Returning along the other side of the cavern towards the fire-place we came upon a narrow opening, less than a yard wide and not much over a yard high. It led into a passage which sloped upwards and was free from moisture. Agathemer was for exploring it. I remonstrated. He insisted. After some expostulation I bade him stand at the opening, which was out of sight of the gleam of daylight at the entrance, being behind a big shoulder of rock further in than the fire-place. While he stood as I told him I went out towards the middle of the cavern floor till I could see the fireplace, though very dimly, and the entrance, quite clearly, by the mellow glow at it from the outer sunshine reflected along the walls of the twice bent entrance-passage.
When I had reached a position from which I could certainly see the entrance and from which, as Agathemer told me, I could be seen by him, I told him I would stay there while he explored the little passage into the side of the cavern. I adjured him to be cautious and not venture himself recklessly in the pitch dark. He declared he could feel his way safely some distance and be sure of returning. Then he crawled into the narrow opening.
Before I had waited long enough to grow impatient, I heard him call:
The voice came not from the direction of the opening into which he had crawled, but from near the fire-place.
Advancing towards the voice and peering into the dimness, where the light dispersed from the entrance made the darkness of the cavern just a little less dark than blackness, I saw him standing on the sill, as it were, of the opening up in the wall, beyond the fire-place as one approached from the entrance, and above the vertical wall of rock.
He had found a passage just big enough to crawl through leading from the aperture up to this species of gallery-alcove. The passage curved and was not much over twenty yards long. He pulled me up to the gallery and we crawled back together out of the aperture by which he had entered the passage. The whole passage was dry, unlike the floor of the cave.
"I tell you what we ought to do," said Agathemer, "let us go outside and gather armfuls of small leafy boughs and twigs. These we can throw up into that gallery-opening and make a fine bed there where it is dry. Then we can get a good safe sleep, and we need a long sound sleep."