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the
shaft took a tangent course which looked easily accessible and, upon an impulse
with which we cannot sympathize, the dauntless E.'s, armed only with a
flashlight, forth-with crawled down into that hole.
“At a depth we've failed to record, the
oblique tunnel opened into a horizontal corridor whose dripping walls, though
now encrusted with minerals, could only have been carved by human hands,
countless ages ago - of this the E.'s felt certain. The end of the short
passage was blocked by what seemed to be a huge doorway of solid rock which,
however, wouldn't yield. The light of their flash was turned to a corner where
water dripped from a protuberance - which proved to be a delicately carved
face, distorted now by the crystallized minerals, and from whose gaping mouth
the water issued.
"As Mr. and Mrs. E. stood there in
silent awe - wondering what lay behind that immovable door - the strangest
thing of all happened... but our chronology will not be incorrect if we wait
till they return to the surface before revealing this, for now the water began
gushing from the carved mouth and from other unseen ducts else-where in that
cave, and rising at an alarming rate!
“They hurried to the surface, and in less
than half an hour there was only a quiet ordinary appearing pool of warm
mineral water on the desert floor.
"’Do you know,’ Mrs. E. said to her
husband, ‘while I stood down there I heard music - the strangest, most weird
music I'd ever heard. But it seemed to come from everywhere at once, or inside
my own head. I guess it was just my imagination.’
“Mr. E. turned pale. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘I
thought it was MY imagination, but I heard it, too - like music from some other
world.’