"This is strange," said Jack. "We dried our meat and ate our meal just
about here, and the stone was not out of its place then."

"Perhaps our movements loosened it," replied his father. He spoke with
the native woman for a little, then turned to his son. "It sank a
moment back when she stepped on it," he said. "Just when she cried
out. She feared she was going to fall through the floor."

Jack knelt down and pressed heavily on the stone. It slid away from
his hands, and, had he not grasped the edge of the hole quickly, he
would have rolled after it The stone vanished, and was heard to land
with a heavy ringing crash on stone below.

"By Jove, I nearly went head first after it," said Jack. "It was as
loose as possible. Where does this lead to?"

Mr. Haydon knelt down and looked carefully around the sides of the
square hole left in the floor.

"It's a secret entrance to some place or other," he said. "See, Jack,
the wooden bar on which this stone worked. It has rotted through, and
the stone held its place, as you may say, by clinging to the
neighbouring stones. But a slight weight was sufficient to start it
moving."

"What's underneath, I wonder?" murmured Jack.

"Some chamber built in the thickness of the floor between this room
and the vault below," replied his father.

"We ought to have a look into this," remarked Jack.

"We will," said his father; "but I hardly see how it will avail us.
There might be a chance to make it useful if we could get the stone
into place, but it is very heavy, and the machinery on which it worked
has rotted away."

Jack took a half-burned torch, whose flare had been quenched upon
their regaining the room from the raid in which they had secured the
buck, and relighted it. He held it as far into the darkness as he
could, and the red light showed that a ladder, built of heavy beams of
teak, ran downwards from the edge of the hole. Mr. Haydon sniffed
cautiously. "The air doesn't smell bad," he remarked; "close and
musty, but no mephitic vapours. I think we'll go down."

Jack swung himself over the lip of the hole, dropped his feet on the
stout ladder, and went down first, holding the torch before him, and
his father followed. They found themselves in a low room of fair size,
but not one-half as large as that above and below.

"What's that?" said Jack, and pointed to the far corner, where
something gleamed white. They crossed to it, and stood before a knot
of skeletons. Nine they