The captain stopped the column and removed from his pack the same wooden box he had consulted on the ship. As the soldiers took a rest break and tended to the horses, he lifted the cover, poured in a small amount of water, and peered into the box. He glanced from the box to a scroll of vellum that he carried in a cloth sack. Then he pushed on with the unerring determination of a migratory bird.

The procession marched through the valley and eventually came to a field where remnants of round millstones were visible through the tall grass. The captain remembered the field when teams of sweating men had turned the stone wheels. Workers had poured baskets full of rocks into the mills, which ground the contents into powder. The powder had been carried over to fire pits. Bellows had stoked the blazes to white-hot intensity. Workers tilted clay crucibles and poured the glowing yellow molten contents into brick-shaped molds.

The expedition pushed on and came upon two stone idols. Each statue was twice the height of a man, and depicted a more or less human form from the neck down. The idols had been carved to frighten natives away. The nightmarish heads were a combination of animal and human, taking the worst features of each, as if the sculptor intended to create the most hideous and frightening face imaginable. Even the tough mercenaries were ill at ease. They nervously switched their spears from one hand to the other and cast wary glances at the evil-looking idols.

The captain consulted his magic box and vellum scroll, and plunged into the woods. The procession followed in the artificial twilight created by the canopy of foliage. Thick tree roots were a frequent obstacle, but after about an hour of marching the procession emerged from the woods. They approached the smooth face of a low rock wall at the base of the ridge. Two more idols, identical to the first pair, barred the way.

Using the idols for reference, the captain triangulated a point on the rock wall. He groped along the vertical face like a blind man who had encountered an unexpected obstacle. His probing fingers found a barely visible set of handholds, which he used to climb up the side of the wall.

About a dozen feet above the ground he turned his body and sat in a rock hollow. He borrowed a spear, which he inserted in a crack as a lever. The soldiers tossed a rope up, which he attached to the spear shaft. The other end of the rope was tied to a horse. The captain called out a signal, and the horse pulled while he pushed with his feet against a slight outcropping. A rock slab about a foot thick detached itself and slammed down with a thud, revealing a cavity about six feet wide and ten feet high.