captain, "Rynders may be back before that, and, on the other hand, a
family of jaguars might scent us out to-night."

"You are right, my boy," said he, speaking to Ralph. "Here is a suite of
rooms, and we will occupy them just as you have said. They are dry and
airy, and it will be far better for us to sleep here than out of doors."

As they returned, Ralph was full of talk about the grand find. But the
captain made no answers to his remarks--his mind was busy contriving some
means of barricading the narrow entrance at night.

When breakfast was over, and the entrance to the rocks had been made
cleaner and easier by the efforts of Maka and Ralph, the ladies were
conducted to the suite of rooms which Ralph had described in such glowing
terms. Both were filled with curiosity to see these apartments,
especially Miss Markham, who was fairly well read in the history of South
America, and who had already imagined that the vast mass of rock by which
they had camped might be in reality a temple of the ancient Peruvians, to
which the stone face was a sacred sentinel. But when the three apartments
had been thoroughly explored she was disappointed.

"There is not a sign or architectural adornment, or anything that seems
to have the least religious significance, or significance of any sort,"
she said. "These are nothing but three stone rooms, with their roofs more
or less broken in. They do not even suggest dungeons."

As for Mrs. Cliff, she did not hesitate to say that she should prefer to
sleep in the open air.

"It would be dreadful," she said, "to awaken in the night and think of