Like a madman he worked: so that even from where I stood I could hear his breath coming hard and fast. At length, with one last glance around, he knelt down and disappeared from my view. My time was come.
Knife in hand, I softly clambered down the south side of the rock, and dropped upon the sand.
The pit lay rather to the north, so that by creeping behind the ridge on the south side I could get close up to him unobserved, even should he look. But he was absorbed now in his prize, so that I stole noiselessly out across the strip of sand between us until within about ten feet of him; then, on hands and knees, I crawled and pulled myself to the trench's lip and peered over.
There, below me, within grasp, he sat, his back still turned towards me. The moon was full in front, so that it cast no shadow of me across him. There he sat, and in front of him lay, imbedded in the sand, a huge iron chest, bound round with a broad band of iron, and secured with an enormous padlock. On the rusty top I could even trace the rudely-cut initials A. T.
I held my breath as he drew from his pocket my grandfather's key and inserted it in the lock, after first carefully clearing away the sand. The stubborn lock creaked heavily as at last and with difficulty he managed to turn the key. And still I knelt above him, knife in hand.
Then, with a long, shuddering sigh, he lifted and threw back the groaning lid. We both gazed, and as we gazed were well-nigh blinded.
For this is what we saw:—
At first, only a blaze of darting rays that beneath the moon gleamed, sparkled and shot out a myriad scintillations of colour—red, violet, orange, green and deepest crimson. Then by degrees I saw that all these flashing hues came from one jumbled heap of gems—some large, some small, but together in value beyond a king's ransom.
I caught my breath and looked again. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, opals, emeralds, turquoises, and innumerable other stones lay thus roughly heaped together and glittering as though for joy to see the light of heaven once more. Some polished, some uncut, some strung on necklaces and chains, others gleaming in rings and bracelets and barbaric ornaments; there they lay—wealth beyond the hope of man, the dreams of princes.
The chest measured some five feet by three, and these jewels evidently lay in a kind of sunken drawer, or tray, of iron. In the corner of this was a small space of about four inches square, covered with an iron lid. As we gazed with straining eyes, Colliver drew one more long sigh of satisfied avarice, and lifted this smaller lid.