A stone slab filled the far side of this recess, and on it were heaped various sad-hued fabrics—bed coverings of sorts. They were discolored with age, but undecayed by reason of the undying frost. Above the tossed and furrowed ends of these rags a face appeared—a face lined with a thousand wrinkles, drawn and yellow as parchment. The features had been old and agonized or ever the breath left the body. They had been of noble outline in life, but terror had been laid like a thick mask upon the dead lineaments. It was the face of one alone with death—a death that crept to it slowly, while the soul waited in its desolation, helpless, alone, despairing.
Parsons found a cracked and reedy voice.
“Gawd pity ’im,” he mumbled, closing up to me fearfully; “’e ’ad it ’eavy at the last.”
The flicker of the wavering candle-light was chasing the gray shadows across and about the fear-haunted face. If was as if the agonies of centuries back had leaped to life. A drop from the roof fell upon the wick of a dip, making it hiss and sputter raggedly; the to and fro of the twittering rays made the dead lips twitch, as it seemed. The shade that swept the rigid form, as we moved toward it, gave it the horrid appearance of shuddering, and thereat I heard Parsons’ breath whistle between his teeth. The black hair fell lank and straight from the furrowed forehead, and as the thin light gleamed upon it, it seemed as if it waved in an unfelt draught.
We bent over the poor, distorted apology for a human form. The hands were crossed upon the wasted chest, each twined within the other convulsively. The eyes were half closed. The sheen of the dead pupils seemed to watch us furtively between the wrinkled lids. The lips were agape, and the teeth set stiffly upon each other. The muscles in the worn throat stood out like the kinks in the parcelling of a worn hawser. The whole face and figure gave the impression of despair personified—of death awaited lingeringly, and the bitter cup thereof drained to the last dregs.
There was a plash and gurgle from the stream behind me, and the swish of hasty stumblings through its pools. I was suddenly aware that I was alone before this gruesomeness—that down the watery pathway we had come Parsons was making for wholesome light and air at the top of his speed. He ran staggeringly, holding out his candle before him, and as I saw the outline of his body diminishingly black through the doorway, a cold dread caught me by the throat. Horror gripped my pulses clammily.
Somehow, within the next ten seconds, I found myself hunting Parsons hard down that icy waterway, with fright—pure, unadulterated funk—following desperately swift upon my footsteps. I stopped to consider nothing, save that behind me was the shadow of death centuries old in all its hoary malignancy, while in front was sunlight and nervous, warm-blooded humanity as personified by the escaping Parsons. With these considerations carven on my brain I splashed along like a hunted otter. Reeling, white-faced, shamed, but full of gratitude for the warm blessings of the sun and sea-borne air, we stumbled out into the cañon, and squatted again beside our baggage. We looked not each other in the eyes for the space of a full minute; then I gave a half-hysteric chuckle.
“It was only a mummy of sorts,” I explained apologetically to James Parsons, seaman and coward.
“That’s as mebbe, m’lord,” quoth Mr. Parsons with dogged deliberation, “but it ’appens to be the first I’ve seen of whatever it ’appens to be, an’ please the Lord I’ll never see another.” He capped this slightly involved indication of his views with a mighty spit into the clearness of the stream, the while he shifted his quid thankfully.
“Nonsense,” said I, with a great show of spirit and discipline, “you must come back with me at once. I dare say there are discoveries to be made of lots of things. Gold, very likely, and other valuables,” and I rolled my eyes at him. He only sniffed doubtfully.