thinks of many things when dire peril con-fronts him; perhaps of his own safety last of all. I supposed at the first that the great stone had stood upon a balance, and had been so nicely poised that my weight set it sliding to the aperture. A second thought put this by, and would have it that human hands had done the thing and trapped me beyond any hope of release.
Of the suppositions, the latter was the more dreadful. It seized me in the grip of fear and sent me running back to the stone, my wit clean gone from me and my heart beating wildly. I thought that human eyes were watching me, and that men listened for my words. In a paroxysm of terror, I hurled myself at the stone, and pressed upon it until my hands were cut and bleeding and my clothes torn. Then I reeled back, and, sinking upon the floor of the cavern, I cried aloud to Roddy, as though he would hear me, out there by the lake-side.
Here I make no defence. The Cave of the Dead at Ice Haven is as terrible a mausoleum as the world knows. Three walls of it shaped from the rock, the fourth is of pure ice, and in this wall the bodies of the pirates lie. Time does not change them; to-day they are as yesterday; and all the mockery of life is to be read in their staring eyes. You might even think that they would answer if you spoke to them, and never shall I forget the hour when the mad Osbart called upon them to rise up that he might hear their voices and lead them back to the ship they had served so well.
And in this place I had been trapped. It might be by an accident of the stone; it might be by the design of those who had raced us to the haven for the treasure! Who shall wonder that the extremity of the peril drove me to such despair that I write of it even here with reticence.
How long this mental distress endured I am not able to say. The deep stillness of the place did not suggest the passing of time nor any hour of day or night. Such sounds as I heard were of the trickling of water amid the stalagmites and the drip from the rock, where a puny spring bubbled upon the dank floor. My supposition that human hands had trapped me grew less sure as the minutes passed, and at length I began to doubt it. For if it had been the truth, why did the men leave me here, and what was their motive? Did they think my friends would desert me at a nod or that the ship would weigh anchor and sail because the owner of it was lost ashore? This was not to be imagined. I came to see that a natural happening had contrived my imprisonment, and that in one hour or two I should be a free man. Roddy would miss me, and make his way back to the yacht. The skipper himself would come ashore and bring a party. I could not doubt it; and, hope quickening, I stumbled to my feet and began to search the cavern.
Now, I think for the first time, I remembered with what object I had come ashore. Osbart's letter from Parkhurst prison was still in my pocket, and I touched it with my fingers, ironically and in mockery. Of what profit to me were all the gold in the world while I lay trapped here in the very bowels of the earth, and knew not whether I would be alive or dead when the sun rose?
This was a truth I would not make light of; but, none the less, curiosity stood with it and would not be denied. Disdain the treasure as I might, the desire to know the truth about it prevailed and set me prying about the cavern. Line by line I recalled the strange document which had come to me from the prison, "Go where dead men's fingers point." So Osbart had written; and, shudderingly I turned and looked back at the tomb. Was it true that the outstretched hand of a dead pirate would show me the place? I feared almost to look; a cold sweat stood upon my forehead.
And yet the truth was there. Looking for the second time, and telling myself that the place was making a coward of me, I saw the fingers to which the writing referred, grown white as a woman's in the ice. Beyond them, lay the distorted, horrible face of a dead man, whose eyes were bent toward the flags at my feet. I remembered that I had matches, and struck one of them. The faint light drew me downward. I felt about with my hands, and then I knew.
A grey stone, laid in the very centre of the floor, had been newly stirred. I could see the imprint of heavy boots about it, and the marks of the nails with which they were shod. And I did not doubt that this had been the chamber of the treasure.