t reared itself up about the
middle of the cliff.

Briscoe stepped alongside of him, and Brace noticed how busily his
companion's eyes wandered about, taking in everything on their way. Not
that there was much to see at first, save that the captain was right
about the inhabitants, for everywhere among the stones which lay heating
in the morning sun they came upon coiled-up serpents, many of which were
undoubtedly venomous; but there were other reptiles as well, for lizards
darted about by the hundred, when disturbed, to make for their holes in
crevices and cracks of the stonework, their scales glistening as if made
of burnished metal, bronze, deadened silver, mingled with velvety black
and soft silvery grey.

At the end of a couple of hundred yards Brace stopped.

"This won't do," he said. "We are on the lowest terrace, and the palace
is a floor higher. It ought to be somewhere over where we are."

"That's where I reckon it is," said Briscoe, going to the low ruined
wall between them and the river, and straining outward to look up.

"See anything?" said Brace.

"No; I can't reach out far enough; the next terrace overhangs. But it
must be here."

"Let's get right on towards the end," said Sir Humphrey, "and I daresay
we shall find some kind of steps leading to the next floor."

It was some time before anything but a dark hole was found, and that
seemed to be only a receptacle for loose stones, so it was passed; but
after pushing on for another two hundred yards, with nothing to take
their attention but the retreating reptiles and the beautiful flashing
river which washed the foot of the clift, Briscoe grew uneasy.

"Look here," he said; "we're losing time. Let's go back, for I'm sure
the way up is through that hole."

"Impossible!" said Brace. "There must be a bold flight of steps."

"No, there mustn't, mister," said Briscoe sharply. "This was an old
strong place when the people who lived here were alive, and you may
depend upon it that the way up was kept small for safety, so that it
could easily be defended by a man or two with spears, or shut up with a
heavy stone. I say we've passed the way up."

"Let's go back then," said Sir Humphrey, smiling good-humouredly; and
they all made their way back to the bottom of the hole, which had
evidently been carefully cut.

Briscoe went to it at once; he gave his double gun to the nearest man to
hold, and then, seizing one of the stones with which the horizo