"Where are you going?" asked Jack.
"I'm going to make one last attempt to find the projectile before it gets too dark," answered the hunter. "We can go out, look around for several hours, and get back before darkness sets in. We might as well do it as sit here doing nothing. Then, too, we can bring in some more water. We'll need all we can store away."
"I'll go with you," volunteered Jack, and Mark, not wanting to be left alone in the dead city, followed. Carrying their life-torches and wrapping their fur garments closely about them, for it had grown much colder, they sallied forth.
They found a thin film of ice on the black pool, showing that it would probably freeze when it got cold enough, though the ordinary temperature of thirty-two degrees had not affected it. They filled their water bottles, and then Andy proposed that they take a new path—one they had not tried before.
They hardly knew where they were going, but ever as they tramped on they cast anxious looks upward to see if they might descry the projectile hovering over them. But they did not see it.
Jack had taken the lead, and was walking along, glancing idly about. He came to a place where two peaks were so close together that it was all he could do to squeeze through. But the moment he had passed the defile and looked out on a broad, level field, he came to a sudden stop. His companions, who pressed after him, saw him rub his eyes and shake his head, as if disbelieving the evidence of what lay before him. Then Jack murmured: "It can't be true! It can't be true!"
"What?" called Mark.
"There! Those," answered his chum. "See, the field is covered with diamonds! We have found the diamonds of the moon—the field of Reonaris that the men of Mars discovered! There are the diamonds—millions of them!"
"Diamonds!" exclaimed Mark. He squeezed through the defile, and stood beside Jack. Before him in the fading light of the sun was a broad field, girt around with towering cliffs, and the surface of the field was covered with white stones.
Jack sprang forward and gathered up a double handful. He let them run through his fingers in a sparkling stream. Old Andy came up to the boys.