His foot rested on solid stone, and he stood wholly in the dark.  Yet the uproar came clearly to his ears.  It was a certainty now that more soldiers would ascend the pyramid looking for him, but he believed that ignorance and superstition would keep them from entering it.

The air that came to his nostrils out of the unknown dark was cold and clean, but he did not yet dare to take out his lantern.  He felt cautiously in front of him with one foot and touched a stone step below.  He also touched narrow walls with his outstretched hand.  He descended to the step, and then, feeling sure that the light of his lantern could not be seen from without, he took it from under his serape and held it as far in front of him as he could.  A narrow flight of stone steps led onward and downward further than he could see, and, driven by imminent necessity, he walked boldly down them.

The way was rough with the decay of time from which stone itself cannot escape, but he always steadied himself with one hand against the wall.  The stone was very cold and Ned had the feeling that he was in a tomb.  Once more he had that overwhelming sense of old, old things, of things as old as Egypt.  At another time, despite every effort of reason, he would have thrilled with superstitious terror, but now it was for his life, and down he went, step by step.

The air remained pure like that of great caves in the States, and Ned did not stop until a black void seemed to open almost before him when he drew back in affright.  Calming himself he held up the lantern and looked at the void.  It was a deep and square well, its walls faced as far as he could see with squared stones.  His lantern revealed no water in the depths and he fancied that it had something to do with ceremonials, perhaps with sacrifice.  There was a way around the well, but it was narrow and he chose to go no further.  Instead he crouched on the steps where he was safe from a fall, and put the lantern beside him.

It was an oil lamp.  Had he possessed any means of relighting it he would have blown it out, and sought sleep in the dark, but once out, out always, and he moved it into a little niche of the wall, where no sudden draught could get at it, and where its hidden light would be no beacon to any daring Mexican who might descend the stairway.

The sense of vast antiquity was still with the boy, but it did not oppress him now as it might have done at another time.  His feeling of relief, caused by his escape from the Mexicans, was so great that it created, for the time at least, a certain buoyancy of the mind.  The unknown depths of the ancient pyramid were at once a shelter and a protection.  He folded the serape, in order to make as soft a couch as possible, and soon fell asleep.

When Ned awoke he was lying in exactly the same position on the steps, and the lantern was still burning in the niche.  He had no idea how long he had slept, or whether it was day or night, but he did not care.  He took the full canteen and drank.  It was an unusually large canteen and it contained enough, if he used economy, to last him two days.  The cool recesses of the pyramid’s interior did not engender thirst like its blazing summit.  Then he ate, but whether breakfast, dinner or supper he did not know, nor did he care.