varo's eye I struck him unawares as he knelt for the last gem.
Deep behind the neck my dagger drank his blood. His vest of mail did
not save him from me! ... And turning to flee hastily with all the
stones, I found the ladder drawn up and N'buqu laughing at me from
above. "'Ho! ho! white man, white wizard!' he called. 'Ye who would
show me the wondrous things of thine own land. How fares it with ye
now? Surely thou hast enough of the bright stones now thy dead
comrade's share and all he had taken; thou hast them all! Handle them,
gaze on them, eat of them, drink of them; for of a surety naught else
will there be for thee to eat and drink! Ho! ho! surely the black man's
magic is vain against the wisdom of the white!'

"And thus he taunted me, whilst vainly I strove by means of my dagger
to cut footholds in the slimy walls of the shaft and thus climb to
freedom. But the holes crumbled as soon as my weight bore on them, and
after falling again and again I desisted in despair. . . . And ever the
yellow fiend above taunted me, and it was abundantly clear that he had
but feigned to fall in with our scheme the more fully to encompass our
destruction. . . . Dawn found me raving in terror of my coming fate
alone with the bodies of the friend whom I had slain and the shipman
who had been by him slain. Terror had helped to parch my tongue with
thirst, and both shaft and cavern, though moist, were drained too dry
to afford one mouthful of the precious fluid. Yet though longing for
water I knew well that when N'buqu should choose again to direct the
stream I should drown like any rat. The day passed. I heard the
frightened mutterings of the dwarf men as they crowded round the mouth
of the shaft seeking the black water that had vanished; but at my first
hoarse shout they fled, yelling in alarm. Day turned to night, and I
had become as one dead. The ghosts of dead Alvaro and Mendez and a
thousand others crowded round me, gibing, and mouthing, and seeking too
for the black water. Again day, and again night came and went. Still
the water I longed for and yet feared came not. I suffered the tortures
of the damned, and fain would I have scattered my throbbing brains with
that last charge of my hand petronel; but ever as I raised it dead
Alvaro caught my hand in an icy grip and I could not die. . . .

"Then again I heard N'buqu, and with him certain men of the dwarfs he
ruled. And in their whistling, creaking tongue I heard him hold forth: