The lanterns illuminated the place completely, and the two men looked
about, searching for some new trace of a living being. The yellow
light fell only on the remains of men dead long ago. Some of the bones
lay as they had lain since then, when the drowned bodies had gently
reached the floor as the "lost water" subsided. Malipieri had not
touched them, nor Masin either. Two skeletons lay at full length, face
downwards, as a drowned body always sinks at last, when decay has done
its loathsome work. A third lay on its side, in a frightfully natural
attitude, the skull a little raised up and resting against the
cemented wall, the arms stretched out together, the hands still
clutching a rusty crowbar. This one was near the entrance, and if, in
breaking their way in, Malipieri and Masin had not necessarily
destroyed the cement on each side of the slit, they would have found
the marks where the dead man's crowbar had worked desperately for a
few minutes before he had been drowned. Malipieri had immediately
reflected that the unfortunate wretch, who was evidently the mason of
whom Sassi had told him, had certainly not entered through the
aperture formerly made from above in the outer chamber, since the
narrow slit afforded no possible passage to the well. That doubtless
belonged to some other attempt to find the treasure, and the fact that
the mason's skeleton lay inside would alone have shown that he had got
in from above, most likely through a low opening just where the dome
began to curve inward.
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