But alas! they did not begin till some six feet above my head, and the wall was sheer.  How was I to reach the lowest rung?  The rock was too sheer for me to cut steps in, as I had done farther back.  I looked about me.  Again the luck was with me.  In one of the caves I had noticed some broken pieces of fallen rock.  They were terribly heavy, but despair lent me strength, and after an hour or two’s work, I had managed to roll several of them to the foot of the ladder, and—­with an effort of which I would not have believed myself capable—­had been able to build them one on top of another against the wall.  So, I found myself able to grasp the lowest rung with my hands.  Then, fastening the lantern round my neck with my necktie, I prepared to mount.

The climb was not difficult, once I had managed to get my feet on the first rung of the ladder, but there was always the chance that one of the rungs might have rusted loose with time, in which case, of course, it would have given way in my grasp, and I should have been precipitated backward to certain death below.

However, the man who had mortised them had done an honest piece of work, and they proved as firm as on the day they were placed there.  Up and up I went, till I must have been forty feet above the floor, and, then, as I neared the roof, instead of coming to a trap door, as I had conjectured, I found that the ladder came to an end at the edge of a narrow ledge, running along the ceiling much as a clerestory runs near the roof of some old churches.  On to this I managed to climb.  It was barely a yard wide, and the impending roof did not permit of one’s standing erect.  It was a dizzy situation, and it seemed safest to crawl along on all fours, holding the lantern in front of me.  Presently it brought me up sharp in a narrow recess.  It had come to an end.

Yes! but imagine my joy! it had come to an end at a low archway rudely cut in the rock.  Deep set in the archway was a stout wooden door.  My first thought was that I was trapped again, but, to my infinite surprise and gratitude, it proved to be slightly ajar, and a vigorous push sent it grinding back on its hinges.  What next!  I wondered.  At all events, I was no longer lost in the bowels of the earth; step by step, I was coming nearer to the frontiers of humanity.

But I was certainly not prepared for what next met my eyes, as I pushed through the low doorway with my lantern, and looked around.  Yes! indeed, man had certainly been here, man, too, very purposeful and businesslike.  I was in a sort of low narrow gallery, some forty feet long, to which the arching rock made a crypt-like ceiling.  At my first glance, I saw that there was another door at the far end similar to the one I had entered by; and on the left side of the gallery, built of rough stones from the low ceiling to the floor, was a series of compartments, each with locked wooden door.  They were strong and grim looking, and might have been taken for prison cells, or family vaults, or possibly wine-bins.  The massive locks were red with rust, and there was plainly no possibility of my opening them.