Our flannel shirts and woolen undergarments hung from us in rags
and tatters. Our feet were bare and bruised and swollen. Our
faces were covered with a thick, matted growth of hair. Placed
side by side with the Incas it is a question which of us would
have been judged the most terrifying spectacles by an impartial
observer.
I don't think either of us realized the extreme foolhardiness of
that expedition. The passage was open and unobstructed, and since
it appeared to be the only way to their fishing-ground, was
certain to be well traveled. The alarm once given, there was no
possible chance for us.
We sought the royal apartments. Those we knew to be on a level
some forty or fifty feet below the surface of the great cavern,
at the foot of the flight of steps which led to the tunnel to the
base of the column. I had counted ninety-six of those steps, and
allowing an average height of six inches, they represented a
distance of forty-eight feet.
How far the whirlpool and the stream which it fed had carried us
downward we did not know, but we estimated it at one hundred
feet. That calculation left us still fifty feet below the level
of the royal apartments.
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