“What I am looking for is in my own land,” said Moore.  “The river is the march.  Come on.”

We went on, now advancing among fairy halls, glistering with stalactites or paved with silver sand, and finally pushing our way through a concealed crevice down dank and narrow passages in the rock.  The darkness increased; the pavement plashed beneath our feet, and the drip, drip of water was incessant.  “We are under the river-bed,” said Moore, “in a kind of natural Thames Tunnel.”  We made what speed we might through this combination of the Valley of the Shadow with the Slough of Despond, and soon were on firmer ground again beneath Moore’s own territory.  Probably no other white men had ever crawled through the hidden passage and gained the further penetralia of the cave, which now again began to narrow.  Finally we reached four tall pillars, of about ten feet in height, closely surrounded by the walls of rock.  As we approached these pillars, that were dimly discerned by the torchlight, our feet made a faint metallic jingling sound among heaps of ashes which strewed the floor.  Moore and I went up to the pillars and tried them with our knives.  They were of wood, all soaked and green with the eternal damp.  “Peter,” said Moore, “go in with the lantern and try if you can find anything there.”

Peter had none of the superstitions of his race, or he would never have been our companion.  “All right, massa; me look for Brer Spook.”

So saying, Peter walked into a kind of roofed over-room, open only at the front, and examined the floor with his lantern, stamping occasionally to detect any hollowness in the ground.

“Nothing here, massa, but this dead fellow’s leg-bone and little bits of broken jugs,” and the dauntless Peter came out with his ghastly trophy.

Moore seemed not to lose heart.

“Perhaps,” he said, “there is something on the roof.  Peter, give me a back.”

Peter stooped down beside one of the wooden pillars and firmly grasped his own legs above the knee.  Moore climbed on the improvised ladder, and was just able to seize the edge of the roof, as it seemed to be, with his hands.

“Now steady, Peter,” he exclaimed, and with a spring he drew himself up till his head was above the level of the roof.  Then he uttered a cry, and, leaping from Peter’s back retreated to the level where we stood in some confusion.

“Good God!” he said, “what a sight!”

“What on earth is the matter?” I asked.

“Look for yourself, if you choose,” said Moore, who was somewhat shaken, and at the same time irritated and ashamed.

Grasping the lantern, I managed to get on to Peter’s shoulders, and by a considerable gymnastic effort to raise my head to the level of the ledge, and at the same time to cast the light up and within.

The spectacle was sufficiently awful.

I was looking along a platform, on which ten skeletons were disposed at full length, with the skulls still covered with long hair, and the fleshless limbs glimmering white and stretching back into the darkness.