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We were approaching another range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them, instead of winding across them through some high-flung pass we entered a mighty natural tunnel a series of labyrinthine grottoes, dark as Erebus. The guards had no torches or light of any description. In fact we had seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered Pellucidar.
It was as though he said: "You wait a bit, my dandy shuffer you ain't through with his Countship yet not by any manner o' means." And Medenham did wait, till nearly seven o'clock. He saw Cynthia and her companions come out of Gough's Cave and enter Cox's. These fairy grottoes of nature's own contriving were well worthy of close inspection, he knew.
From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted the balustrade as with fine laminae of gold, vineyards stooped to the rich valley clasped in hills.
Here there is not a ruin, not a vestige, except a few low heaps of stone-or brickwork hidden by weeds: on the other, toward Tivoli, much of the beauty is due to the work of man the stately remnants of ancient aqueduct, temple and tomb; the tall square towers of feudal barons, round which cluster low farm-buildings scarcely less old and solid; the vast, gloomy grottoes of Cerbara, which look like the underground palace of a bygone race, but which are the tufa-quarries of classic times; the ruined baths of Zenobia, where the rushing milky waters of the Aquæ Albulæ fill the air with sulphurous fumes; and, as a climax, the Villa of Hadrian, less a country-place than a whole region, a town-in-country, with palace, temples, circus, theatres, baths amidst a tract of garden and pleasure-ground ten miles in circumference.
He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking off toward his boat; but found his eye falling upon the ribbon grass, trailing along the ship's water-line, straight as a border of green box; and parterres of sea-weed, broad ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far, with what seemed long formal alleys between, crossing the terraces of swells, and sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes below.
In the depths on the one side, grottoes upon grottoes are seen, some with their entrances half concealed, others with gigantic portals, above which the wild rocks tower high; on the other a rich soil is spread in the form of terraces on the rocky cliffs, forming a lovely picture of refreshing vegetation.
The grottoes of Puy Labrousse near Brive, comprising five or six chambers, have isolated from the rest one that opens in the face of a sheer precipice at a considerable height above the valley.
With its air of quiet and peaceful dignity, its beautiful paths, and parterres of blooming flowers, its fountains and grottoes, none could suspect that its melancholy mission was to shelter the noblest work of an Infinite hand in a wrecked and shattered state.
We have a cool, pleasant ride to-day through this part of the canyon. The walls are steadily increasing in altitude, the curves are gentle, and often the river sweeps by an arc of vertical wall, smooth and unbroken, and then by a curve that is variegated by royal arches, mossy alcoves, deep, beautiful glens, and painted grottoes.
Your sentence was hard labor, wasn't it? I don't know why you weren't sent on a fortnight ago." Fry then took him out into the labor-yard, which he found perforated with cells about half the size of his hermitage in the corridor. In each of these little quiet grottoes lurked a monster, called a crank.
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