It will be remembered that Marama told me the mountain in the lake had risen much during the frightful cyclone in which we were wrecked and with it the cave mouth which previously had been invisible.
From the markings on the mountain side it was obvious that something of the sort had happened very recently, at any rate on this eastern face.
That is, either the flat rock had sunk or the volcano had been thrown upwards.
Once in the far past the cave had been as it was when we found it.

Then it had gone down in such a way that the table-rock entirely sealed the entrance.

Now this entrance was once more open, and although of course there was a break in them, the grooves of which I have spoken ran on into the cave at only a slightly different level from that at which they lay upon the flat rock.

And yet, although they had been thus sheltered by a great stone curtain in front of them, still these sculptures were worn away by the tooth of Time.

Of course, however, this may have happened to them before they were buried in some ancient cataclysm, to be thus resurrected at the hour of our arrival upon the island.
Without pausing to make any closer examination of these crumbled carvings, we entered the yawning mouth of that great place, following and indeed walking in the deep grooves that I have mentioned.