most wonderful embalming could not conceal as that of death.
Our sense of having profaned the regal place presently wore off, and Anderson, as much, I fancied, from a nervous reaction as anything, moved nearer to the figure and lightly tapped it with the bamboo stick he carried.
"How are you, old top" he asked.
An instant later the man, chair and canopy absolutely dissolved before our eyes and lay on the raised dais in a small pile of dust through which the numerous diamonds and opals gleamed at us like evil spirits.
"Let's get out of here," I muttered.
III.
THE EXTENT of the underground system seemed endless, as long, high-arched corridors opened up in vistas before our astonished gaze.
From another point I could hear the excitable Van Dusee, enraptured over some new-found curio or work of art. Making careful note of our course, Anderson and I pressed on, coming shortly to a rough, unfinished cavern that glowed with sunlight as if exposed to the open sky. There came a shout in my ear. It was from Anderson.
"See!" he exclaimed.
And well might he cry out, for in the center of the chamber lay piles of delicately contrived golden goblets, mixed with hideous-jawed dragons, flying-birds, pedestals of intricate pattern—all in gold! But most astounding of all were the replicas of human figures in gleaming yellow metal, some of them quite of life-size, others in miniature, that tilted here and there among the shining mass—all of the most exquisite workmanship, though many pieces were dented and broken; apparently the mass had been allowed to accumulate by the addition, from time to time, of defective pieces.
However, one piece, the reproduction of a slender female figure just budding into womanhood, about eighteen inches in height, lay quite near us, as if unwittingly it had been dropped. Young Anderson picked it up. The figure was heavy but quite perfect. In silent amaze we studied that exhibit of a handicraft that surely would have brought a shout of appreciation from Benvenuto Cellini, the great Italian goldsmith.
I was about to stroll over to the pile of gold, when I heard the sound of someone running. Then a man burst into the chamber. His entrance was unseemly, and I turned to chide him.
With difficulty I recognized the halfbreed Gomez. His eyes were dilated, his features transformed, as, mouthing unintelligible noises, he ran toward that heap of yellow gold.
If his appearance was terrifying, the shriek that now left his lips came as a thing yet more awful. For before our gaze, while he was still a good thirty feet from the gold, there was a spurt of smoke from the running man, and he stumbled, curled up in a blaze of fire, and actually burned to death!
In my weakened condition my senses reeled at the sight and I caught at Anderson for support. Hardy and Van Dusee were soon with us, and again our worthy leader demonstrated his quick perception and resourcefulness.
"Don’t move!" he commanded, "The place is full of death points!"
A glimmering of his reasoning came to me, and I raised my eyes to what constituted the ceiling of that extraordinary cavern. The answer flashed to me that the artificers of the Ataruipe must have fashioned portions of that wondrously clear crystal formation overhead into gigantic burning glasses which, in that land of eternal sunshine, daily projected down into the cavern focal points of condensed sun's rays that were terrific in their heat units.
But Hardy was demonstrating, and we watched him. With a long bamboo the ingenious chap felt out the deadly heat points, each of which in turn discovered itself by sending a spurt of flame from the end of the pole.
"Altogether, there were nearly fifteen of the deadly contrivances in that cavern, none of which, with the exception of the most powerful one that had killed Gomez, being visible to the human eye!
The reason for this was that the focal point invariably centered about five feet ten inches from the basaltic floor—the precise point where the head of the ordinary man would be while walking.
But if the discoveries made by Anderson and me were remarkable, those of the rest of the party were equally so. Zangaree had stumbled into a chamber evidently reserved for the woman of that lost people. Here, mounted gems of unrivaled quality and size abounded, most of them proving that the Ataruipe as jewelers were equally at home in precious stones and gold.
The apparel of the men in our party was filled to overflowing with the scintillant fragments; Zangaree, in pure Afric joy, tossed a handful into the air and in the unusual light of the cavern they sparkled like fireworks as they fell. From the walls, lustrous opals flashed at us their iridescent rays: there were gems underfoot, cleverly laid in fantastic mosaics such as the mind of modern man never had conceived.
It was all too overwhelming, and we were a sobered party indeed when again we assembled for the very necessary purpose of outlining our future plans. Of course, each one of us was rich, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and it seemed the end, or beginning of everything.
I think that for the time being there was not a single one of us, lounging there in the pit of that ghostly amphitheater, who gave a thought to the long hard way we had come, or to the thousands of miles of jungle and river that lay between us and the consummation of our desires.
Night came on apace, and soon we found ourselves enveloped in a darkness that was only saved from completeness by the trifling fire Hardy had built. Van Dusee presently sprawled down at my side, and pulled at his pipe, talked calmly, as I had never heard him talk before. For once the entomologist was gone. The thing, our experience, had swept him off his feet; his pet subject was forgotten; he had gained new orientation.
"Such artists!" he breathed prayerfully, "Those sculptured women! That exquisite miniature of Bobby’s! And all for what? To what end? Of what avail? Ah! The futility of it!"
And again he murmured, half to himself:
"To think that a thousand, yea, two thousand years ago, these wonderful people lived, breathed and had their being in this very place! What were their thoughts, their pleasures—and what, in Heaven’s name, became of the last of them?"
I told him of our experience with the figure whch at Anderson’s touch had disintegrated so swiftly that the incident seemed like black magic. And for the first time it occurred to me that, aside from the man I had just described, none of us had seen a single skeleton or other evidence of the human occupants.
Van Dusee laughed shortly when put my query.
"We found their burying place, all right," he said.
"Where?" I asked.
"Thousands of them," his voice went on, and in the darkness it seemed that I must be dreaming; "rows on rows of them up in those interminable galleries, each body—or what was left of it—in a handsomely woven basket, with gold trimming. Hardy and I passed along touching an occasional one for the striking effect of seeing it crumble into nothingness—as your king did. Ah, the pity
