e of the committee members tried to pick a bone up, and it fell to
pieces in his fingers. Another man touched a rib, and that broke
brittlely. I picked up the broken piece of rib and held it in the rays
of King's flashlight.

"You remember?" said King in an undertone to me. "You recall the Gray
Mahatma's words? 'There will be nothing left for the alligators!'
There's neither fat nor moisture in that bone, it's like chalk. See?"

He squeezed it in his fingers and it crumbled.

"Huh! This fellow has been dead for centuries," said somebody. "He can't
have been a Hindu, or they'd have burned him. No use wondering who _he_
was; there's nothing to identify him with--no hair, no clothing--nothing
but dead bone."

"Nothing! Nothing whatever!" said the priest with a dry laugh, and began
kicking the bones here and there all over the cavern. They crumbled as
his foot struck them, and turned to dust as he trod on them--all except
the teeth. As he kicked the skull across the floor the teeth scattered,
but King and I picked up a few of them, and I have mine yet--two molars
and two incisors belonging to a man, who to my mind was as much an
honest martyr as any in Fox's book.

"Well, Mr. King," asked one of the committee in his choicest note of
sarcasm, "have you any more marvels to exhibit, or shall we adjourn?"

"Adjourn by all means," King advised him.

"We know it all, eh?"

"Truly, you know it all," King answered without a smile.

Then speaking sidewise in an undertone to me:

"And you and I know nothing. That's a better place to start from,
Ramsden. I don't know how you feel, but I'm going to track their science
down until I'm dead or master of it. The very highest knowledge we've
attained is ignorance compared to what these fellows showed us. I'm
going to discover their secret or break my neck!"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAVES OF TERROR***

******* This file should be named 18970.txt or 18970.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/9/7/18970

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General