This piteous farce went on for forty-eight hours or more until at last the wretched Japhet, who was quite demoralized and in no mood for acting, betrayed us, exactly how I cannot remember.  After this Maqueda would touch nothing more, which did not greatly matter as there was only one biscuit left.  I offered it to her, whereon she thanked me and all of us for our courtesy toward a woman, took the biscuit, and gave it to Japhet, who ate it like a wolf.

It was some time after this incident that we discovered Japhet to be missing; at least we could no longer touch him, nor did he answer when we called.  Therefore, we concluded that he had crept away to die and, I am sorry to say, thought little more about it for, after all, what he suffered, or had suffered, we suffered also.

I recall that before we were overtaken by the last sleep, a strange fit came upon us.  Our pangs passed away, much as the pain does when mortification follows a wound, and with them that horrible craving for nutriment.  We grew cheerful and talked a great deal.  Thus Roderick gave me the entire history of the Fung people and of his life among them and other savage tribes.  Further, he explained every secret detail of their idol worship to Higgs, who was enormously interested, and tried to make some notes by the aid of our few remaining matches.  When even that subject was exhausted, he sang to us in his beautiful voice—­English hymns and Arab songs.  Oliver and Maqueda also chatted together quite gaily, for I heard them laughing, and gathered that he was engaged in trying to teach her English.

The last thing that I recollect is the scene as it was revealed by the momentary light of one of the last matches.  Maqueda sat by Oliver.  His arm was about her waist, her head rested upon his shoulder, her long hair flowed loose, her large and tender eyes stared from her white, wan face up toward his face, which was almost that of a mummy.

Then on the other side stood my son, supporting himself against the wall of the room, and beyond him Higgs, a shadow of his former self, feebly waving a pencil in the air and trying, apparently, to write a note upon his Panama straw hat, which he held in his left hand, as I suppose, imagining it to be his pocket-book.  The incongruity of that sun-hat in a place where no sun had ever come made me laugh, and as the match went out I regretted that I had forgotten to look at his face to ascertain whether he was still wearing his smoked spectacles.

“What is the use of a straw hat and smoked spectacles in kingdom-come?” I kept repeating to myself, while Roderick, whose arm I knew was about me, seemed to answer: 

“The Fung wizards say that the sphinx Harmac once wore a hat, but, my father, I do not know if he had spectacles.”

Then a sensation as of being whirled round and round in some vast machine, down the sloping sides of which I sank at last into a vortex of utter blackness, whereof I knew the name was death.