He lighted his taper and swung it into the abyss, disclosing steps of granite leading off in the darkness. As his head disappeared from view, Jim, with a shudder, followed. The steps led to a passage or passages, for the whole of the underground room was formed of vaulted passages, sliding off in every direction. The stairs ended in another passage; the men went down it; it was situated, as nearly as they could judge, directly beneath the room where they had been confined. Silently the two figures crept on, literally feeling their way. Shortly they came to another passage running at right angles; slowly they crept along the tunnel, for it was nothing more, narrowing until it suddenly ended in a sort of cave, running at right angles; they crossed this, halting at the further side to rest and think. Charlie looked anxiously about him for signs, but saw nothing alarming in the smooth sandy floor, and irregular contorted sides. The floor was strewn with bowlders like the bed of a torrent. As they went on, the cavern widened into an amphitheatre with huge supporting columns. To the right and left of the cave there were immense bare spaces stretching away into immense galleries. Here they paused to rest, eating sparingly of the food they had brought. “Let us rest here,” said Charlie, “I am dead beat.”
“Is it not safer to go on? We cannot be very far from the room where we were confined.”
“I’ll sit here a few moments, anyhow,” replied Charlie. Jim wandered aimlessly about the great vault, turning over stones and peering into crevices.
“What do you expect to find, Jim, the buried treasure?” laughed Charlie, as he noted the earnestness of the other’s search.
Jim was bending over something—wrenching off a great iron cover. Suddenly he cried out, “Mr. Vance, here it is!”
Charlie reached his side with a bound. There sat Jim, and in front of him lay, imbedded in the sand of the cavern’s floor, a huge box, long and wide and deep, whose rusted hinges could not withstand the stalwart Negro’s frantic efforts.
With a shuddering sigh the lid was thrust back, falling to one side with a great groan of almost mortal anguish as it gave up the trust committed to its care ages before. They both gazed, and as they gazed were well-nigh blinded. For this is what they saw:—
At first, a blaze of darting rays that sparkled and shot out myriad scintillations of color—red, violet, orange, green, and deepest crimson. Then by degrees, they saw that these hues came from a jumbled heap of gems—some large, some small, but together in value beyond all dreams of wealth.
Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, opals, emeralds, turquoises—lay roughly heaped together, some polished, some uncut, some as necklaces and chains, others gleaming in rings and bracelets—wealth beyond the dreams of princes.
Near to the first box lay another, and in it lay gold in bars and gold in flakes, hidden by the priests of Osiris, that had adorned the crowns of queens Candace and Semiramis—a spectacle glorious beyond compare.