l, "there are surely
more therein. Take your fill, white lords! _Ha! ha!_ take your fill."

Thus adjured, we set to work to pull up the stone lids on the other
two, first--not without a feeling of sacrilege--breaking the seals that
fastened them.

Hoorah! they were full too, full to the brim; at least, the second one
was; no wretched burglarious Da Silvestra had been filling goat-skins
out of that. As for the third chest, it was only about a fourth full,
but the stones were all picked ones; none less than twenty carats, and
some of them as large as pigeon-eggs. A good many of these bigger ones,
however, we could see by holding them up to the light, were a little
yellow, "off coloured," as they call it at Kimberley.

What we did _not_ see, however, was the look of fearful malevolence
that old Gagool favoured us with as she crept, crept like a snake, out
of the treasure chamber and down the passage towards the door of solid
rock.

* * * * *

Hark! Cry upon cry comes ringing up the vaulted path. It is Foulata's
voice!

"_Oh, Bougwan! help! help! the stone falls!_"

"Leave go, girl! Then--"

"_Help! help! she has stabbed me!_"

By now we are running down the passage, and this is what the light from
the lamp shows us. The door of the rock is closing down slowly; it is
not three feet from the floor. Near it struggle Foulata and Gagool. The
red blood of the former runs to her knee, but still the brave girl
holds the old witch, who fights like a wild cat. Ah! she is free!
Foulata falls, and Gagool throws herself on the ground, to twist like a
snake through the crack of the closing stone. She is under--ah! god!
too late! too late! The stone nips her, and she yells in agony. Down,
down it comes, all the thirty tons of it, slowly pressing her old body
against the rock below. Shriek upon shriek, such as we have never
heard, then a long sickening _crunch_, and the door was shut just as,
rushing down the passage, we hurled ourselves against it.

It was all done in four seconds.

Then we turned to Foulata. The poor girl was stabbed in the body, and I
saw that she could not live long.

"Ah! Bougwan, I die!" gasped the beautiful creature. "She crept
out--Gagool; I did not see her, I was faint--and the door began to
fall; then she came back, and was looking up the path--I saw her come
in through the slowly falling door, and caught her and held her, and
she stabbed me, and _I die_, Bougwan!"

"P