As It Was in the Beginning

by Philip Verrill Mighels

He was still engaged, like some merely scientific archeologist, in examining piece after piece of the metal, or one after another of the stones, which were cut as never he had seen them before, when he fancied some weird, faint echo called his name.

With pounds of the trinkets in his hands, he returned to the broken heap of stones he had lately overthrown. Out of the ringing silence of the larger cave came a distant wisp of sound——

He knew that Elaine was calling from somewhere in the passage.

It was only the work of a moment to catch up his basket and place in its hold the small stone sarcophagi of jewels. Carelessly then, on top of these, he swept in the ornaments of gold. They fell, dully ringing, from the shelves, where perhaps they had lain for above a century—a heterogeneous collection which he was sorry to disturb till the various positions in which they had been disposed could be noted and remembered.

He was certain no less than a hundredweight of the treasure taxed his strength when he presently lifted his burden from the place and bore it across the larger chamber.

Elaine was calling again. Her voice was clearer in the passage. Grenville came there, panting from his effort, with his dusty and useless riches. He answered at once on entering the gallery, where he paused to close and secure his concealing door.

"Please come!" was the cry, in response to his shout, like an unreal voice from the blackness of a tomb. "They're here! They're close to the island!"

With a short but inarticulate ejaculation, Grenville once more took up his basket, blundered forward with it a few feet only, and set it down against the wall. Why he had paused to bother with it, for a moment he did not understand. With his torch flaring back, in his greater speed, he plunged along and up the passage.

Around the first of the sharper angles he came upon Elaine. She had brought no torch, in her hurry to sound the alarm, but had groped her way downward through the Stygian blackness of the gallery, calling time after time as the gloom rendered up no reply.

Her eyes were dilated wildly, from her efforts to see in the dark. Her face seemed intensely white against the impenetrable ebon.