d went to sleep. At dawn I
woke again, and in the half light saw Silvestre sitting up, a strange,
gaunt form, and gazing out towards the desert. Presently the first ray
of the sun shot right across the wide plain before us till it reached
the faraway crest of one of the tallest of the Suliman Mountains more
than a hundred miles away.

"'There it is!' cried the dying man in Portuguese, and pointing with
his long, thin arm, 'but I shall never reach it, never. No one will
ever reach it!'

"Suddenly, he paused, and seemed to take a resolution. 'Friend,' he
said, turning towards me, 'are you there? My eyes grow dark.'

"'Yes,' I said; 'yes, lie down now, and rest.'

"'Ay,' he answered, 'I shall rest soon, I have time to rest--all
eternity. Listen, I am dying! You have been good to me. I will give you
the writing. Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass the
desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.'

"Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer
tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope.
It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and
this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. 'Untie it,'
he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which
something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag was a paper.

"Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: 'The paper has all
that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a
political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who
landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains
which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was Jose da
Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited
for him on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the
writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none
have cared to read it, till at last I did. And I have lost my life over
it, but another may succeed, and become the richest man in the
world--the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, senor; go
yourself!'

"Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over.

"God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big
boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have dug
him up. And then I came away."

"Ay, but the document?" said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest.

"Yes, the do