Chatting to Itza to encourage her, and explaining my scheme to her, we started on. It was slow work. We had to use care, but all seemed to be going well. We had proceeded for at least an hour. I felt that at any time we might catch a glimpse of the light in the entrance ahead, when Itza uttered a surprized exclamation: “The symbol!” she cried. “See, Itzimin, there on the stone!” * * * * * [Illustration: “The Symbol,” she cried. “See, Itzimin, there on the stone”] * * * * * I peered at the spot she indicated. She was right. Clearly outlined on the surface of an upjutting mass of rock was the deeply-cut symbol of Kukulcan with the reed and foot. But it pointed at right angles to the course we were following! I was puzzled. Had we lost our way, had we become confused and was the symbol right, or did the symbol point the way to another entrance? Should we follow it--perhaps to find that in the ages that had passed since it had been cut, the entrance it led to had been blocked by débris? Or should we ignore it and continue on our course? Then I remembered that, in the vision I had seen, the same symbol was cut there in the valley near the giant tilting idol. That then must be the only exit; the symbol must lead to it. But how, where could we find the next mark? If we left the spot, if we wandered about hunting here, there and everywhere for the next symbol and failed to locate it, could we ever find our way back to the place where we stood, and could we again proceed in the straight line we were following? My torch illuminated only a small area of the cavern, we would have to search very carefully, very slowly for the mark, and there was the chance--the certainty almost--that many, if not most of the symbols, had been covered with the stalactitic material during the countless centuries. Suddenly memory of Nohul Voh’s enigmatical words flashed across my mind, the words he had uttered when he had given me the bamboo tube that had served me so well and so mysteriously in the temple: “It may serve you well within that Cavern of the Bats.” Strange that I should have forgotten it. What had the old sorcerer meant? Had he merely uttered generalities, meaning it might answer as a torch to light our way, or was there a deeper, hidden meaning?