"And bring me something to eat, if you can," Forrester added. "I'm famished: have had nothing for more than twenty-four hours: none of us has."
"Och, that's bad. You can't work on an empty stomach. Fetch here all you can, Hamid, and be quick about it.... Now, man, for the Eye! If we can only find out how the thing works, we have the whole caboodle at our mercy."
"Turn it towards the golden lattice; it won't destroy gold, I know that," said Forrester. "And keep behind it, in case of accident."
Standing over the head-dress, they began to examine it, at first with their eyes alone. Then Mackenzie ventured to pass his fingers round its base, feeling gently for the spring or secret button by which he supposed the shutter or eyelid of the Eye was opened. Gradually working upwards, in the course of a few minutes he had left no portion of it untouched except the Eye itself, which he was careful always to avoid.
"How the dickens does the thing work?" he said at length, thrusting his hands into his pockets and contemplating it with a puzzled frown. "We'll not find out without taking it to pieces, to my thinking."
"Does it matter?" asked Forrester. "The main thing is that we've got it, and the Old Man hasn't. Besides, those fellows outside will be getting anxious. Where is Sher Jang, by the bye?"
"In his hut. I wished I could bring him, but he shares the hut with three others, and I didn't dare fetch him out by night in case they smelt a rat and followed him. The fewer the better, to begin with."
"I say, it's nearly morning. Look!"
A faint light was creeping in at the windows high in the wall. Time had passed more quickly than they had been aware. Soon the Old Man's menials would come to extinguish the lamps, and the priests would issue from their dwellings and go about the work of the day.
"What now?" Forrester asked.