or water and
food, all the front part of the place appeared to be empty. Beyond, in
its centre, stood an object of some gleaming metal, that from its double
handles and roller borne upon supports of rock she took to be some kind
of winch, and rightly, for beneath it was the mouth of a great well, the
water supply of the topmost fortification.

Beyond the well was a stone altar, shaped like a truncated cone or
pyramid, and at some distance away against the far wall, as she dimly
discovered by the lamp that stood upon the altar, cut in relief upon
that wall indeed, a colossal cross to which, vigorously if rudely
executed in white stone, hung the image of Christ crucified, the crown
of thorns upon His drooping head. Now she understood. Whatever may have
been the first worship to which this place was dedicated, Christians
had usurped it, and set up here the sacred symbol of their faith,
awful enough to look upon in such surroundings. Doubtless, also, the
shell-shaped basin at the entrance had served the worshippers in this
underground chapel as a stoup for holy water.

The Molimo lifted the lamp from the altar, and having adjusted its
wick, held it up in front of the rood before which, although she was no
Catholic, Benita bowed her head and crossed herself, while he watched
her curiously. Then he lowered it, and she perceived that on the
cemented floor lay great numbers of shrouded forms that at first looked
to her like folk asleep. He stepped to one of them and touched it with
his foot, whereon the cloth which with it was covered crumbled into
dust, revealing beneath a white skeleton.

All those sleepers rested well indeed, for they had been dead at least
two hundred years. There they lay--men, women, and children, though of
the last but few. Some of them had ornaments on their bones, some were
clad in armour, and by all the men were swords, or spears, or knives,
and here and there what she took to be primitive fire-arms. Certain
of them also had turned into mummies in that dry air--grotesque and
dreadful objects from which she gladly averted her eyes.

The Molimo led her forward to the foot of the crucifix, where, upon
its lowest step and upon the cemented floor immediately beneath it
respectively, lay two shapes decorously covered with shawls of some
heavy material interwoven with gold wire, for the manufacture of which
the Makalanga were famous when first the Portuguese came into contact
with them. The Molimo took h