第 12 页

Meanwhile, Oldroyd and I devoted ourselves zealously to the gathering and curing of our crop of tobacco, and the completion of our bows, arrows and spears. The bows, after being thoroughly dried and seasoned, proved a conspicuous success, becoming very tough and elastic, and so strong that it taxed our muscles to the utmost—until one grew accustomed to the work—to draw a three-foot arrow to its head. The exertion of so much strength, however, proved to be unnecessary, at least for hunting purposes, for we found that an arrow so discharged often passed clean through the body of a bird and was lost, we therefore made lighter bows for hunting, and a complete set of stronger ones for use in the—as it then appeared—unlikely event of war. We also made two still lighter bows for the girls, who thereafter frequently undertook to supply the larder while we men were engaged upon more arduous work.

Our experiments with the lianas resulted in a great success, for, after leaving a length steeping in water until we had forgotten all about it, we discovered, when we eventually stumbled upon it by accident, that the pith had all dissolved away, leaving nine long unbroken filaments, as fine as the thinnest sewing cotton and as strong as packthread. These filaments, when dried, were capable of being converted into cord or rope of any required thickness, and of being woven—as we afterward found—into a fine, strong serviceable cloth. This was important, for our clothing, especially that of the men, was showing signs of wear, and we were all wondering how we should meet the difficulty. Here again, Mason came to the rescue, for no sooner was it established that the liana filaments and the silk were of real value than he undertook to construct a hand loom—of sorts—and actually made good his promise after some three months of strenuous work; again plunging the Doctor into the depths of despair.

Meanwhile, although Mason’s frequent and lengthy defections delayed the excavations in the base of the tower, those excavations proceeded so effectively that about the time when the American proudly presented his loom to the two admiring girls, the original stone floor of the tower was laid bare, and in it was found a large loose slab, upon raising which a flight of stone steps was revealed, leading, as we subsequently discovered, to a series of subterranean chambers hewn out of the solid rock.

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Chapter Eight: The Subterranean Temple, and its Wonders.

The discovery was a tremendous stimulus to our curiosity, the result of which was that all hands of us, excepting of course the two girls, devoted every moment of our spare time to the clearing away of the rubbish which had accumulated upon the steps. There was not very much of this; by the end of the day, therefore, we succeeded in reaching the bottom of the flight, only, however, to find ourselves confronted by what at first appeared to be a face of solid rock, but which, upon closer inspection, the Doctor pronounced to be undoubtedly a stone door, the joints between which and the surrounding rock we eventually found after a careful scraping away from the surface of the dust of ages. We found that the door had been hewn out of a solid block of granite, a pair of pivots having been also formed, and fitted into sockets in the stone jamb, permitting the massive door to swing open and shut. To get the door open, however, was a work of time and such great labour that, to start with, it demanded the combined strength of the six men of the party, dust having gathered in the hinge sockets and there become indurated. By dint of patient washing and raking out of the indurated dust, however, and freely anointing the pivots with melted fat, we at length got the door to work so easily that by the exertion of all our strength any one of us men could make it revolve, while it would also yield to the united efforts of the two girls.

This doorway, with its curious stone door, gave access to what may be described as the landing of another flight of steps; but such a landing and such a flight of steps as I am quite sure none of us ever dreamt of finding on a Pacific island. The landing was ten paces wide by fourteen paces long, and it formed the head of a flight of no less than eighty-three steps of the same width as the landing. The rock roof of this landing chamber was about eight feet high and, like the walls, had been dressed smooth, these last being decorated with paintings in panels representing, presumably, some of the religious ceremonies of the unknown people who had been at the trouble to excavate the rock chambers, of which this was the vestibule. The paintings were admirably done, somewhat in the style of those found in the ancient temples of Egypt, and the colouring was, for the most part, quite bright and fresh looking. To add to the remarkable character of the place, it was furnished with four massive and beautifully wrought brackets of bronze, two projecting from each of the side walls, supporting grotesquely shaped lamps of the same metal.

Descending the eighty-three well-worn steps which led from the landing down seemingly into the bowels of the earth, we noted, by the light of our torches, that the side walls of the stairway were decorated in a similar manner to those of the landing above and, like them, were fitted with brackets supporting lamps, at intervals. Oldroyd and I, who happened to be together during this interesting tour of exploration, registered a vow that, if we could obtain the necessary oil, those lamps should be once more lighted if only for the space of a few hours.

Arrived at length at the bottom of the long flight of steps, we found ourselves in what had the appearance of an anteroom to another chamber. This anteroom measured about sixty feet square by perhaps twelve feet high; and its walls, like those of the landing and the long flight of steps, were decorated with paintings, the subjects depicted being of such a character as to suggest that the temple, of which this chamber was undoubtedly an adjunct, must have been dedicated to some savage equivalent of the goddess Aphrodite. This chamber had been at one time illuminated by no less than twenty lamps, suspended in two rows from the ceiling.

The wall of this anteroom, opposite the foot of what we soon grew to call The Grand Staircase, was pierced by a rectangular opening reaching from floor to ceiling, and about eight feet high. It was veiled by a curtain of some heavy velvet-like material, rose-pink in tint, but so covered with exquisite embroidery that very little of the ground material was visible. The embroidery depicted a female figure clad in a gorgeously embroidered robe, and with a kind of coronet on her head. Gold and silver thread was lavishly employed in the decoration of this beautiful curtain, as well as silks, apparently of the most brilliant hues, together with what we at first took to be a great many large coloured beads, but which we afterwards discovered were uncut precious stones!

The sight of this superb piece of handiwork made us gasp with astonishment; and before any of the rest of us had recovered from our amazement the Doctor sprang out in front of us and, raising his hands in entreaty, exclaimed—

“Let no one touch that curtain, I beg, until I have first examined it. You all see what a beautiful thing it is, and, if it is at all possible, it must be preserved. But it must be—oh, I don’t know how many hundreds of years old, so old indeed that it may crumble to pieces at an unwary touch; therefore please let me examine it first. Mason and—yes, you, Massey, bring your torches and hold them at about a foot from the curtain—no nearer, lest you set it on fire.”

Obeying the Doctor’s behest, Mason and I advanced and stationed ourselves on either side of him while he stooped down and gingerly took the corner of the curtain between finger and thumb. To his loudly expressed delight, the fabric did not crumble away at his touch, on the contrary, it appeared to be in such an excellent state of preservation as to bear handling freely. This fact being demonstrated, the worthy Doctor proceeded to investigate the method of the curtain’s suspension, clambering up on my shoulders to do so, when it was found that this wonderful specimen of the handiwork of an unknown people was sewn to a number of bronze rings which travelled upon a bronze rod, permitting the curtain to be drawn aside from the aperture in the wall which it veiled. With the most tender care the Doctor coaxed the supporting rings along the rod until we found ourselves staring into a chamber so vast that the light of our torches failed to illumine it.

The Doctor was the first to enter, turning as soon as he had passed through the doorway and bidding the torch bearers to follow; and we immediately had a demonstration of the extraordinary size of the chamber in the deep, hollow reverberations which accompanied the Doctor’s speech. It sounded like the voice of a man speaking from the bottom of a deep well, and so uncanny was the effect that the two girls started back with little ejaculations of terror. We menfolk, however, were not so easily affected, and pressed forward, holding our torches high, the girls, reassured, following closely.

But even when all the torch bearers were inside, so vast was the space that only a few square feet of the adjacent walls were revealed, the remainder of the chamber being plunged in impenetrable gloom. We were therefore compelled to examine it foot by foot, thus eventually discovering that it was circular in shape, about three hundred feet in diameter, and of unknown height, the roof or ceiling towering high out of reach of the feeble light of our torches. There were evidences, however, that provision had been made to dissipate this obscurity upon certain occasions, for although the light of our torches failed to reach the roof, it dimly revealed the existence of a sort of chandelier containing a group of twenty large lamps, suspended from the centre of the roof, while other lamps—to the number of forty, we afterward ascertained—were suspended at intervals all round the central chandelier in a circle half-way between it and the circular wall.

This circular wall, like those of the anteroom and the Grand Staircase, was decorated with paintings depicting human figures in the foreground of a landscape; but, unlike the other decorations, we presently discovered that it formed a continuous picture, representing a procession of some hundreds of male and female figures, the males each bearing what appeared to be a basket of fruit, while the females carried large bouquets and garlands of flowers. The painting was executed with a considerable amount of artistic skill, and revealed a wonderfully perfect knowledge of the human anatomy, while its subject threw an almost complete light upon the personal appearance, mode of dress, and religious ceremonies of a truly remarkable unknown people. Judging from the painting—as its excellence justified one in doing—these one-time inhabitants of our lonely little Pacific island were a fine race of people, the men well proportioned, with regular, intelligent-looking features, while the women must, as a whole, have been beautiful. They were apparently a fair-skinned race, scarcely darker than a Spaniard, the women being represented as distinctly fairer than the men.

Following this picture in its course round the circular wall of the chamber, and examining it at leisure by the light of the torches, we arrived at a point half-way round the wall and immediately opposite the doorway by which we had entered, and here we came upon what I had been for some time expecting, and what indeed the flickering light of our torches had partially revealed, namely, a recess in the wall, a sort of shrine, containing a life-size female figure, standing, clad in a single garment of thin, semi-transparent material having the appearance and texture of silk, of a most beautiful deep sapphire colour, the neck, hem, and edges of the sleeves bordered with a band, some nine inches wide, of embroidery in gold, silver, and coloured threads, thickly encrusted with uncut gems, of such marvellous beauty that it threw the girls into ecstasies of delight and admiration, in which latter emotion we men shared. And the figure was worthy of the garment, being exquisitely carved—in wood, we subsequently ascertained—with a skill and attention to the minutest detail, which, beautifully painted as it was, rendered it startlingly lifelike. But perhaps the most remarkable peculiarity about the figure was its extraordinary resemblance to the Doctor’s daughter, the features, complexion, and colour of the hair and eyes being—as nearly as the dim light of the torches revealed—the same! So striking was the resemblance that it was impossible to avoid noticing it, the Doctor himself remarking—

“Why, ’Thea, it is your very self! If you were to don that robe and stand up there, I guess nobody would know the difference. We must take that statue away with us when we go, and fix it up in the hall of our house at home; it will comfort momma to go and look at it when you are away visiting!”

But Miss Anthea happened to be in one of her most disagreeable moods that day, and turned scornfully away from her father, without deigning to answer him.

A large and finely sculptured altar stood in front of the recessed figure, but there was no sign that a fire had ever been kindled upon it, the Doctor therefore came to the conclusion—which the painting on the wall seemed to corroborate—that the offerings presented to this unknown goddess probably consisted entirely of fruit and flowers.

The recess or shrine containing the figure was sunk in an elaborately sculptured projection standing out some six feet from the face of the circular wall, and in each side of this projecting mass of rock there was an opening, veiled by a handsome embroidered curtain, very similar in character to that which veiled the main entrance to this extraordinary subterranean temple—for such it undoubtedly was. These two openings, or doorways, gave access to a long passage stretching away into the heart of the rock in the rear of the statue. For a distance of some three hundred yards we paced this passage without making any discovery; then we were brought to a standstill by a fall of earth and stone which blocked further progress. After such wonderful discoveries as those which we had made it was natural that we should desire to know what lay beyond that fall of rubbish, and it was decided to clear the stuff away, so the original party of excavators got to work again on the morning following our discovery of the subterranean temple. But Oldroyd and I had several other matters to attend to; there was the daily supply of food for the party to be provided, countless yards of lianas to be cut and put to soak, there was our crop of tobacco to secure, oil to be obtained by some means or other before our dream of seeing the subterranean temple properly illuminated could be realised, in short, there were so many things to be done that we scarcely knew which to begin upon first. Finally, after paying a visit to our tobacco field and finding that the crop of plucked leaves was not yet quite cured, we tackled the lianas and, in the course of a week, obtained a quantity quite sufficient, as we believed, to supply our immediate needs. Then we returned to the tobacco field, picked out all the leaves sufficiently cured, and bound them in bundles of convenient size for future use.