over there, and there was nobody to talk to, I thought I would go and try
to find the back of his head"--pointing to the stone face above them.
"But he hasn't any. He is a sham."

"What do you mean?" asked his sister.

"You see, Edna," said the boy, "I thought I would try if I could find any
more faces, and so I got a bit of stone, and scratched away some of the
burnt vines that had not fallen, and there I found an open place in the
rock on this side of the face. Step this way, and you can see it. It's
like a narrow doorway. I went and looked into it, and saw that it led
back of the big face, and I went in to see what was there."

"You should never have done that, Ralph," cried his sister. "There might
have been snakes in that place, or precipices, or nobody knows what.
What could you expect to see in the dark?"

"It wasn't so dark as you might think," said he. "After my eyes got used
to the place I could see very well. But there was nothing to see--just
walls on each side. There was more of the passageway ahead of me, but I
began to think of snakes myself, and as I did not have a club or anything
to kill them with, I concluded I wouldn't go any farther. It isn't so
very dirty in there. Most of this I got on myself scraping down the burnt
vines. Here comes the captain. He doesn't generally oversleep himself
like this. If he will go with me, we will explore that crack."

When Captain Horn heard of the passage into the rock, he was much more
interested than Ralph had expected him to be, and, without loss of time,
he lighted a lantern and, with the boy behind him, set out to investigate
it. But before entering the cleft, the captain stationed Maka at a place