turn not to the path
but to the edge of the crater at some distance from it, and peering
down could see that the fire was still burning, and here, hiding as
best I could, I waited till morning. Daylight showed me no sign of life
however, though still the pale flame flickered, and I could now make
out that it burnt before a sort of building which seemed to be of white
polished stone. Till well after broad daylight I lay and watched, but
nothing stirred; and I determined that I would go down and see what
manner of fire was this that burnt day and night without tending.

The skulls did not look as ghastly in sunlight as they had done in the
pale light of the moon. I could see too that this path was ancient, and
nowhere could I find traces of its being used. As I had seen the night
before, it led straight across the desert, and in the distance in that
direction I could now see faint blue mountains. So there was an end to
this land of desolation after all, and I determined that after I had
seen what was below, I would follow that road! The slope went down
steeply and here the path was roughly stepped; as it led deeper, too,
the slope narrowed, until at the bottom the entrance to the crater lay
through a natural gateway of rock that rose high on either hand and
almost shut out the light. Through it the strange path led, and here in
the gloom the horror of this awful place again came upon me and I could
scarce bring myself to enter the narrow defile. I remember clutching my
revolver as I went forward at last: remember thinking too that it could
avail me nothing, for here was no live being to fear, here was naught
but the dead. . The utter silence and loneliness even after my months
of silence and loneliness seemed to weigh upon me like a heavy burden,
and when a bat came fluttering by me in the gloom I uttered a hoarse
cry of alarm. But the distance was but short, and soon I stood safe in
the daylight again, and on the floor of the crater. And now I could see
that the white floor I had thought was sand was also strewn with bones,
of animals principally, though men's skeletons also lay thick on every
side. Bones of the elephant principally; for among them lay huge tusks
in quantities, tusks the like of which I had never seen, except in
pictures of the giant mammoth of prehistoric ages, tusks the girth of a
man in size. Piled in all directions they lay, the whole vast floor was
indeed a stupendous charnel house. And among the whi