ulloa, old fellow!" he called out, "are you there? This is getting
interesting, is it not?"

Just then, with a terrific yell, Job arrived right on the top of us,
knocking us both down. By the time we had struggled to our feet again
Ayesha was standing among us, and bidding us light the lamps, which
fortunately remained uninjured, as also did the spare jar of oil.

I got out my box of wax matches, and they struck as merrily, there, in
that awful place, as they could have done in a London drawing-room.

In a couple of minutes both the lamps were alight and revealed a curious
scene. We were huddled together in a rocky chamber, some ten feet
square, and scared enough we looked; that is, except Ayesha, who was
standing calmly with her arms folded, and waiting for the lamps to burn
up. The chamber appeared to be partly natural, and partly hollowed out
of the top of the cone. The roof of the natural part was formed of the
swinging stone, and that of the back part of the chamber, which sloped
downwards, was hewn from the live rock. For the rest, the place was warm
and dry--a perfect haven of rest compared to the giddy pinnacle above,
and the quivering spur that shot out to meet it in mid-air.

"So!" said _She_, "safely have we come, though once I feared that
the rocking stone would fall with you, and precipitate you into the
bottomless depths beneath, for I do believe that the cleft goeth down
to the very womb of the world. The rock whereon the stone resteth hath
crumbled beneath the swinging weight. And now that he," nodding towards
Job, who was sitting on the floor, feebly wiping his forehead with a red
cotton pocket-handkerchief, "whom they rightly call the 'Pig,' for as a
pig is he stupid, hath let fall the plank, it will not be easy to return
across the gulf, and to that end must I make a plan. But now rest a
while, and look upon this place. What think ye that it is?"

"We know not," I answered.

"Wouldst thou believe, oh Holly, that once a man did choose this airy
nest for a daily habitation, and did here endure for many years; leaving
it only but one day in every twelve to seek food and water and oil that
the people brought, more than he could carry, and laid as an offering in
the mouth of the tunnel through which we passed hither?"

We looked up wonderingly, and she continued--

"Yet so it was. There was a man--Noot, he named himself--who, though
he lived in the latter days, had of the wisdom of the sons of Kor.