“O-ho!” said I, looking on it, “I know, I think, what this means!” For I recalled the withered patch of moss above the Cloisters. And, stooping down, I felt about the roots of it.
It proved as I expected: the moss adhered to the iron lid of a trapdoor.
I found the spring, and pressed it; and the contrivance slowly opened. Now, during my stay on the island, I had furnished myself with, and carried always about with me, the material for contriving matches, namely: a good length of dead cocoa-fibre steeped in oil and dried in the sun. Accordingly, having cut a stick and broken it in twain, I bound some of my fibre about the ends of both pieces. I set one of my matches upright in the pocket of my coat, lest I should want it; and, having kindled the other with my flint and steel, I held it down into the pit.
The match burnt brightly, which told me the air was wholesome; so I set my foot upon the ladder within, and, having the lighted match in my hand, began to descend.
I reached the base; to find myself in a great well, or cylindrical shaft, the walls of which were clay hardened with fire. I looked for a tunnel, or passage leading off from the place; but in vain. I was in the act of mounting the ladder, in despair of making any discovery, when I spied a tiny knob of brass on the wall. To this I set my finger, and pressed it. Immediately a door flew open in the wall, revealing the dark arched orifice of a passage.
I ventured within. My matchlight shone flickering upon bare clay walls at first; but, when I was gotten a little way, I near dropped the torch, startled at what I suddenly beheld.
For, heaped up in a medley before me, was a great vast treasure. Candlesticks and flagons and jewelled sword-hilts, and plate and bars of gold, half sunk in jewels without number and without price: some of them being set in beautiful ornaments, but the most part loose, and many uncut and unpolished as they had been taken up out of the earth.
I stood at gaze, whilst diamonds, opals, and emeralds gleamed and flashed in the matchlight, like rainbowed lightning. Suddenly a dreadful fear seized hold on me, and I dropped the match, which flickered for a moment and went out: a ghostly, clucking laughter had sounded through the passage!
For a moment there was silence, while I stood quaking; and then I knew who was with me in that secret place.
“Are you, then, come as a robber?” came the mocking voice of Doctor Copicus. “Would’st despoil me of my wretched dole, the scanty savings and substance of my old age? What! shall the young tread down the aged, the strong and lusty trample upon the infirm?”