“Look!” the dark youth shouts, stooping and pointing to the floor of the cavern, upon which the winds of heaven have spread a thin covering of desert sand; “look!”
A compound exclamation of surprise and annoyance bursts from two pairs of lips, for there, stamped into the soft, yellow carpeting of silicious particles, are the marks of numerous human feet. Not those that wandering natives might have made, but boot-marks, and, what is worst of all, apparently quite fresh.
“Somebody been here afore us,” exclaims Williams. Claude simply looks downwards, and whistles a musical execration.
Billy, who stands behind, grins extensively as he sees the discomfited faces of his white companions, and hesitates for the best part of a minute before he proceeds to relieve their minds. Then he whispers huskily,—
“Dr. Dyesart! What on earth do you mean?” exclaims Claude excitedly, as the wild hope of his uncle still being alive flashes through his brain. Billy, like most persons possessed of some superior instinct or talent, can hardly appreciate the fact that others may be deficient in the same, so he grins again when he finds that the white men are still unable to distinguish between an ancient and a recent footmark.
“How long since my uncle was here?” asks Angland sharply. But our hero’s hopes are dashed out of sight as Billy replies sadly,—
“How the dickens are these marks so recent then?”
“They very old, boss,” replies the black, and turning away, he lights a match, and boldly leads the way into the black mouth of the natural tunnel, which slopes downwards at an easy incline.
All the men are smokers, therefore provided with the means of producing an impromptu illumination. Claude carries his matches, after the fashion of most settlers in the New Zealand bush, in a small but stout glass bottle,—the moist atmosphere of the Land of Ferns rendering this precaution necessary,—and as he creeps after his black guide, he examines the dark, glossy surface of the walls and roof of the cave, which are covered with ripple-like corrugations. The party has not proceeded far, when Claude slips upon a long, smooth object lying across his path, and as he falls is horrified to hear Billy, who is immediately in front, sing out that a snake has bitten him. In an instant the party are in darkness. Williams has tripped over Angland, and the black boy having leapt wildly upwards against the rock overhead—with a force that would have demolished any but an aboriginal skull—lies rubbing his head where he has rolled to, which is some yards on in advance, for the tunnel descends pretty steeply here.
