It took me some time to put him to rights, and in
the meantime I had ample opportunities of observing the spot into
which I had so foolishly dropped.
At the risk of being considered tedious, I must describe it at
length: inasmuch as an accurate mental picture of its peculiarities
will be of material assistance in enabling the reader to understand
what follows.
Imagine then, as I have said before, a horseshoe-shaped crater of
sand with steeply graded sand walls about thirty-five feet high.
(The slope, I fancy, must have been about 65 degrees.) This crater
enclosed a level piece of ground about fifty yards long by thirty at
its broadest part, with a crude well in the centre. Round the bottom
of the crater, about three feet from the level of the ground proper,
ran a series of eighty-three semi-circular ovoid, square, and
multilateral holes, all about three feet at the mouth. Each hole on
inspection showed that it was carefully shored internally with
drift-wood and bamboos, and over the mouth a wooden drip-board
projected, like the peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet.
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