Of these yawning depths, however, we did not at the moment make out much, partly because they were plunged in shadow and partly for another reason.
Rising out of the gulf below was what we took at first to be a rounded hill of black rock, oblong in shape, from which projected a gigantic shaft of stone ending in a kind of fretted bush that alone was of the size of a cottage.

The point of this bush-like rock was exactly opposite the little plateau on to which we had emerged and distant from it not more than thirty, or at most, forty feet.
"What is that ?" asked Maqueda, of Shadrach, pointing in front of her, as she handed back to one of the Mountaineers a cup from which she had been drinking water.
"That, O Walda Nagasta," he answered, "is nothing else than the back of the mighty idol of the Fung, which is shaped like a lion.

The great shaft of rock with the bush at the end of it is the tail of the lion.
Doubtless this platform on which we stand is a place whence the old priests, when they owned Mur as well as the land of the Fung, used to hide themselves to watch whatever it was they wanted to see.

Look," and he pointed to certain grooves in the face of the rock, "I think that here there was once a bridge which could be let down at will on to the tail of the lion-god, though long ago it has rotted away.

Yet ere now I have travelled this road without it." We stared at him astonished, and in the silence that followed I heard Maqueda whisper to Oliver: "Perhaps that is how he whom we call Cat escaped from the Fung; or perhaps that is how he communicates with them as a spy." "Or perhaps he is a liar, my Lady," interrupted Quick, who had also overheard their talk, a solution which, I confess, commended itself to me.
"Why have you brought us here ?" asked Maqueda presently.
"Did I not tell you in Mur, Lady--to rescue Black Windows?
Listen, now, it is the custom of the Fung to allow those who are imprisoned within the idol to walk unguarded upon its back at dawn and sunset.