Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1889 — KING SOLOMON’S MINES. [ARTICLE]

KING SOLOMON’S MINES.

BY H. RIDER HAGGARD.

IMPBISONKD. Thenwe turned to Foulata. The phqr girl wu stabbed in the body, and could not, I saw, lire long. M Ah! Bougwan, I die!” gasped the beautHnl -creature. Gagool; I did not see her, I was faint—and the door began to fall; then she came back, and was looking up ths path' —and I Faw her come in through the slowlv falling door, and caught her and held her, and she stabbed me, and I die, Bong wan.” “Poor girl! poor girit” Good cried; and then, as he could do nothing else, he fell to kissing her. “Bougwan,” she said, after a pause, “is Macttmazshn there? it grows so dark, I can not see.” ____________ “Her# 1 am, Foulata?’ “Mscumazahn, be my tongue for a moment, 1 pray thee, for Bougwan can not understand me, and before I go into the darkness—l would speak a word.” “Say on, Foulata, I will render it” “Bay to my lord, Bougwan, that-I love him, and that I am glad to die because I know that he can not camber his, life with such as me. for the sun can not mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black. “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 can not lift my hand, and my brain grows cold, I do not feel as though my heart wer> dying; it is so full of love that could live a thousand years, and yet be young. Say that if I live again, tqayhap t shall see him in the stars, and that—l will search them all, though perchance I should there still be black and he would -still be white. SayPay, Macumazahn. say no more, save that I love—, Ob, hold me closer, BoPgwan, 1 can not feel thine arms—oh! obi’ “She is dead-she is dead!” said Good, rising in grief, the tears, running down his honest face. “Yod need not let that trouble you, old fellow,” said Sir Henry. “Eh!” said Good; “what do you mean?” “I mean .that vou 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 that the full horror of what had happened had come to us, preoccupied as we were w ilh 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 dcor that nbne ceuld hope to force with anything short of dynamite in large quantities. And we were on the wrong side of it! For a few minutes we stood horrified there over the corpse of Foulata. Ail the manhood seemed to have gone out of us. The first shock of this idea of the slow and zriiserable end that awaited us was overpowering. We saw kail now; that fiend Gagool ha i 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 and hunger in the company of the treasure they had coveted. I saw the point of that sneer of hers abouteating and drinking the diamonds now. Perhaps someoody 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 ns see if we can’t find the spring that works the rock.” We sprung forward with desperate energy, and standing in a bloody ooze, began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the paisage. But no knob or spring could we discover, “Depend on it,” it does not work from the inside; if it did Gagool not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazards, curse her.” “At all events,” said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh, “retribu'.ion was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is likely to be. We can do nothing with the door, Jet 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 ehesta of priceless treasures. “Lst us divide the food,” said Sir Henry, “so as Jo make it last as long as possible.” Accordingly we did so. It would, we reckoned, make four infinites ■imaliy small meals for each of us, enough, say, to support iifs for a couple of days- Besides the “biltong," or dried game fl-ish, 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 eat 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 feit better after swallowing it. Then we got up and made a systematic examination of the walls of her prison-house/ in the faint hope of finding some means of exit, sounding them and the Soar carefully. There was none. It was not proba b!e that there wqyljheqeft Jfttreaa ure-chamber. The la op began to burn dim. The fat was nearly exhausted. M “Quatermain, w said Sir Henry, ”what is the time—your watch goes?'.’ I drew it out and looked at it. It was ■ix o’clock; we had entered the Cave at eleven. - - “Infadoos will miss us,” I suggested “If we do not return to-night, be will search for us in the morning, Curtis.” “He may search in vain. He does not know the secret of the door, not even where it is. No living person knew it yesterday, except Gagool. To-day do one knows it. Even if he found the door he could not break it down. All the Kukuanaarmy could not break through live 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; wo shall go to number.” The lamp grew dimmer yet. Presently it flared up and showed the whole scene in strong relief, the great mass of white tusks, the boxes full 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 dbath by starvation.