“What the deuce!” he muttered. “That can mean nothing but evil--much evil--and the death of many. Aztec and Egyptian--not burial but death, and an evil death at that. Death to many--repeated over there. Well, the carvers were here, that’s certain. Couldn’t have come in as I came. H’m--” He went on, stepping across the fissure where the water flowed in, and keeping to the dank rim which widened as he proceeded. Although the walls rose roughly perpendicular with here an outward bulge, there a falling back to a steep incline, there was visible no passage nor even a split, save where the water came sliding down the fissure that was no more than a seam. All along the wall, high up wherever a smooth surface offered, there were the carvings, with little variation in their sinister portent, the great chain of evil, and the death of many. CHAPTER IX--A JUMP INTO SPACE Twice Abington circled the pool, pausing often to scan the carvings and to look up at the place where he had made his unexpected entrance. A real jump-off, that; more than twice the height of a tall man, and no possibility of climbing back unless one had a rope. The water had undoubtedly saved him a nasty fall. As a means of escape, Abington gave it up and turned his attention to the places where the walls slanted up into blackness. He was standing thoughtfully considering his next move--a matter that would bear thought!--when he was startled by an explosive report, muffled by distance, but nevertheless unmistakably a gunshot. Something approaching a spasm of rage at his helplessness shook Abington and passed, leaving him again calculating and outwardly calm. The sound could not have come down the fissure from which he had fallen. He had come too far along a straight passage before he reached the three forks, for an outside noise to penetrate to him there. The sound might have come down the narrow inlet to the pool, but Abington dismissed that possibility, probably because it was of no use to him, since he could not very well worm his way through an eight-inch crevice. There must be some opening in the roof. If not, then one good archaeologist was likely to be counted a martyr to science and finally forgotten--his own bones eventually becoming mere fossilized relics. “Cheerful prospect, by Jove!” he grunted as he turned his back on the inlet and began to examine the walls with the speculative eye of a steeple jack. Now that he was fairly sure that the surface was near, Abington did find a place where it looked possible for an athlete to climb up, at least as far as the light illumined the walls.