"Oh, you have discovered it, have you?" asked Professor Beecher, and his voice was bitter.
"Yes, not ten minutes ago. The natives have kindly acknowledged my right to it under the law of priority. I am sorry but——"
With a look of disgust and chagrined disappointment on his face, Professor Beecher turned to the other scientists and said:
"Let us go. We are too late. He has what I came after."
"Well, it is the fortune of war—and discovery," put in Mr. Hardy, one of the party who seemed the least ill-natured. "Your luck might have been ours, Professor Bumper. I congratulate you."
"Thank you! Are you sure your party is all right—not in need of assistance? How did you get out of the place you were buried?"
"Thank you! We do not require any help. It was good of you to think of us. But we got out the way we came in. We did not enter the tunnel as you did, but came in through another entrance which was not closed by the landslide. Then we made a turn through a gateway in a tunnel connecting with ours—a gateway which seems to have been opened by the earthquake—and we came here, just now.
"Too late, I see, to claim the discovery of the idol of gold," went on Mr. Hardy. "But I trust you will be generous, and allow us to make observations of the buildings and other relics."
"As much as you please, and with the greatest pleasure in the world," was the prompt answer of Professor Bumper. "All I lay sole claim to is the golden idol. You are at liberty to take whatever else you find in Kurzon and to make what observations you like."
"That is generous of you, and quite in contrast to—er—to the conduct of our leader. I trust he may awaken to a sense of the injustice he did you."