The men in this story went to an unknown part of Southern Africa, to search for the lost brother of one of them. This brother had gone to Africa hoping to find a large amount of diamonds, which a portuguese explorer had found over three hundred years before. The explorer had died, but had left behind a map to show where the treasure was. The man in our passage were following a copy of this map, hoping to find the lost brother or discover what had happened to him. They rested one night in a cave, and awoke the next morning.
By this time the sunlight was pouring its cold rays(for here theywere cold) straight in at the mouth of the cave, upon our half-frozen forms. Suddenly I heard an exclamation of fear from someone, and turned my head down the cave. And this was what I saw. Sitting at the end of it, for it was not more than twenty feet long, was another form,of which the head rested on the chest and the long arms hung down. I stared at it, and saw that it was a dead man, and what was more, a white man.The others saw it too, and the sight proved too much for shattered nreves. We all scrambled out of the cave as fast as our half-frozen limbs would allow.
Outside the cave 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 cave to put it to the proof. After the bright light outside, our eyes,weak as they were with staring at the snow, could not for a while pierce the gloom of the cave. Presently, however, we grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, and went closer to the dead form.
Sir Henry knelt down and peered into its face. ‘ Thank God,’ he said, with a sigh of relief, ”it is not my brother’. Then I went and looked. The corpse was that of a tall man with a narrow face, grey hair, and a long black moustache. The skin was yellow, and stretched tightly over the bones. Round the neck hung a yellow ivory crucifix. The corps was frozen perfectly stiff.
‘ Who on earth can it be?’ said I. ‘ Can’ t you guess?’ asked Good. I shook my head. ‘ Why, the old Don, Jose Da silvestra, of course – who else?’
‘ Impossible,’ I gasped, ‘he died three hundred years ago’. ‘And what is there to prevent his lasting for three thousand yeras in this atmosphere, I should like to know?’ asked Good. ‘ If only the air is cold enough, flesh and blood will keep fresh 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 map, took off his clthes and left him. He could not have buried him alone. Look here,’ he went on, stooping down and picking up a queer-shaped bone scraped at the end into a sharp point, ‘here is the ” cleft-bone” that he used to draw the map with.’
We gazed astonished, for a moment forgetting our own miseries in this extraordinary and, as it seemed to us, semi-miraculous sight. ‘ Yes,’ said sir Henry, ‘ and here is where he got his ink from’, and he pointed to a small wound on the dead man’s left arm. ‘ Did ever man see such a thing before?”
There was no longer any doubt about the matter. There he sat, the dead man, whose directions, written some ten generations ago, had led us to this spot. There in my own hand was the rude pen with which he had written them, and there round his neck was the crucifix his dying lips had kissed.
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