The brilliance of the gems, though somewhat dulled by the dust of ages, held us with fascination. Upon the ground around us they lay heaped in such scattered profusion that we seemed powerless to collect them. There were great diamonds of enormous value that flashed, scintillated, and dazzled us under the uncertain rays of the torches, magnificent emeralds, some almost yellow, others green as the deep sea, white, yellow, and rich blue sapphires, huge purple amethysts, pale, exquisitely-coloured beryls, peerless pink and black pearls larger than any in the Crown Jewels, green, straw-coloured, and blue topazes of enormous size, beautiful topazolites of delicate hues, huge blood-red jacinths, opals marvellous in their iridescent reflection of light, and matchless spinels, turquoises, and other stones of all difference of colour and shade and every degree of translucency.
“Come!” I cried excitedly at last, when speech returned to me; “let us see what the next contains!” and together we tore asunder the wrappings, to discover a similar hoard of unset gems, many of the diamonds being even larger and more magnificent than those we had at first discovered.
Intoxicated by delight, we proceeded to further investigate our newly-discovered wealth, passing on from bale to bale, finding in each a wondrous collection of precious stones of such size and brilliancy, the like of which our eyes had never before encountered.
“Look!” I ejaculated, picking out three enormous diamonds that were lying in a heap upon the floor. “Each single stone will realise a fortune!”
“True,” answered Octave gleefully, his eyes glistening with delight. “They are as large as any in the world.”
Finding a piece of rotten wood that had originally been placed along the edge of one of the packages, apparently to strengthen it, we utilised it as a flambeau, and, proceeding with our investigations, we found that no fewer than sixteen of the great bales contained nothing but gems, most of which had evidently been hurriedly knocked from their settings in order to be more easily transported.
One pack was nearly filled with treasures that were absolutely priceless from an archaeological point of view, for they were genuine and well-preserved relics of bygone ages. Strangely—engraven zircons, hyacinths, tourmalines, spinels, beryls, all of exquisite hues, delicately carved emeralds, and deep blood-red sards with mystic inscriptions and remarkable designs. Hundreds of Egyptian seals in the form of the scarabaeus, or sacred beetle, curious cylindrical seals in chalcedony, and beautiful Greek scarabs, the engraved intaglio of which in most cases was enclosed in a guilloche or engrailed border. There were also large numbers of finely-engraved ornaments of carnelian, chrysoprase, plasma, bloodstone, jasper, beryl, agate, and onyx, and many seals of thin form, through which the light passed sufficiently to show the engraving by transmitted rays, the stones with this view being mostly cut en cabochon.
In another package we discovered, carefully wrapped by themselves in cloths of fine linen—now yellow with age and rotten as tinder—a number of strangely-shaped amulets. Upon many of them were engraved in Arabic gnomic or other sayings, indicating that they were believed to guard the wearer against demons, thieves, and various evils, or regarded as charms for procuring love; while others had on them the names of their possessors, various mottoes, good counsels from the Korân, and even distichs of Arab poetry.
Continuing our search, we came across a great pack of ancient ornaments of gold. Time had in some instances dulled them, but their weight showed their solidity, and the stones set in them were the most magnificent we had ever seen. Rings, bracelets, anklets, necklets, great bands of gold for the arms, earrings, buckles and girdles encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires, marvellously-enamelled clasps, jewelled sword-hilts, aigrettes with diamond bases, finely-worked filigree balls of gold, and four magnificent diadems, one of which was set entirely with huge diamonds, that gleamed and flashed with a thousand fires as we held it up, while another was adorned wholly by emeralds. From their delicacy of construction, we judged that their wearers must have been Sultanas. Who, we wondered, were they? Whose harem had their dazzlingly-ornamented figures graced?