“I haven’t the least idea, but it must lead to something, or the ancients who made this revolving stone door wouldn’t have taken such care to block the passage.”
“Ask Goosal if he knows anything about it,” suggested Mr. Damon to the professor.
“He says he never was here before,” translated the savant, “but years ago, when he went into the hidden city by the cave we left yesterday, he saw doors like this which opened this way.”
“Then we’re on the right track!” cried Tom. “If this is the same kind of door, it must lead to the same place. Ho for Kurzon and the idol of gold!”
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-205—
As they passed through the stone door, Tom and Professor Bumper tried to get some idea of the mechanism by which it worked. But they found this impossible, it being hidden within the stone itself or in the adjoining walls. But, in order that it might not close of itself and entomb them, the portal was blocked open with stones found in the passage.
“It’s always well to have a line of retreat open,” said Tom. “There’s no telling what may lie beyond us.”
For a time there seemed to be nothing more than the same passage along which they had come. Then the passage suddenly widened, like the large end of a square funnel. Upward and outward the stone walls swept, and they saw dimly before them, in the light of their torches, a vast cavern, seemingly formed by the falling in of mountains, which, in toppling over, had met overhead in a sort of rough arch, thus protecting, in a great measure, that which lay beneath them.