"That's one," said Briscoe coolly. "I shouldn't wonder if his wife's at home, and a small family as well. Here, you just fish out that next stone with the boat-hook." The man addressed stepped forward, thrust the implement into the opening, and drew out another stone, when, as the American had suggested, a second serpent came gliding out, to meet its death quickly and be tossed by one of the men over the parapet-like wall into the river. More stones were dragged out with the boat-hook, but only a lizard appeared afterwards; and as two more blocks were pulled forth light from above came down, showing that the opening was L-shaped, going about six feet in to where a chimney-like shaft rose at right angles, down which the light struck, evidently from the next terrace. "I thought so," said Briscoe. "Here: I'll go in first." He crept into the hole at once, and found on looking up the shaft that Briscoe was quite correct, for there were foot-holes chiselled out at intervals in the chimney-like place, so that he could easily step up from one to the other, and the next minute his head was on a level with the floor above and his eyes gazing full in those of a venomous-looking serpent, which raised its head from the middle of its coil ready to strike. CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN. BRISCOE'S BIT OF ORE. Brace obeyed the natural impulse to duck down out of the reptile's reach, and his next idea was to lower himself the ten feet or so to the bottom; but he shrank from doing this, for it seemed ignominious to retreat, so he raised his head sharply again till his eyes were about level with the terrace platform, and there, a dozen feet away, was the tail part of the snake, disappearing in a fissure of the stone. The next minute he was standing in front of one of the openings they had seen from the river, and his companions were climbing to his side. Here, upon examination, they found room after room with doorway and window all cut out of the soft limestone, and Sir Humphrey and Briscoe were not long in giving it as their opinion that these single rooms, all separate and with their doorways opening upon the terrace, were really the modest little houses of the old dwellers in this hivelike arrangement. There they were, side by side, all opening upon the long terrace, and, after examining many, they found relics of the old inhabitants in the shape of clay-baked rough pots or their broken sherds; and in several, roughly-formed querns or mill-stones, made, not of the rock in which the houses were cut, but of a hard grit that would act better upon the grain they were used to grind. These remains, though, were very scarce, and scarcely anything else was found, though search was made in the expectation of finding skeletons; but not so much as a skull was discovered in either of the stone rooms they reached: nothing to show how the ancient inhabitants came to an end. Apparently it was by no sudden catastrophe, and probably only by dying slowly away.