also. "Look here," he said, "there's no knowing
what you may find up there, and if you do lay hands on anything,
remember it's your own. I shall have no claim whatever."

"Very kind of you, but I've got no use for any more mummies done up in
goatskin bags."

"Bah! That's not a burial cave up there. Don't you know the difference
yet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't follow that
because we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't stumble across a
good find for yourself up there."

"Oh, very well," I said, as he seemed so set on it; and away I stumbled
over the fallen rocks, and along the ledge, and then scrambled up by
that fissure in the cliff which saved us the two-mile round which we had
had to take at first. I wrenched out the crowbar, and jammed it down
in a new place, and then away I went over the side, with hands smarting
worse at every new grip of the rope. It was an awkward job swinging into
the cave mouth because the rock above overhung, or else (what came to
the same thing) it had broken away below; but I managed it somehow,
although I landed with an awkward thump on my back, and at the same time
I didn't let go the rope. It wouldn't do to have lost the rope then:
Coppinger couldn't have flicked it into me from where he was below.

Now from the first glance I could see that this cave was of different
structure to the others. They were for the most part mere dens, rounded
out anyhow; this had been faced up with cutting tools, so that all the
angles were clean, and the sides smooth and flat. The walls inclined
inwards to the roof, reminding me of an architecture I had seen before
but could not recollect where, and moreover there were several rooms
connected up with passages. I was pleased to find that the other
cave-openings which Coppinger wanted me to explore were merely the
windows or the doorways of two of these other rooms.

Of inscriptions or markings on the walls there was not a trace, though I
looked carefully, and except for bats the place was entirely bare. I
lit a cigarette and smoked it through--Coppinger always thinks one is
slurring over work if it is got through too quickly--and then I went
to the entrance where the rope was, and leaned out, and shouted down my
news.

He turned up a very anxious face. "Have you searched it thoroughly?" he
bawled back.

"Of course I have. What do you think I've been doing all this time?"

"No, don't come down yet. Wait a minute. I say, old