The others saw also, and the sight proved too much
for our shattered nerves. One and all we scrambled
out of the cave as fast as our half-frozen limbs
would carry us.
SOLOMON’S ROAD
Outside the cavern we halted, feeling rather foolish.
“I am going back,” said Sir Henry.
“Why?” asked Good.
“Because it has struck me that—what
we saw—may be my brother.”
This was a new idea, and we re-entered the place to
put it to the proof. After the bright light outside,
our eyes, weak as they were with staring at the snow,
could not pierce the gloom of the cave for a while.
Presently, however, they grew accustomed to the semi-darkness,
and we advanced towards the dead man.
Sir Henry knelt down and peered into his face.
“Thank God,” he said, with a sigh of relief,
“it is not my brother.”
Then I drew near and looked. The body was that
of a tall man in middle life with aquiline features,
grizzled hair, and a long black moustache. The
skin was perfectly yellow, and stretched tightly over
the bones. Its clothing, with the exception of
what seemed to be the remains of a woollen pair of
hose, had been removed, leaving the skeleton-like
frame naked. Round the neck of the corpse, which
was frozen perfectly stiff, hung a yellow ivory crucifix.
“Who on earth can it be?” said I.
“Can’t you guess?” asked Good.
I shook my head.
“Why, the old Dom, Jose da Silvestra, of course—who
else?”
“Impossible,” I gasped; “he died
three hundred years ago.”
“And what is there to prevent him from lasting
for three thousand years in this atmosphere, I should
like to know?” asked Good. “If only
the temperature is sufficiently low, flesh and blood
will keep fresh as New Zealand mutton for ever, and
Heaven knows it is cold enough here. The sun
never gets in here; no animal comes here to tear or
destroy. No doubt his slave, of whom he speaks
on the writing, took off his clothes and left him.
He could not have buried him alone. Look!”
he went on, stooping down to pick up a queerly-shaped
bone scraped at the end into a sharp point, “here
is the ‘cleft bone’ that Silvestra used
to draw the map with.”
We gazed for a moment astonished, forgetting our own
miseries in this extraordinary and, as it seemed to
us, semi-miraculous sight.
“Ay,” said Sir Henry, “and this
is where he got his ink from,” and he pointed
to a small wound on the Dom’s left arm.
“Did ever man see such a thing before?”
