ed with superstitious terror, but now it was for his
life, and down he went, step by step.

The air remained pure like that of great caves in the States, and Ned
did not stop until a black void seemed to open almost before him when he
drew back in affright. Calming himself he held up the lantern and looked
at the void. It was a deep and square well, its walls faced as far as he
could see with squared stones. His lantern revealed no water in the
depths and he fancied that it had something to do with ceremonials,
perhaps with sacrifice. There was a way around the well, but it was
narrow and he chose to go no further. Instead he crouched on the steps
where he was safe from a fall, and put the lantern beside him.

It was an oil lamp. Had he possessed any means of relighting it he would
have blown it out, and sought sleep in the dark, but once out, out
always, and he moved it into a little niche of the wall, where no sudden
draught could get at it, and where its hidden light would be no beacon
to any daring Mexican who might descend the stairway.

The sense of vast antiquity was still with the boy, but it did not
oppress him now as it might have done at another time. His feeling of
relief, caused by his escape from the Mexicans, was so great that it
created, for the time at least, a certain buoyancy of the mind. The
unknown depths of the ancient pyramid were at once a shelter and a
protection. He folded the serape, in order to make as soft a couch as
possible, and soon fell asleep.

When Ned awoke he was lying in exactly the same position on the steps,
and the lantern was still burning in the niche. He had no idea how long
he had slept, or whether it was day or night, but he did not care. He
took the full canteen and drank. It was an unusually large canteen and
it contained enough, if he used economy, to last him two days. The cool
recesses of the pyramid's interior did not engender thirst like its
blazing summit. Then he ate, but whether breakfast, dinner or supper he
did not know, nor did he care.

He was tempted to go up to the entrance of the stairway and see what was
going forward in the camp, but he resisted the impulse. For the sake of
caution he triumphed over curiosity, and remained a long time on the
steps, beside the niche in which his lamp sat. Then he began to
calculate how much longer the oil would last, and he placed the time at
about thirty hours. Surely some decisive event would happen in his favor
befo