“It cannot be,” he said, “for if there is an opening here, how could it be that the slaves were unable to get away?” I did not think it worth while to argue the question, but groped on hopefully. The light grew gradually brighter, although still but a dim reflection on the wall of the tunnel, but presently a turn showed the end of the passage distinctly a long distance ahead, and evidently not opening into the outer world but into some chamber or gallery lighted by daylight. We now quickened our pace, and soon emerged into a very singular cavern or chamber. It was roughly circular in plan, about fifteen yards across and thirty or forty feet high, the walls gradually approaching towards the top, where there was an irregular-shaped opening through which I could see masses of foliage and a single spot of sky. The sides were of the rough rock, not cut away as in the other cavern, but quite irregular and broken, like the face of a cliff, with deep hollows and large projecting bosses; but very little of the original surface could be seen, for a dense covering of moss encrusted the whole of the sides and floor, and out of this tiny, delicate, pale-green ferns sprang, while the darker corners harboured clusters of toadstools, mostly snowy-white. Altogether there was in the aspect of the place something singularly suggestive of the unnoticed passage of time, and of solitude long undisturbed; such as one remarks on entering some ancient tomb, outside which the centuries have rolled on, while the dust has slowly deposited on the unchanging monuments of the forgotten dead within. But it was not the general appearance of the place alone that bore this suggestiveness, for the objects that it contained were yet more fraught with an air of mouldy antiquity, and these riveted my attention from the moment that my eyes fell upon them. On one side, close to the wall, reposed a great chest of age-blackened odúm wood, evidently of native workmanship, despite the elaborate carving on its front, which, indeed, had it been seen under other conditions, would have stamped it as European in origin; for the central device showed a rudely executed square of drapery on which was a grotesque face. But the model from which it had been copied stood opposite--a smaller coffer of jet-black mahogany in the last stage of decay, on the front of which could yet be distinguished a carving of the Holy Handkerchief of St. Veronica surmounted by the initials “J de S,” and flanked by the date “1489.” Each chest bore on its lid a collection of skulls arranged with great precision, the larger chest having sixteen skulls in a double row, and the smaller chest having nine in a single row; and, even to my inexpert eye, it was easy--seeing them thus in groups--to perceive a difference in type, the skulls upon the smaller chest being obviously less massive than the others, and having much less projecting jaws and smaller teeth.