But first, I must get out of the crater. As I have said, the spot where I had been arrested in my involuntary decent of the ash slope was rocky and was surrounded with coarse grass and a few gnarled and stunted trees. This was not surprising, for in many other active craters, especially in the West Indies--I had seen the same forms of vegetation growing in the sand and sulphur-impregnated deposits surrounded with steam and boiling water. As I rose and pressed through the thin growth--taking great care not to step into a pool of boiling water, I gave a cry of delight. Lying among the bits of rock was my revolver. Refilling its empty chambers and replacing it in the holster, I passed through the scrub, and reaching the farther side carefully surveyed the crater, searching for a passage out. I was at the bottom of an immense crater--I remember that at the time it reminded me of the titanic pit of a gigantic ant-lion, and I thanked Heaven there had been no such voracious creature lurking in the bottom to gobble me up as I came tumbling into its waiting jaws. On one side was the slope down which I had fallen and which had swallowed up the dinosaur. On two other sides there were perpendicular rocky walls seamed with golden-yellow sulphur veins, but on the fourth side the crater wall was broken down and filled with loose masses of stone between which grew red-flowered weeds, climbing cacti and coarse, brake-like ferns. It was the only passable exit, and crawling carefully over the loose and treacherous rocks, I surmounted the barrier and to my delight found that the brushy mountain side stretched unbroken to a wooded valley far below. As I moved easily down the hillside, many thoughts and conjectures filled my mind. Would I be able to sustain life without Maliche’s aid? Would I--even if I reached the hidden city--ever be able to return to civilization? Of what use would it have been to have journeyed so far, to have undergone so much, to have found the city, if I spent the rest of my days here? And in that case, of what value would be my precious codex? I laughed grimly to myself as I mentally reviewed the strange events that had followed in such an unbroken chain since my visit to the little junk shop in far-off Vigo. From the moment I had seen the faded, ancient document, my entire course of life, yes, even my mental processes, had been altered. I had been bewitched, obsessed with the thing. Why hadn’t I been content to dispose of it for what it would bring--a far greater sum than I had ever before possessed at one time--instead of traveling here, there and everywhere, trying to find someone to interpret it?