“Good-bye, Eloise,” I whispered, and, sweeping aside the heavy folds of curtain, vanished from her sight.

CHAPTER XXX

UNDERGROUND

A slight radiance found passage through the coarsely woven curtain, proving sufficient, as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, to reveal, rude steps excavated from the earth, leading down into lower darkness.  Pausing merely to assure myself that the meeting between Naladi and Madame was outwardly courteous, while De Noyan seemed shamed into silence by the presence of his wife, I began the descent, quickly finding myself in an apartment, rounded in outline, not greatly dissimilar to that other from which I had been so lately rescued.  This, however, was smaller, the floor littered with various articles, the nature of which I found it difficult to determine in such dim light.  Nor did I pause for close inspection, but, so soon as search revealed an opening into a narrow passageway beyond, I pressed forward amid dense gloom, feeling my way, fearful lest I meet some pitfall.  It was a low, contracted gallery, so extremely irregular in excavation that I sometimes stood erect, unable to reach the roof with extended fingers, yet a moment later was compelled to creep on hands and knees in order to progress at all.  Had it led through solid rock I should have accepted this as evidence of natural origin, but sides, floor, and roof were of earth, while every few feet, rendering progress uncertain and perilous, were huge posts of wood, usually roughly hewn tree trunks, each topped by a flat piece of stone, supporting the sagging roof.

Altogether it was a surprising excavation, exhibiting some degree of engineering skill on the part of these savages.  I wondered whether the conception originated within the brain of their alien Queen, or was another of the unique inheritances of their race.  Perhaps I may be permitted to add here some information which reached me later, that abundant evidences of the existence of similar passages have been noted elsewhere in the old homes of this people beside the Mississippi.  While at Petite Rocher River, I met lately a Jesuit, who had travelled widely and read many books, and he gravely assured me that in the vast cities of the Aztecs, far to the south in Mexico, their temples and palaces were connected by means of such long, secret, covered ways.  Hence I incline to the belief that this excavation was largely the labor of slaves; for these Nahuacs had many such, some of negro, others of Indian blood, and that the earth thus removed had been utilized in constructing those mounds above, the entire method of building merely a tradition from the past.