"Where are you off to?" asked the general, as the couple hurried by the mess verandah, in which he stood endeavouring to light his pipe.
"To the lower hut to search for an ornament," promptly answered Mrs. Waldershare.
"Plucky woman! But I don't think you run any risk, beyond breaking your necks in the dark. I shall come and look after you, as soon as I have started this pipe."
On their way to the hut, the couple encountered Mr. Brady—that is to say, he met Mrs. Waldershare, for Angel was already half-way down the path, her feet winged by some indescribable presentiment.
"Hallo, I say! what are you doing here?" he panted, for he had been running fast.
"Only going to the hut for a moment to look for something I have lost."
"For God's sake, don't," he cried. "Better lose what ever it is, than your life—mind you, I warn you that the dam can only hold another ten minutes."
He had an important message to deliver, and could not delay, although probably he would have done so had he dreamt that Mrs. Gascoigne was already standing on dangerous ground. Lola smiled to herself as she hurried downwards. What a fright they were all in. Lose her life! There was no fear of that; and she would risk a good deal to find her little diamond skull—her fetish.
In five minutes' time Mrs. Waldershare was on her knees going over the floor of the hut, ayah-fashion, with her bare hands; her hair had come adrift, and fell in one great coil on her shoulders. Her companion held the light a little way above the searcher's head. At last, after considerable delay, Lola lifted her head.
"Here it is," she cried, with an audible sob of relief, raising herself in a kneeling position; "see, the ring is broken. A fortune-teller told me that my star would be in the ascendant as long as I had the skull. Now I have found it, I am happy. What luck! What," she repeated, in another and a sharper key, as the hut rocked violently, and the rest of the sentence was drowned in a long, loud, shattering crash.