treasure, they had coveted. I saw the point of that sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds now. Perhaps somebody had tried to serve the poor old don in the same way, when he abandoned the skin full of jewels.
"This will never do," said Sir Henry hoarsely; "the lamp will soon go out Let us see if we can't find the spring that works the rock."
We sprang forward with desperate energy, and, standing in a bloody ooze began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the passage. But no knob or spring could we discover.
"Depend on it," I said, "it does not work from the inside; if it did Gagool would not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazard, curse her."
"At all events," said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh, "retribution was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is likely to be. We can do nothing with the door; let us go back to the treasure-room." We turned and went, and as we did so I perceived by the unfinished wall across the passage the basket of food which poor Foulata had carried. I took it up and brought it with me back to that accursed treasure- chamber that was to be our grave. Then we went back and reverently bore in Foulata's corpse, laying it on the floor by the boxes of coin.
Next we seated ourselves, leaning our backs against the three stone chests of priceless treasures.
"Let us divide the food," said Sir Henry, "so as to make it last as long as possible." Accordingly we did so. I would, we reckoned, make four infinitesimally small meals for each of us enough, say, to support life for a couple of days. Besides the biltong, or dried game-flesh, there were two gourds of water, each holding about a quart.
"Now," said Sir Henry, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
We each ate a small portion of the biltong, and drank a sip of water. We had, needless to say, but little appetite: though we were sadly in need of food: and felt better after swallowing it. Then we got up and made a systematic examination of the walls of our prison-house, in the faint hope of finding some. means of exit, sounding them and the roof carefully.
There was none. It was not probable that there would be one to a treasure chamber.
The lamp began to burn dim. The fat was nearly exhausted.
"Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "what is the time - your watch goes?"
I drew it out and looked at it. It was six o'clock; we had entered the cave at eleven.
"Infadoos will miss us," I suggested. "If we do not return to-night he will search for us in the morning, Curtis."
"He may search in vain. He does not know the secret of the door, nor even where it is. No living person knew it yesterday, except Gagool. To-day no one knows it. Even if he found the door he could not break it down. All the Kukuana army could not break through five feet of living rock. My friends, I see nothing for it but to bow ourselves to the will of the Almighty. The search for treasure has brought many to a bad end; we shall go to swell their number."
The lamp grew dimmer yet.
Presently it flared up and showed the whole scene, in strong relief, the great mass of white tusk, the boxes furl of gold, the corpse of poor Foulata stretched before them, the goat-skin full of treasure, the