moving even the outer case of a buried friend.
“That very night I set off from San Francisco, and in a few weeks I found myself once more at Abaris, if a few sand-heaps and crumbling walls may retain the name of the great city. I hurried to the Frenchmen who were digging there and asked them for the ring. They replied that both the ring and the mummy had been sent to the Boulak Museum at Cairo. To Boulak I went, but only to be told that Mariette Bey had claimed them and had shipped them to the Louvre. I followed them, and there at last, in the Egyptian chamber, I came, after close upon four thousand years, upon the remains of my Atma, and upon the ring for which I had sought so long.
“But how was I to lay hands upon them? How was I to have them for my very own? It chanced that the office of attendant was vacant. I went to the Director. I convinced him that I knew much about Egypt. In my eagerness I said too much. He remarked that a Professor’s chair would suit me better than a seat in the Conciergerie. I knew more, he said, than he did. It was only by blundering, and letting him think that he had over-estimated my knowledge, that I prevailed upon him to let me move the few effects which I have retained into this chamber. It is my first and my last night here.
“Such is my story, Mr. Vansittart Smith. I need not say more to a man of your perception. By a strange chance you have this night looked upon the face of the woman whom I loved in those far-off days. There were many rings with crystals in the case, and I had to test for the platinum to be sure of the one which I wanted. A glance at the crystal has shown me that the liquid is indeed within it, and that I shall at last be able to shake off that accursed health which has been worse to me than the foulest disease. I have nothing more to say to you. I have unburdened myself. You may tell my story or you may withhold it at your pleasure. The choice rests with you. I owe you some amends, for you have had a narrow escape of your life this night. I was a desperate man, and not to be baulked in my purpose. Had I seen you before the thing was done, I might have put it beyond your power to oppose me or to raise an alarm. This is the door. It leads into the Rue de Rivoli. Good night!”
The Englishman glanced back. For a moment the lean figure of Sosra the Egyptian stood framed in the narrow doorway. The next the door had slammed, and the heavy rasping of a bolt broke on the silent night.
It was on the second day after his return to London that Mr. John Vansittart Smith saw the following concise narrative in the Paris correspondence of the Times:
“Curious Occurrence in the Louvre.—Yesterday morning a strange discovery was made in the principal Egyptian Chamber. The ouvriers who are employed to clean out the rooms in the morning found one of the attendants lying dead upon the floor with his arms round one of the mummies. So close was his embrace that it was only with the utmost difficulty that they were separated. One of the cases containing valuable rings had been opened and rifled. The authorities are of opinion that the man was bearing away the mummy with some idea of selling it to a private collector, but that he was struck down in the very act by long-standing disease of the heart. It is said that he was a man of uncertain age and eccentric habits, without any living relations to mourn over his dramatic and untimely end.
THE GREEN GOD, by William Call Spencer
They were following the last of the storm, climbing soggily the great rollers, nursing the boat carefully through the white-caps, making consistently for the island with the dead tree spire.
Rill, with head sagging on his narrow chest, scraped rhythmically with the bailing-pail, along the bottom, over the side, scrape and over, scrape and over, never ceasing, rarely looking up, his thin face lined with fatigue.
The other man swung forlornly on a pair of great oars. His head was thrown back, exposing the neck-column that sat on the thick torso, beautiful as the neck of a Greek vase. The two rarely spoke, unless concerning the course.
They had not changed posture since the day before, when, after the delirium of the Bertha’s foundering, they had found themselves as they were now, the one rowing, the other, of lesser physique, bailing. The storm had driven the packet boat that plied north from Skagway out of her course. They were somewhere in the Aleutian Islands. That was all they knew, that, and a hunger that lost itself somewhere in thirst.
The danger of capsizing hourly had grown less, seeming queerly enough to lessen with the weakening of the men’s resistance; or possibly it was the other way round. Late in the afternoon, with the sun beginning to shine palely, they came to the island. The surf crashed upon the rocky line in a steady thunder. Sea-birds swooped and beat above it, their cawing inaudible.
“Guess it’s all up,” the big man at the oars said. “If we go round to make shore on the lee side, the current’ll carry us past like a shot. If we get in the surf, them rocks’ll chop us up—for the gulls.”
They both stared at the spuming shoreline that momentarily became plainer. The oarsman had the better eyes.
“There’s a cove,” he said presently. “Sometimes that means a stretch of sand. If the breakers catch you right, you kin carry through, sometimes. Try it?”
The slim man peered through the lank black hair that fell over his red-lidded eyes, noting his informant as he had the shore.
“I don’t know you yet,” he said. “You a sailor? Got good judgment? Can we do anything else?”
“Name’s Pug Norton, sir—cook on the Bertha, sailed regular before the mast in the old days up here. Ain’t much I don’t know about landin’ a boat. I’d ruther get it over quick, there in the pound, than take days to it. I’ve helped pick up fellows that croaked from the thirst—I swore when my turn came I’d go a quick way. You feel the same?”
Rill nodded his head, and went to baling again, head drooped forward, shoulders bent. The sailor, Pug, gazed more frequently over his shoulder and sent the boat along a bit faster. Perhaps he intended to try the wild ride before dusk put a false light on things. They had no more speech, for they had said quite all that was necessary to say with thickening tongues.
The moment came when the boat was opposite the little cove, and the sailor simply, without hesitation, headed in for the breakers. They were big, as they usually are in Alaska, and always after a storm. Pug had a parting fragment of advice to give:
“If this here boat founders way out, just hang on tight. If she busts on shore, keep away from her. I’ve seen a Malay get his nut cracked between the boat and the sand. An’ I guess you know enough not to fight—if we ain’t carried in, we don’t get it, that’s all.”
Rill dropped the bucket and hung on to the gunwales as the other, choosing his time, strained at the oars. They shot in, lifted by a swell, dropped, were carried again, and again dropped just before the wave foamed and curled. The sailor had timed it well. He had the boat further in by the next break, so that at any rate the tremendous fall of water did not bash them. Instead they met the crazy blanket of foam. Rill perceived vaguely the other flashing the oars frantically, then the boat sank from under him, and he went down, clinging like a barnacle to the gunwale. He remembered coming to the top again, and swirling madly, giddily over and under the boat. Finally he let go. He felt his arm seized, and then his consciousness went.
When it came back he was lying with his face in the sand a foot or so beyond high-water line. He coughed weakly and opened his eyes to see the sailor, Pug, reeling toward him through the dusk, carrying something in his cap. Rill wondered pettishly how the sailor had kept that cap.
“Pool of rain-water back there,” Pug said. “Scummy-like, but good enough to rinse the salt water out of your mouth. Here.”
He lay down on the sand above Rill, and before the latter was through with
