But, after all had gone to their release, Hestaiyon still remained, alone in the fading sunset, beside the cloven corpses of Mmatmuor and Sodosma. There, as the tablets had directed him to do, he made trial of those spells of elder necromancy which he had known in his former wisdom, and cursed the dismembered bodies with that perpetual life-in-death which Mmatmuor and Sodosma had sought to inflict upon the people of Cincor. And maledictions came from the pale lips, and the heads rolled horribly with glaring eyes, and the limbs and torsos writhed on their imperial couches amid clotted blood. Then, with no backward look, knowing that all was done as had been ordained and predicted from the first, the mummy of Hestaiyon left the necromancers to their doom, and went wearily through the nighted labyrinth of vaults to rejoin Illeiro.

So, in tranquil silence, with no further need of words, Illeiro and Hestaiyon passed through the open door of the nether vault, and Illeiro locked the door behind them with its key of untarnished bronze. And thence, by the coiling stairs, they wended their way to the verge of the sunken flames and were one with their kinsfolk and their people in the last, ultimate nothingness.

But of Mmatmuor and Sodosma, men say that their quartered bodies crawl to and fro to this day in Yethlyreom, finding no peace or respite from their doom of life-in-death, and seeking vainly through the black maze of nether vaults the door that was locked by Illeiro.

THE SEED FROM THE SEPULCHER

“Yes, I found the place,” said Falmer. “It’s a queer sort of place, pretty much as the legends describe it.” He spat quickly into the fire, as if the act of speech had been physically distasteful to him, and, half averting his face from the scrutiny of Thone, stared with morose and somber eyes into the jungle-matted Venezuelan darkness.

Thone, still weak and dizzy from the fever that had incapacitated him for continuing their journey to its end, was curiously puzzled. Falmer, it seemed to him, had undergone an inexplicable change during the three days of his absence—a change so elusive and shadowy in some of its phases that Thone was unable to delimit it fully in his thoughts.

Other phases, however, were all too obvious. Falmer, even during extreme hardship or jungle illness, had been heretofore unquenchably loquacious and cheerful. Now he seemed sullen, uncommunicative, as if his mind were preoccupied with far-off things of disagreeable import. His bluff face had grown hollow—even pointed—and his eyes had narrowed to secretive slits. Thone was troubled by these changes, though he tried to dismiss his impressions as mere distempered fancies due to the influence of the ebbing fever.

“But can’t you tell me what the place was like?” he persisted.

“There isn’t much to tell,” said Falmer, in a queer grumbling tone. “Just a few crumbling walls overgrown and half-displaced by the forest trees, and a few falling pillars netted with lianas.”

“But didn’t you find the burial-pit of the Indian legend, where the gold was supposed to be?”

“Oh, yes, I found it. The place has started to cave in from above, so there wasn’t much difficulty about that—but there was no treasure.” Falmer’s voice had taken on a forbidding surliness; and Thone decided to refrain from further questioning.

“I guess,” he commented lightly, “that we had better stick to orchid-hunting. Treasure trove doesn’t seem to be in our line. By the way, did you find any unusual flowers or plants during the trip?”

“Hell, no,” Falmer snapped. His face had gone suddenly ashen in the firelight, and his eyes had assumed a set glare that might have meant either fear or anger. “Shut up, can’t you? I don’t want to talk. I’ve had a headache all day—some damned Venezuelan fever coming on, I suppose. We’d better head for the Orinoco tomorrow, even if we are both sick. I’ve had all I want of this trip.”

James Falmer and Roderick Thone, professional orchid-hunters, with two Indian guides, had been following an obscure tributary of the upper Orinoco. The country was rich in rare flowers; and, beyond its floral wealth, they had been drawn by vague but persistent rumors among the local tribes concerning the existence of a ruined city somewhere on this tributary: a city that contained a burial-pit in which vast treasures of gold, silver and jewels had been interred together with the dead of some nameless people. These rumors were never first hand, but the two men had thought it worthwhile to investigate them. Thone had fallen sick while they were still a full day’s journey from the supposed site of the ruins, and Falmer had gone on in a canoe with one of the Indians, leaving the other to attend to Thone. He had returned at nightfall of the third day following his departure.

Thone decided after a while, as he lay staring at his companion, that the latter’s taciturnity and moroseness were perhaps due to disappointment over his failure to find the treasure. It must have been that—together with some tropical infection working in his blood. However, he admitted doubtfully to himself, it was not like Falmer to be disappointed or downcast under such circumstances. Greediness for mere wealth, as far as he had occasion to observe, was not in the man’s nature.

Falmer did not speak again, but sat glaring before him as if he saw something invisible to others beyond the labyrinth of fire-touched boughs and lianas in which the whispering, stealthy darkness crouched. Somehow, there was a shadowy fear in his aspect. Thone continued to watch him, and saw that the Indians, impassive and cryptic, were also watching him, as if with some obscure expectancy. The riddle was too much for Thone, and he gave it up after a while, lapsing into restless, fever-turbulent slumber, from which he awakened at intervals to see the set face of Falmer, dimmer and more distorted each time with the slowly dying fire. At last it became a half-human thing, devoured by inhuman shadows and twisted by the ever-changing horror of those febrile dreams.

Thone felt stronger in the morning: his brain was clear, his pulse tranquil once more; and he saw with mounting concern the mysterious indisposition of Falmer, who seemed to rouse and exert himself with great difficulty, speaking hardly a word and moving with singular stiffness and sluggishness. He appeared to have forgotten his announced project of returning toward the Orinoco, and Thone took entire charge of the preparations for departure. His companion’s condition puzzled him more and more: the signs were not born of any malady with which he was familiar. There was no fever and the symptoms were wholly obscure and ambiguous. However, on general principles, he administered a stiff dose of quinine to Falmer before they started.

The paling saffron of a sultry dawn sifted upon them through the jungle-tops as they loaded their belongings into the dugouts and pushed off down the slow current. Thone sat near the bow of one of the boats, with Falmer in the rear, and a large bundle of orchid roots and part of their equipment filling the middle. The two Indians, taciturn and stolid, occupied the other boat, together with the rest of the supplies.

It was a monotonous journey. The river wound like a sluggish olive snake between dark, interminable walls of forest, from which, at intervals, the goblin faces of orchids leaned and leered. There were no sounds other than the splash of paddles, the furious chattering of monkeys and petulant cries of strange, fiery-colored birds. The sun rose above the jungle and poured down a waveless tide of torrid brilliance.

Thone rowed steadily, looking back over his shoulder at times to address Falmer with some casual remark or friendly question. The latter, with dazed eyes and features that were queerly pale and pinched in the sunlight, sat dully erect and made no effort to use his paddle, seeming to lack both the strength and the inclination. He offered no reply to the solicitous queries of Thone, but shook his head at intervals with a sort of shuddering motion that was plainly automatic and involuntary, rather than the expression of common negation. After a while he began to moan thickly, as if in pain or delirium.