CHAPTER XVI THE CAVE The late spring or early summer weather was hot and clear. We had been pressing on feverishly and were heated, tired and sleepy, when, while following a faint track through dense woods, we took a wrong turn and soon found that we had utterly lost our way. The sunlight was intensely brilliant and the windless air sweltering. Stumbling over rocks and through bushes was exhausting. We came upon a little spring and quenched our thirst. Standing by it and staring about we noticed what looked like an opening in an inconspicuous vine-clad cliff. It was, in fact, the entrance to a spacious and, apparently, extensive cave. The outer opening was about the size of an ordinary door. Though it was well masked by beeches above and cornel bushes below, such was the position of the sun and so intense was the flood of light it poured down from the cloudless sky, that the inside of the cave, for some little distance, was faintly discernible in the glimmer which penetrated there. After our eyes had become accustomed to the darkness we could make out fairly well the shape and proportions of the first considerable grotto. From the outer opening a passage about a yard wide and two yards high extended straight into the cliff for about four yards. There it bent sharply to the right in an elbow. This offset extended three or four yards and then bent to the left in a similar elbow, opening into a cavern more than fifteen yards wide, twice as long or longer, and with a roof of dim white pendants like alabaster, no part of which was less than five yards from the conveniently level, rather damp floor, while some parts of it were lofty. The two elbows in the entrance passage made it impossible to see into this cavern from anywhere out in the woods, and impossible to see out from anywhere inside it. Yet, as I said, so brilliant was the sunlight and so favorable the position, of the sun at the moment of our entrance that, after the outer dazzle had faded from inside our eyes, we could make out the form and size of this rocky hall. To the right of the opening where the outer passage expanded, around a jutting shoulder of rock, we found a recess about three yards across and nearly as deep, in which we felt and smelt wood-ashes and charred, half- burnt wood. We groped among the damp charcoal, convincing ourselves that many good-sized fires had been made there, but none recently. We stood back and regarded this recess, which was so placed that no gleam from any fire, however large, kindled in it, could ever show outside the cave. Investigating the recess yet again Agathemer looked up and pointed. Above me, I saw sky. The recess was a natural fire-place with a natural chimney from it, opening at a considerable height above.