V: The People-of-Peace
AGAIN I HANDED HANNAH the candle, and I shook the rock slab; lay down and kicked it, and could not budge it. “Lead out. We can never move it without a crowbar,” I said.
We were about halfway back to the entrance of the passage when Hannah paused, sat up, and from a projection of the wall close up under the roof secured a handful of sticks averaging about six inches in length and a half-inch in diameter, and we saw at once, by the dim light of the candle, that they were not just sticks, the pilings of a rat nest: all were notched in at one end, and several had carved ends, and to the head of one of them a few downy, tiny feathers adhered, as though stuck on with glue.
We found a few more of the sticks at the back of the little shelf—eighteen in all, and then notice
