We moved on after we left the cave for a considerable period of time
in silence. I was busy making mental notes of every salient feature
that might be useful to me in retracing my steps, but I found nothing
other than a winding and gently ascending corridor, without crossings
or branches, until we reached the foot of a long flight of stone
steps at the summit of which we emerged into a large chamber in the
walls of which there must have been at least a dozen doorways, where,
to my great disappointment, I was immediately blindfolded. They
whirled me around then, but evidently it was done perfunctorily,
since it was exactly one full turn and I was halted in my tracks
facing precisely in the same direction that I had been before. This I
was positive of, for our powers of orientation are often tested in
this way in the air service. Then they marched me straight forward
across the room through a doorway directly opposite that at which I
had entered the chamber. I could tell when we left the larger chamber
and entered the corridor from the different sound which our footsteps
made. We advanced along this corridor ninety-seven paces, when we
turned abruptly to the right and at the end of thirty-three paces
emerged into another chamber, as I could easily tell again from the
sound of our footsteps the instant we crossed the threshold. They led
me about this chamber a couple of times with the evident intention of
bewildering me, but in this they did not succeed, for when they
turned again into a corridor I knew that it was the same corridor
from which I had just emerged and that I was retracing my steps. This
time they took me back thirty-three paces and then turned abruptly to
the right. I could not but smile to myself when I realized that we
were now continuing directly along the same corridor as that which we
had entered immediately after they had first blindfolded me, their
little excursion through the short corridor into the second chamber
having been but a ruse to bewilder me. A moment later, at the foot of
a flight of steps they removed the blind, evidently satisfied that
there was now no chance of my being able to retrace my steps and find
the main tunnel leading to the crater, while, as a matter of fact, I
could easily have retraced every foot of it blindfolded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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