarcely any roof, almost the whole of the upper part being open to the sky.

A mass of broken rocks on the floor of this apartment showed that the roof had fallen in.  The captain entered it and carefully examined it.  A portion of the floor was level and unobstructed by rocks, and in the walls there was not the slightest sign of a doorway, except the one by which he had entered from the adjoining chamber.

“Hurrah!” cried Ralph.  “Here is a suite of rooms.  Isn’t this grand?  You and I can have that first one, Maka can sleep in the hall to keep out burglars, and Edna and Mrs. Cliff can have the middle room, and this open place here can be their garden, where they can take tea and sew.  These rocks will make splendid tables and chairs.”

The captain stood, breathing hard, a sense of relief coming over him like the warmth of fire.  He had thought of what Ralph had said before the boy had spoken.  Here was safety from wild beasts—­here was immunity from the only danger he could imagine to those under his charge.  It might be days yet before the mate returned,—­he knew the probable difficulties of obtaining a vessel, even when a port should be reached,—­but they would be safe here from the attacks of ferocious animals, principally to be feared in the night.  They might well be