Then I set out to explore the rest of the crack.
It slanted down and then rose again to a small platform.

After that it dropped in easy steps to the moor beyond the tower.

If the Portuguese Jew had come here, that was the way by which he had reached it, for he would not have had the time to make my ascent.

I went very cautiously, for I felt I was on the eve of a big discovery.

The platform was partly hidden from my end by a bend in the crack, and it was more or less screened by an outlying bastion of the tower from the other side.