an' out at th' same time. So! Now sling your muscle into it.
Heft!"

We were stooping a little, and so had a strong purchase, and with all
our united strength we heaved away together. There was a rattling of
metal, a yielding of the plate so easy that our tremendous effort was
out of all proportion to it; my fingers seemed suddenly to be nipped in
a red-hot vice; Young uttered a yell of pain, and then we both were
sprawling on our backs on the floor, while in front of us was a broad
opening in the wall where a wide section of the panelling had risen
upward (the plates sliding up under each other), and so had made an open
way.

"H--ll! how that did hurt!" Young mumbled, with his nipped fingers in
his mouth; and I must say that the vigor of his language was not
uncalled for, as I well understood by the pain that I myself was
suffering. I never remember pinching my fingers so badly as I did then
in the whole course of my life.

However, we did not suffer our hurts, which were not really serious, to
delay us in exploring this hidden place that so suddenly and with such
unnecessary violence had opened to us. Pushing upward the ingeniously
contrived door from the bottom, we easily raised it until an opening was
discovered the full height of a man; and through this we went into a
narrow passage in the rock that in a moment turned and so brought us
into a room that was nearly as large as the oratory that we had just
left, and that, as we presently found, actually communicated with the
oratory by means of two narrow slits high up in the wall; which
apertures here were plainly visible, but on the other side were so
cleverly disguised by an ingenious arrangement of the overlapping plates
as to be entirely concealed. Like the oratory, too, this room had an
opening in its roof through which air entered, and so much light that we
could see about us plainly. And the very first glance that I cast around
me in this strange place assured me that, by sheer accident, we had
found our way at last to the secret chamber wherein King Chaltzantzin's
treasure had lain hidden for a thousand years.

Rude shelves had been cut in the rock on all four sides of the room, and
on these were ranged earthen pots of curious shapes, ornamented with
strange devices that my newly acquired knowledge enabled me to
recognize--to express the matter in the terms of our system of
heraldry--as the arms of a king quartered with the arms of certain
princely hous