Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/68

 “Forward!” cried the Doctor. “I saw the hill and a flight of stone steps leading up.”

We leaped over the fallen tree and following the Doctor soon found ourselves at the beginning of steps leading up a hill which must surely have been artificial. It was about one hundred feet in height and cut in terraces paved with stone. Up upon these terraces four staircases led—I describe the place as I saw it afterward—solid stone affairs having hand-rails, ornamented with lions, beautifully carved, and at the top stood a large circular tower of considerable circumference, completely overgrown with shrubs and vines. On the level space about it dozens of great trees had forced their roots down between the blocks of the pavement and were now swaying wildly before the blast.

“By gracious! Mirrikh was right George!” cried Maurice, as we gained the platform at the top of the steps. “Here is the tower, sure enough!”

“But the door—where is the door!” shouted the Doctor, his words scarcely distinguishable above the howl of the storm.

We ran entirely around the building before we found it, and then it was just about where we had started from, half hidden by a mass of vines which hung trailing down from the stones above.

It was I who made the discovery; pushing the vines aside we made our way into a circular enclosure, from one side of  which a flight of stairs led up into the tower; the only peculiar feature it possessed, except a huge stone image of Buddha which occupied a sitting position in a niche to the right of the staircase. A veritable colossus, three times life size, but in a sad state of delapidation, being minus a leg, an arm and the better part of the nose. In front of the pedestal was a circular depression in the stone floor half filled with bits of charcoal, and behind the image Maurice found quite a pile of dry brush wood which showed that this was not the first time the old stone tower had served as a shelter. Meanwhile the storm raged more fiercely than ever and the continual crashing of thunder was something awful to hear.

Involuntarily I thought of Mr. Mirrikh and wondered where in that wilderness beneath us he was just then. There was no other building upon the platform—that I had already made sure of—so if he was actually near us, and I  half suspected it, his hiding place must be in the tower itself.