"Of course she is dead, otherwise she would not be in that glass coffin.I think I should like to read the Burial Service over her, which I daresay was never done when she was put in there.""How do you know she is dead?" asked Bickley in a sharp voice and speaking for the first time."I have seen hundreds of corpses, and mummies too, but never any that looked like these."I stared at him.It was strange to hear Bickley, the scoffer at miracles, suggesting that this greatest of all miracles might be possible.
"They must have been here a long time," I said, "for although human, they are not, I think, of any people known to the world to-day; their dress, everything, shows it, though perhaps thousands of years ago--" and I stopped.
"Quite so," answered Bickley; "I agree.That is why I suggest that they may have belonged to a race who knew what we do not, namely, how to suspend animation for great periods of time."I said no more, nor did Bastin, who was now engaged in studying the old man, and for once, wonderstruck and overcome.Bickley, however, took one of the candles and began to make a close examination of the coffins.So did Tommy, who sniffed along the join of that of the Glittering Lady until his nose reached a certain spot, where it remained, while his black tail began to wag in a delighted fashion.Bickley pushed him away and investigated.
"As I thought," he said--"air-holes.See!"I looked, and there, bored through the crystal of the coffin in a line with the face of its occupant, were a number of little holes that either by accident or design outlined the shape of a human mouth.
"They are not airtight," murmured Bickley; "and if air can enter, how can dead flesh remain like that for ages?"Then he continued his search upon the other side.
"The lid of this coffin works on hinges," he said."Here they are, fashioned of the crystal itself.A living person within could have pulled it down before the senses departed.""No," I answered; "for look, here is a crystal bolt at the end and it is shot from without."This puzzled him; then as though struck by an idea, he began to examine the other coffin.
"I've got it!" he exclaimed presently."The old god in here"(somehow we all thought of this old man as not quite normal)"shut down the Glittering Lady's coffin and bolted it.His own is not bolted, although the bolt exists in the same place.He just got in and pulled down the lid.Oh! what nonsense I am talking--for how can such things be? Let us get out and think."So we crept from the sepulchre in which the perfumed air had begun to oppress us and sat ourselves.down upon the floor of the cave, where for a while we remained silent.
"I am very thirsty," said Bastin presently."Those smells seem to have dried me up.I am going to get some tea--I mean water, as unfortunately there is no tea," and he set off towards the mouth of the cave.
We followed him, I don't quite know why, except that we wished to breathe freely outside, also we knew that the sepulchre and its contents would be as safe as they had been for--well, how long?
It proved to be a beautiful morning outside.We walked up and down enjoying it sub-consciously, for really our--that is Bickley's and my own--intelligences were concentrated on that sepulchre and its contents.Where Bastin's may have been I do not know, perhaps in a visionary teapot, since I was sure that it would take him a day or two to appreciate the significance of our discoveries.At any rate, he wandered off, making no remarks about them, to drink water, I suppose.
