so dark and dank that
we could see nothing and could scarcely breathe. Candles had to be
lighted, and as they threw feeble flickers of light across the gloom,
hideous bats began flying madly about, and dashing to the ground in
their fright great shreds of dusty cobwebs that must have been
centuries old. Nobody minded that, however; it seemed just the sort of
place where millions could really be found in these prosaic days!

The thing was now interesting, if only from a psychological point of
view....

The _ku-ping_ advanced, without hesitation, and brought us to a high
wooden paling which shut off one half of this immense hall from the
other. Inside the paling, as far as we could see, there were just
mountains of empty sacks--hundreds of thousands of them, even
millions, I should think.

But the paling was impassable. A small gate leading through it was
still locked with a heavy Chinese padlock, and there was no key. One
of the officers gave a wave of his hand, and a couple of the soldiers
went out and reappeared with axes. In a few blows they had cleared a
broad opening; the _ku-ping_ sprang through, and, like bloodhounds
that scent a trail, ran swiftly up the steep slopes of the great
masses of empty bags, looking eagerly about them. Then, finally
calculating aloud, they marked down a spot. They had located the exact
place where they would have to begin to work. They stripped themselves
to the waist with great rapidity, and, feeling that their reputations
were at stake, without any warning they were heaving away among those
empty sacks like so many madmen. Faster and faster they worked,
throwing away the sacks. Choking clouds of dust, now rising as if by
magic, filled the whole vast hall and drove us back coughing and
gasping for air, until, fairly beaten, we had to stand outside. As if
through a thick vapour we could dimly see those men still working more
and more rapidly. I wondered how they could breathe....

In very few minutes, however, they also had had enough, but as they
sprang down, and quickly gasping, sought the open air, they brought
with them the end of a rope. They had evidently not only located the
exact spot they were seeking, but had found the first trace which was
necessary to make their search successful. Still, it was impossible to
continue work in this way. It would take hours, at such a slow rate,
to dig down beneath those mountains of old treasure-sacks. It would
take more hours to excavate