derstand them?"
"There's always some old wise man or woman in every village, sar, who
understands them. You remember old King Coffee in Grant's Town?"
"Does he know Egyptian?"
"O yaas, sar! He knows 'gyptian right enough. And he could tell you
every word them birds says--if he's a mind to."
"I wonder if Tobias knows Egyptian, Tom?"
"I wouldn't be at all surprised, sar," he answered; "he looks like that
kind of man," and he added something about the Prince of the Powers of
the Air, and suggested that Tobias had probably sold his soul to the
devil, and had, therefore, the advantage of us in superior sources of
information.
"He's not unlike one of those black parrots himself, is he, Tom?" I
added, for Tom's words had conjured up a picture for me of Tobias, with
his great beak, and his close-set evil eyes, and a familiar in the form
of a black parrot perched on his shoulders, whispering into one of his
ugly ears.
However, we continued with our digging, and Tobias continued to make no
sign.
But, at the close of the third day from our discovery of John Teach's
wine cellar, something happened which set at rest the question of
Tobias's knowledge of Egyptian, and proved that he was all too well
served by his aerial messengers. The three days had been uneventful. We
had made no more discoveries, beyond the opening up of various prosaic
offices and cellars that may once have harboured loot but were now empty
of everything but bats and centipedes. But, toward evening of the third
day, we came upon a passage leading out of one of these cellars; it had
such a promising appearance that we kept at work later than usual, and
the sun had set and night was rapidly falling as we turned homeward.
As we came in sight of the house, we were struck by the peculiar hush
about it, and there were no lights in the windows.
"No lights!" the "King" and I exclaimed together, involuntarily hurrying
our steps, with a foreboding of we knew not what in our hearts. As we
crossed the lawn, the house loomed up dark and still, and the door
opening on to the loggia was a square of blackness, in a gloom of
shadows hardly less profound. Not a sound, not a sign of life!
"Calypso!" we both cried out, as we rushed across the loggia. "Calypso!
where are you?--but there was no answer; and then, I, being ahead of the
"King," stumbled over something dark lying across the doorway.
"Good God! what is this?" I cried, and, bending down, I saw that
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