ggs.

"It isn't a fit job for anybody," said Ned, "but we'd do it because it's
learned and wonderful. Oh, I think it's very fine."

"P'r'aps it is," said Griggs coolly, "but you're not going to take the
job out of my hands, and so I tell you. Just hark at him, Chris; he has
got the idea in his head that he's going to discover swords with golden
sheaths, and belts thick with precious stones; helmets with plumes of
feathers, and rich and costly armour."

"Not such a noodle," said Ned, whose cheeks had turned very red, for
though not so extravagant as the American painted, he was fain to own to
himself that he had some such ideas in connection with the dusky
warriors who had stormed the place.

"I got thinking a deal of it though last night after I lay down," said
Griggs, who did not care to carry his taunts any further after seeing
the colour of Ned's face, "and I was precious glad that I didn't go down
with only a few matches for light. I got dreaming about it afterwards."

"What, about the old fighting men? The dead?"

"No. About what might be there all alive."

"What!" cried Chris. "Not about snakes?"

"But I did, my lad; and I kept on waking up and then going to sleep and
dreaming the same thing again. I never saw such big ones alive as I saw
creeping along the bottom of that great square hole, getting into the
corners and squirming up one till they nearly stood upon their tails,
and then fell over sidewise with a crack that sent the dust flying."

"Horrid!" said Chris.

"Yes. They're not nice things to dream about--snakes--because of the
waking up."

"Yes, I know," cried Chris eagerly. "You fancy that you really have
them about you, and feel as if you can't believe it was only a dream."

"You never felt like that?" cried Griggs.

"Yes, I have, more than once."

"Well, that's strange, because it's just how I felt over and over again
last night, and it quite set me against the job."

"But now it is morning and we're all awake and rested you don't think
it's likely that there are any rattlers down in that hole?"

"I do think it's very likely, my lad," said the American gravely. "Give
one a rocky place out in the desert where the hot sun shines, and
there's no one to interfere with them, and you're pretty sure to find
some of those gentlemen. I wonder we haven't seen more."

"I don't like the idea of your going down, Griggs," said Chris.

"Forward there," cried the doctor from below, as he