, for some reason of her own,
she had always hated, slowly perishing of thirst and hunger in the
company of the treasure they had coveted. Now I saw the point of that
sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds. Probably somebody
had tried to serve the poor old Dom in the same way, when he abandoned
the skin full of jewels.

"This will never do," said Sir Henry hoarsely; "the lamp will soon go
out. Let us see if we can't find the spring that works the rock."

We sprang forward with desperate energy, and, standing in a bloody
ooze, began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the passage.
But no knob or spring could we discover.

"Depend on it," I said, "it does not work from the inside; if it did
Gagool would not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It
was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazards,
curse her."

"At all events," said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh, "retribution
was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is likely to be. We
can do nothing with the door; let us go back to the treasure room."

We turned and went, and as we passed it I perceived by the unfinished
wall across the passage the basket of food which poor Foulata had
carried. I took it up, and brought it with me to the accursed treasure
chamber that was to be our grave. Then we returned and reverently bore
in Foulata's corpse, laying it on the floor by the boxes of coin.

Next we seated ourselves, leaning our backs against the three stone
chests which contained the priceless treasure.

"Let us divide the food," said Sir Henry, "so as to make it last as
long as possible." Accordingly we did so. It would, we reckoned, make
four infinitesimally small meals for each of us, enough, say, to
support life for a couple of days. Besides the "biltong," or dried
game-flesh, there were two gourds of water, each of which held not more
than a quart.

"Now," said Sir Henry grimly, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die."

We each ate a small portion of the "biltong," and drank a sip of water.
Needless to say, we had but little appetite, though we were sadly in
need of food, and felt better after swallowing it. Then we got up and
made a systematic examination of the walls of our prison-house, in the
faint hope of finding some means of exit, sounding them and the floor
carefully.

There was none. It was not probable that there would be any to a
treasure chamber.

The lamp began to