University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

But he gathered courage for a second trial. The
answering echoes were not followed by any evil,
though they seemed to mock his ears with a laughter
such as he had heard from the tyrant of the Dian de
Burgos, when he devoted him to his melancholy exile.
He passed again into the cavern, taking care, by his
own silence, to provoke no such fearful responses as
those which had driven him forth. A few feet brought
him to a small dark pool which lay directly in his pathway,
and which left but a narrow space between its
own margin and the walls of the cavern. This he
sounded with his spear, and found to be shallow. It
was a lakelet left by the waves of ocean, by which,
at its overflow, the cave was evidently penetrated.
Passing this pool, our Maroon found himself upon

a dry floor, the foundation of which was the solid
rock; but a slender coating of soil had formed upon it,
which was, in turn, clothed with a nice smooth covering
of green and velvet-like moss. Here he was
gladdened by a glimpse of the sun, which, breaking
through a chink in the rock, a slender crevice, glided
along the rugged vault-side, affording to the timid
adventurer a more perfect idea of an angel presence
than he had ever before possessed. Another opening
in the rock, almost immediately above, afforded sufficient
light for his examination of the whole interior.
The cave narrowed to a still slenderer gap, as he
advanced, than was the one by which he had entered.
This was the entrance to another apartment. It was
some time before he ventured to enter this, and not
until he had thrust his spear its full length into its
recesses. He then clambered up, for the elevation of
this inner chamber was greater than the first. Here
he was again refreshed with brief glimpses of the sunlight,
which, peeping in through two openings of the
rock, looked like two of the most natural and smiling
eyes in the world. This apartment, though of less
height, was of larger area than the other. It soon
afforded him new subjects of curiosity if not alarm.
In the centre of the chamber stood a rock, scarcely
larger than a blacksmith's anvil, and having something
of the appearance of one, on which lay the remains of
a fire. Brands lay half consumed, the fires of which
were now extinguished; but the ashes were there,
still undisturbed, as if the flame had only recently
gone out. Piles of an aromatic gum lay upon a shelf
of the rock, and other piles, in slender fragments of
wood, of which our Maroon knew nothing, lay contiguous
also. But what more than anything beside
arrested and confounded our Maroon, were certain
numerous shreds of dark hair, soft, fine, and very
long, like the hair of women, which hung neatly
tied in separate volumes from the tops of reeds, which
were stuck about the vaulted roof of the cavern, and
wherever a crevice could be found sufficiently large in
which to introduce their slender extremities. Examining
several of these shreds of hair, the wonder of
the explorer was increased to discover that the ends
of them were shrivelled as in the flame. There were
other objects to excite his surprise, if not to occasion
his alarm. Baskets of shells and pebbles, flowers
which had decayed, a bow and many arrows—all of
the latter being broken—and a heavy string of large
pearls which had been slightly injured in the fire, but
which Spanish cupidity readily conceived would still
possess considerable value in the Cuba market.