"Hyne,.C.J.Cutcliffe.-.Lost.Continent.-.Lostc10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hyne C J Cutcliffe)

perspiration from the heat; my head ached from the violence of the
sun; and my hands were cut raw with the rope.

Coppinger might be tired, but he was still enthusiastic. He
tried to make me enthusiastic also. "Look here," he said, "there's
no knowing what you may find up there, and if you do lay hands on
anything, remember it's your own. I shall have no claim whatever."

"Very kind of you, but I've got no use for any more mummies done
up in goatskin bags."

"Bah! That's not a burial cave up there. Don't you know the
difference yet in the openings? Now, be a good fellow. It doesn't
follow that because we have drawn all the rest blank, you won't
stumble across a good find for yourself up there."

"Oh, very well," I said, as he seemed so set on it; and away I
stumbled over the fallen rocks, and along the ledge, and then
scrambled up by that fissure in the cliff which saved us the
two-mile round which we had had to take at first. I wrenched out
the crowbar, and jammed it down in a new place, and then away I
went over the side, with hands smarting worse at every new grip of
the rope. It was an awkward job swinging into the cave mouth
because the rock above overhung, or else (what came to the same
thing) it had broken away below; but I managed it somehow, although
I landed with an awkward thump on my back, and at the same time I
didn't let go the rope. It wouldn't do to have lost the rope then:
Coppinger couldn't have flicked it into me from where he was below.

Now from the first glance I could see that this cave was of
different structure to the others. They were for the most part
mere dens, rounded out anyhow; this had been faced up with cutting
tools, so that all the angles were clean, and the sides smooth and
flat. The walls inclined inwards to the roof, reminding me of an
architecture I had seen before but could not recollect where, and
moreover there were several rooms connected up with passages. I
was pleased to find that the other cave-openings which Coppinger
wanted me to explore were merely the windows or the doorways of two
of these other rooms.

Of inscriptions or markings on the walls there was not a trace,
though I looked carefully, and except for bats the place was
entirely bare. I lit a cigarette and smoked it through--Coppinger
always thinks one is slurring over work if it is got through too
quickly--and then I went to the entrance where the rope was, and
leaned out, and shouted down my news.

He turned up a very anxious face. "Have you searched it
thoroughly?" he bawled back.