It was an oil lamp. Had he possessed any means of relighting it he would
have blown it out, and sought sleep in the dark, but once out, out
always, and he moved it into a little niche of the wall, where no sudden
draught could get at it, and where its hidden light would be no beacon
to any daring Mexican who might descend the stairway.
The sense of vast antiquity was still with the boy, but it did not
oppress him now as it might have done at another time. His feeling of
relief, caused by his escape from the Mexicans, was so great that it
created, for the time at least, a certain buoyancy of the mind. The
unknown depths of the ancient pyramid were at once a shelter and a
protection. He folded the serape, in order to make as soft a couch as
possible, and soon fell asleep.
When Ned awoke he was lying in exactly the same position on the steps,
and the lantern was still burning in the niche. He had no idea how long
he had slept, or whether it was day or night, but he did not care. He
took the full canteen and drank. It was an unusually large canteen and
it contained enough, if he used economy, to last him two days. The cool
recesses of the pyramid's interior did not engender thirst like its
blazing summit.
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