It was interesting to observe the monkey-like countenance of old Meerta as she watched the effect produced on her visitors, her little black eyes sparkling in the lamp-light more brightly than the finest gems there; and not less interesting was it to note the half-amused, more than half-amazed, and partially imbecile gaze of the still silent visitors. Little Letta enjoyed their looks quite as much as Meerta.
“Haven’t we got lots of pretty things here?” she said, looking up into Robin’s face.
“Yes, little one,—wonderful!”
Robin revived sufficiently to make this reply and to glance at Sam, Slagg, and Stumps, who returned the glance. Then he relapsed.
Snatching the lamp from his hand, old Meerta now led the party to a remote corner of the cave, where a number of large casks were ranged at one end, and covered with a sheet of leather.
“Ha! ha!” laughed their wild guide, in a sort of screech, “here be de grandest jools, de finest dimunds of all, what buys all de rest!”
She lifted a corner of the skin, removed the loose head of a cask, and holding the lamp close over the opening, bade them look in. They did so, and the effect was powerful as well as instantaneous, for there, only a few inches below the flaring light, lay an open barrel of gunpowder!
The senses of Sam Shipton returned like a flash of lightning—interest, surprise, admiration vanished like smoke, as he uttered a shout, and, with one hand seizing the wrist of the withered arm that held the lamp, with the other he hastily drew the leathern cover over the exposed powder and held it down.
“You old curmudgeon!” he cried; “here, Robin, take the lamp from her, and away with it into the outer cave.”
Our hero promptly obeyed, while the other two, under an instinct of self-preservation, had already fled in the same direction, followed by a shrill and half-fiendish laugh from the old woman.