O'Reilly surveyed this Aladdin's cave in a daze. He set his candle down, for his fingers were numb and unsteady. Cautiously, as if fearful of breaking some spell, he stooped and tried to move one of the casks, but found that it resisted him as if cemented to the rock. He noted that its head was bulged upward, as if by the dampness, so he took his iron bar and aimed a sharp blow at the chine. A hoop gave way; another blow enabled him to pry out the head of the cask. He stood blinking at the sight exposed, for the little barrel was full of coins—yellow coins, large and small. O'Reilly seized a handful and held them close to the candle-flame; among the number he noted a Spanish doubloon, such as young Esteban had found.
He tested the weight of the other casks and found them equally heavy. Knowing little about gold, he did not attempt to estimate the value of their contents, but he judged they must represent a fortune. With throbbing pulses he next lifted the lid of the nearest chest. Within, he discovered several compartments, each stored with neatly wrapped and labeled packages of varying shapes and sizes. The writing upon the tags was almost illegible, but the first article which O'Reilly unwrapped proved to be a goblet of most beautiful workmanship. Time had long since blackened it to the appearance of pewter or some base metal, but he saw that it was of solid silver. Evidently he had uncovered a store of old Spanish plate.
In one corner of the chest he saw a metal box of the sort in which valuable papers are kept, and after some effort he managed to break it open. Turning back the lid, he found first a bundle of documents bearing imposing scrolls and heavy seals. Despite the dampness, they were in fairly good condition, and there was enough left of the writing to identify them beyond all question as the missing deeds of patent to the Varona lands—those crown grants for which Dona Isabel had searched so fruitlessly. But this was not all that the smaller box contained. Beneath the papers there were numerous leather bags. These had rotted; they came apart easily in O'Reilly's fingers, displaying a miscellaneous assortment of unset gems—some of them at first sight looked like drops of blood, others like drops of purest water. They were the rubies and the diamonds which had brought Isabel to her death.
O'Reilly waited to see no more. Candle in hand, he crept out into the well to apprise Rosa of the truth.
"We've got it! There's gold by the barrel and the deeds to your land. Yes, and the jewels, too—a quart of them, I guess. I—I can't believe my eyes." He showed her a handful of coins. "Look at that! Doubloons, eagles! There appear to be thousands of them. Why, you're the richest girl in Cuba. Rubies, diamonds—yes, and pearls, too, I dare say—" He choked and began to laugh weakly, hysterically.
"I've heard about those pearls," Rosa cried, shrilly. "Pearls from the Caribbean, as large as plums. Isabel used to babble about them in her sleep."
"I found those deeds the first thing. The plantations are yours now, beyond any question."
Rosa drew back from her precarious position, for she had grown limp from weakness and her head was whirling. As she rose to her feet she brushed something, somebody, some flesh-and-blood form which was standing almost over her. Involuntarily she recoiled, toppling upon the very brink of the pit, whereupon a heavy hand reached forth and seized her. She found herself staring upward into a face she had grown to know in her nightmares, a face the mere memory of which was enough to freeze her blood. It was a hideous visage, thick-lipped, fiat-featured, black; it was disfigured by a scar from lip to temple and out of it gleamed a pair of eyes distended and ringed with white, like the eyes of a man insane.
For an instant Rosa made no sound and no effort to escape. The apparition robbed her of breath, it paralyzed her in both mind and body. Her first thought was that she had gone stark mad, but she had felt Cobo's hands upon her once before and after her first frozen moment of amazement she realized that she was in her fullest senses. A shriek sprang to her lips, she tried to fight the man off, but her weak struggle was like the fluttering of a bird. Cobo crushed her down, strangling the half-uttered cry.
Terror may be so intense, so appalling as to be unendurable. In Rosa's case a merciful oblivion overtook her. She felt the world grow black, fall away; felt herself swing dizzily through space.