nd a gasp went up from our
little party.

"'By all that's holy, what is it?' whispered Tom Bradhurst, my special
friend.

"No one answered, but we all got a tight grip on our revolver butts. We
gazed, fascinated, at those two lambent points of light, fully expecting
to come to hand grips with the 'demon' then and there. As nothing
happened, however, we plucked up courage enough to advance cautiously,
and were soon near enough to make out the cause of our fright. The eyes
were two great emeralds set in the head of a colossal idol carved out of
a great block of solid granite! The image must have been at least thirty
feet high, and the emeralds were each as large as a robin's egg.

"'Great Scott!" ejaculated Bob Winters, another of our party, "that thing
has scared me out of ten years of life, and I'm going to have my revenge.
I'm going to climb up there and get those emeralds, if it takes a leg.
Why, there'll be a fortune in them for all of us."

"We tried to dissuade him, for our nerves had been shaken, and we didn't
want to monkey with the confounded things. Bob was always a dare-devil
chap, though, and set on having his own way. So he went at it, climbing
nimbly up the front of the image, until he was in a position to touch the
great emeralds. Then he drew his hunting knife and commenced prying away
at the stones to dislodge them.

"Suddenly he gave the most unearthly shriek it has ever been my lot to
hear, threw his hands up over his head, and started sliding down the
steep front of the statue. While the shriek yet rang in our ears, a
great section of what had appeared to be solid rock flooring at the base
of the idol opened inward, and our comrade's body hurtled through the
aperture and disappeared from our sight. His hunting knife rattled on
the stones at our feet, and then all was silence.

"If we had been standing a yard nearer the base of the image the whole
party would have been dropped through the hole."

At this point Mr. Hartley paused in his narrative, and passed his hand
over his eyes. The boys saw that great beads of perspiration covered his
forehead, but they had been so absorbed in the story that they had not
noticed this before. They waited breathlessly for him to resume, which
he did after a few seconds.

"Well," he continued, "for a few seconds we were stricken motionless by
the suddenness and horror of the thing. Then we gathered ourselves
together, and rushed to the edge of the