Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1889 — CHAPTER XVIII. [ARTICLE]

CHAPTER XVIII.

WE ABANDON HOPS. I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, foreven in such a position as ours/ wearied nature will \ still sometimes assert itself. But I, at any rate, found it impossible to sleep much. Putting aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom —for the bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us,and I never had any great pretentions to be brave—the silence itself was too great to allow of it. Reader, you may have lain awake at night and thought the silence oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can “have no idea what a vivid tangible thing. perfect silence really is. On the surface of the earth there is al ways some sound or motion, and though it may in itself be imperceptible, yet does it deaden the sharp edge of absolute silence. But here there was none. We wqre b aried in th _ bowels of a huge snow-clad peak. Thousands of feet above us the fresh air rushed over the white pnow, but no sound of it reached us. We were separated by a long tunnel and five feet of rock everi from the awful chamber of the dead; and the dead make no noise. The crashing of all the artillery of earthand heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb. We were cut off from all echoes of 4-he world—we were as already dead. And then the irony of the " situation forced itself upon me. There around us

lay treasures enough to pay bffa moderate national debt, or to buiid a fleet of iron clads, and yet we would gladly have bartered them all for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be glad to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last. And so the night wore on. “Good,” said Sir Henry’s voice at last, and it sounded awful in the intense stillness, “how many matches have you in the box?” “Eight, Curtis." “Strike one, and let us see the time.” He did so, and in contrast to the dense darkness the flame nearly blinded us. It was five o’clock by my watch. The beautiful dawn was now blushing on the snow-wreaths far over our heads, and the breeze would be stirring the night mists in the hollows. ■‘We had better eat something and keep up our strength,” said I. “What is the good of eating?” answered Good; “the sooner we die and get it over the better.” “While there is life there is hope,’’ said Sir Henry. Accordingly we eat and sipped some water.and another period of time passed, when somebody suggested that it might be as well to get as near to the door as possible and halloa, ou the faint chance of somebody catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and began, aud I must say be made a most diabolical noise. I never heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all the effect it produced. After awhile he gave it up, and came back very thirsty, and had to have some water. After that we gave up yelling, as it encroached on the supply of water. So we all sat down once more against our chest of useless diamonds in that dreadful inaction, which was one of the hardest circumstances of our fate; and I am bound to say that, for my part, I gave wav in despair. Laying my head against Sir Henry’s broad shoulder I burst into tears; and I think I heard Good gulping away on the other aide, and swearing hoarsely at himself for doing so. Ah, how good and brave that great man was! Had we been two frightened children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated ue more tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to sootoe our broken nerves, te!liv.g stories of men who had been in somewhat similar circumstances, and miraculously escaped; and when these failed to cheer us, pointing out how, after all, it was only anticipating an end that must come to us all, that it would soon be over, and that death from exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not true). Then, in a diffident sort of way, as I had once before heard him do, he .suggested th>t we should throw ourselves on the mercy of a higher Power, which for my part 1 did with great vigor. His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong. And so somehow the day went as the night had gone (if. indeed, one can use the terms where all was densest night), and when I lit a match to see the time it was seven o’clock. A - i Once more we eat and drank, and as we di<l so an idea occured to m->. A “ -low is it,” said I, “that the air in this place keeps fresh? It is thick and heavy, but it is perfectly fresh.” “Great heavens!’’said Good, starting up, “I never ‘bought of that. It can’t come through the stone door, for it is air-tight, it ever a door was. It must come from somewhere. If there were nd current of air in the place we should have oeen stifled when first we came in.. JLat us. have a lookX . . It was wonderful what a change this mere spark of hops wrought in us. In a jno uent we were-all three, groping about the place ou our hands and knees, feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardor'received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was poor Foulata’s dead face. For an hour or mere we went on feeling about, till at last Sir Henry and I gave it up in despair, having'got considerably hurt bv constantly knocking our heads against chests, and the aides of the chamber. But Good still persevered, saying, with an approach to cheerfulness that it was better than doing nothing. , _ X “Isay, yon fellows,” "he said, presently, tn a constrained sort of voice, “come here.” /. Needles* to eay we scrambled over toward him quick enough.

“Quatermain,/put your head where mine is. Now, qo youfeel anything?” “I think I feel air coming up.” ■- “Now listen.” He rose and stamped upon the place, and flame of hope shot up in our hearts. I It rang hollow. With trembling hands I lit a match. I mad only, three left, and we saw that, we were in the angle of the far corner of the chamber, a fact that accounted for our not having noticed the hiollow ring of the place during our former exhaustivc examination. As the match burned we scrutinizedthe spot. There was a joint in the solid rock floor, and, great heavens! there, let in level With the rock, Wes a sto no ring. Wesaid no word, we were too excited,and our hearts beat too wildly with hope to allow us to speak. Good had a knife, at the back of which was one of thoae faooks that are made to extract stonhs.from horses’ hoofs. He opened it, and scratched away at trie ring with it. Finally begot ikunder.and levered away gently for fear of breaking the "hook. The ring began to move. Being of stone, it had notgot set fast in all the centuries it had lain there, as would have been the case had it been of iron. Presently it was upright. Then he got his hands' into it and tugged with all his force, but nothing budged. “Let me try,” I said, impatiently, for the sitnation of the stone, right in the angle of the corner, wai such that it was impossible for two to pull at once. I got hold and strained away, but with no results. Then Sir Henry tried and failed. Taking the hookagain, Good scratched all around the crack where we felt the air coming up. . - “Now, Curtis,” he said, “tackle on and put your back into it; you are as strong .as twe. “Stop,” and betook off a stout black silk handkerchief, which, true to his habits of neatness, he still were, and ran it through the ring. “Quatermain, get Curtis round the middle and pull for dear life when I give the word. Now,” Sir Henry put out all his enormous strength, and Good and I did the same, with such power as nature

had given tre: ——T- ~ “Heavel heave! it’s giving,” gasped Sir Henry; aud I heard the muscles ’of his great back cracking. Suddenly there came a parting sound, then a rush of air, and we were all on ou? backs on the floor with a great flagstone on the top of us. Sir Henry’s strength had done it, *nd never did muscular power stand a man in better stead. “Light a match, Quatermain,” he said, as soon as we had picked quraelvee up and got one breath; “carefully, now.” "1 did so, and there before us was, Godbepraised! the firststep of a stone stair. “Now what is to be done?” asked Good. “Follow the stair, of course, and trust to Providence.” •Stop!” said Sir Henry; “Quatermain, get the bit of biltong and the water that is left; we may want them.” I went creeping back to our place by the cheats for that purpose, and as 1 was coining away an idea struck me We had not thought much of the diamonds for the last twenty-four hours or so; indeed, the idea of dtamopds was nauseous, seeing what they had entailed up?n us; but thought I, I may as well pocket a few in case we ever should get out of this ghastly hole. So I just stack my fist into the first chest and filled all the available pockets of my hunting coat, topping up —this was a happy thought—with a couple of handfuls of big ones out of the third chest.

“I say, you fellows,” I sung out, “won’t you take some diamond, with you? I’ve filled my pockets.” “Oh! hang the diamonds!” said Sir Henry. “I hope I may never see another.” As for Good, he made nd answer. He was. I think, taking a last farewell of all that was left of the poor girl who loved him so well. And, carious as it may seem to you, my reader, sitting at home at ease and reflecting on the vast, indeed, the immeasurable, weaitn which we were thus abandoning, I can assure you that if you had passed some twentyeight hours with next to nothing to eat and drink in that place, you would not have cared to cumber yourselt with diamonds whilst plunging into the unknown bowels of the earth, in the w jld hope of escape from aa agonizing death. If it had not, from the habits ot a life time, become a sort of second nature with me never to leave anything worth having behind, if there was the slightest cnance of my being able to carry it away, lam sure I should not ha-e bothered to fill my pockets. “Come on. Quateimain,” said Sir Henry, who was already standing on the first step of the stone utair. “Steady, I wiil go that." “Mind where you put your feet, there may be some awful hole underneath," said I.

“Much more likely to be another room,said Sir Henry, as slowly descended, counting the steps as he went. When he got to ‘ fifteen,” he stopped. “ Here’s the bottom,” he said. “Tha« go dties'! I think it’s a passage. CoKe on down.” 7 Good descended next, and I followed last, and on reaching the bottom ht ode of the t*o remaining matches. By its light we could just see that we were standing in a narrow tunnel, which ran right aud left at right angles to the staircase we had descended. Before we could make out any more, the match burned my fingers and went out. Tnen arose the delicate question of which way to turn. Of course, it was impossible to know what the tunnel was or where it ran to, and yet to turn one way might lead us to safety, and the other to destruction. We were utterly perplexed, till suddenly it struck Good that when 1 had lit the match the draught of tie passage blew the dime “Let ns go against the draught,; he said; “air draws inward, not outward? . We took this suggestion,, ami lading along the wall with the liand, whiffet trying the ground before us at every step, we departed from that accursed treasure chamber on our terrible quest. If ever it should be entered again by man, which I do not think it wiil be, he will find n token of our presence in the open cheats of jewels .the empty lamp, and the white nones of poor Foulata. When we had groped our way tor aboot a quarter of an hour along the passage, it suddenly took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by anoiher, which we followed, only iu course of time to be led into a third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone labyrinth w hich led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course 1 cannot say, but wo. thought that they

must be theancient workings of a mine, of which the various khafta traveled hither and thither as tha-bre led them. This is the only way in whirir we could account for such a multitude of passages. At length we halted, thoroughly worn out with fatigue, and with that hope deferred which mgketh the heart sick, and eat up our poor remaining piece of biltong, and drank our last remaining sup of water, for pur throats were like lime kilns. It seemed to us that we had escaped death in the dark-ne-s of the chamber only to meet him in the darkness of the tunnels. As we stool, once more utterly depressed, I thought I caught a sound, to which I called the attention of the others. It was very faint and very far off, but it was a sound, a faint, murmuring sound, for the others heard it too, and no words can describe the blessedness of it after all those hours of utter,’ awful stillness. “By Heaven! it’s running water,” said Good. “Comean.” Off we started again in the direction from which the faint murmur seemed to came, groping our way as before along the rocky walls. As we went it got more and more, audible, tili at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet. On, yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of rushing water. And yet how could there be running water in the bowels of the ‘earth? Now we were quite near to it, and Good, who was leading, js wore that he could smell it. * Go gently, Good,” said Sir Henry, ‘we must be close? Splashland a cry from Good. ; He had fallen in. “Good! Good! where are you?" we shouted, in terrified distress. To our intense relief, an answer came back in a choky voice. “All right; I’ve got hold of a rock. Strike alight to show me where you are.”

Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How see, bat there, some way out, was the form of our companion hanging on to a projecting rock. “Stand clear to catch me,” sung out Good. “I must swim for it.” Then we heard a splash and a great struggle. Another minute 1 and he bad grabbed at and catlght Six . Henry’s outstretched hand, and w&nad pulled him up high and dry into the tunnel. “My word!” he said, between his gasps, “that was touch and go. If I hadn’t caught that rock, aud known how to swim, I should have been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom.” It was clear that this would not do; So after Good had rested a little, and we had drunk our fill from the water of the subterranean river, which was sweet and fresh, and washed our faces, which sadly needed it, as well as we could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in front of us. At length we came toanothar tunnel leading to our right. •’We may as well take it,’ said Sir Henry, wearily; “all roads are alixe here; we can only go on till we drop.” Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly weary, along this new tunnel, Sir Henry leading now. Suddenly hestoppfed, and we bumped up azainst him. “Link!” he whispered, “is my brain going, or is that light?” We stared with aj> our eyes, and there, yes there, fa r ahead of us, was a taint glimmering spot, no larger than a cottage window pane. It was so faint that I doubt if any eyes except those which, like ours, had for days seea nothing but blackness, could have perceived it at alt With a sort of gasp we parsed on. In five minutes more there was no longer any doubt; it waa a patch of faint light. A minute more and p . breath of real live air was fanning us. On we struggled. All at once the tunnel narrowed. Sir Henry went on his knees. Smaller yet it grew, till it was only the size of a large fox’s earth —it was earth now mind you, the rock had ceased. A squeeze, a struggle, and Sir Henry was out, and so was Good, and so was I, and there above us were the blessed stare, and in our nostrils was the sweet air; then suddenly something gave, and we were all rolling over and over and over through grass and bushes, and soft, wet soil. I caught at something and stopped. Sitting up I halloed lustily. An answering shout came from just below, where Sir Hehrifs wild career had been stopped by soffie level ground. 1 scrambled to him, aud found him uuhurt, though breathless. A little way off we found G»od too, jammed in a forked root. He was a good deal knocked about but soon came to. We sat down together there ou the grass, and the revulsion of feeling was ao great that I really think we cried, for joy. We had escaped from that awful dungeon, that was so near to becoming our grave. Surely some merciful Power must have guided Our footsteps to the jackal bole at the termination of the tunnel (for that is what it must have been). And see, there on the mountains, the dawn we had never thought to look upon again was blushing rosy red. Presently the gray light stole down the slopes, and we saw that we were at the bottom, or rather, nearly at the bottom, of tne vast pit in front of the entrance to the cave. Now we could make out the dim forms of the three colossi who sat upon its verge. Doubtless those awful passages along which we bad wandered the live long night, had originally been, in some way, connected With the great diamond itniiie. As for the subterranean river in the bowels of the mountain, Heaven mly knows what it was, or whence it flows, or whither it goea- L loc one Dave no anxiety to trace its couyse. Lighter it grew, and lighter yet. We Could see each other now. and such a spectacle as we presented I have never set eyas on before or since. Gaunt cheeked, hollow eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust and mud, bruised, bleediug, the long fear of inqminent death yet written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the daylight. And yet it i* * solemn fact that vood's eyeglass was still fixed in Good’s eye. 1 doubt whether he had <iver taken it out at all. Neither the darkness, nor the plunge in the subterranean river, nor the roll down the slope, had been able to separate Good and his eyeglass. Presently we rose, fearing that our limbs would stiffen if we stopped there longer, aud commenced with alow and painful steps to struggle np the sloping

sides of the great pit. - For an hour or more we toiled steadfastly up the blue elay, dragging ourselves oh by the help of roots and grasses With which it was dotbed. At last it was done, and we stood on the great road, on the side of the pit opposite to the colossi. By the side of "toe road/ a hundred yards off, a fire waa burning in front of some huts, and round the fire were figures. We made toward them, sapporting one another, and halting every few paces. Presently, one of the figures rose, saw us, and fell on to the ground, crying out for fear. “Infadoos, Infadoos! it is us, thy friends.” We rose; he ran to us, staring wildly, and still shaking with fear. “Oh, my lords, my lords, it is indeed you come back from the dead!—come back from the dead!” And the old warrior flung himself down before us, and clasped Sir Henry’s knees, and wept aloud for joy. _ Zrf/Z Continued next week.