"Say that at times I have felt as though there were a bird in my bosom,which would one day fly hence and sing elsewhere;even now,though I cannot lift my hand,and my brain grows cold,I do not feel as though my heart were dying;it is so full of love that could live a thousand years,and yet be young.Say that if I live again,mayhap I shall see him in the stars,and that -I will search them all,though perchance I should there still be black and he would -still be white.Say -nay,Macumazahn,say no more,save that I love-Oh,hold me closer,Bougwan,I cannot feel thine arms -oh!oh!""She is dead --she is dead!"said Good,rising in grief,the tears running down his honest face.
"You need not let that trouble you,old fellow,"said Sir Henry.
"Eh!"said Good;"what do you mean?"
"I mean that you will soon be in a position to join her.Man,don't you see that we are buried alive?"Until Sir Henry uttered these words,I do not think the full horror of what had happened had come home to us,preoccupied as we were with the sight of poor Foulata's end.But now we understood.The ponderous mass of rock had closed,probably forever,for the only brain which knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath it.This was a door that none could hope to force with anything short of dynamite in large quantities.And we were the wrong side of it!
For a few minutes we stood horrified there over the corpse of Foulata.All the manhood seemed to have gone out of us.The first shock of this idea of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was overpowering.
We saw it all now;that fiend,Gagool,had planned this snare for us from the first.It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would have rejoiced in,the idea;of the three white men,whom,for some.reason of her own,she had always hated,slowly perishing of thirst am hunger in the company of the 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 dim glimmer of the diamonds,and the wild,wan faces of us three white men seated there awaiting death by starvation.
Suddenly it sank,and expired.