He screamed with laughter, like a man laughing at the most riotous adventure. Then came silence. The roars of thunder ceased. Vorski bent forward and suddenly, from the top of the ladder, shouted:
"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani! The gods have forsaken her. Death has done its work. The last[Pg 253] of the four women is dead. Veronique is dead!"
He was silent once again and then roared twice over:
"Veronique is dead! Veronique is dead!"
Once again there was a great, deep silence.
And all of a sudden the earth shook, not with a vibration produced by the thunder, but with a deep inner convulsion, which came from the very bowels of the earth and was repeated several times, like a noise reechoing through the woods and hills.
And almost at the same time, close by, at the other end of the semicircle of oaks, a fountain of fire shot forth and rose to the sky, in a whirl of smoke in which flared red, yellow and violet flames.
Vorski did not speak a word. His companions stood aghast. One of them stammered:
"It's the old rotten oak, the one which has already been struck by lightning."
Though the fire had disappeared almost instantly, the three men retained the fantastic vision of the old oak, all aglow, vomiting flames and smoke of many colours.
"This is the entrance leading to the God-Stone," said Vorski, solemnly. "Destiny has spoken, as I said it would: and it has spoken at the bidding of me who was once its servant and who am now its master."
He advanced, carrying the lantern. They were surprised to see that the tree showed no trace of fire and that the mass of dry leaves, held as in a bowl where a few lower branches were outspread, had not caught fire.
"Yet another miracle," said Vorski. "It is all an inconceivable miracle."
[Pg 254]"What are we going to do?" asked Conrad.
"Go in by the entrance revealed to us… Take the ladder, Conrad, and feel with your hand in that heap of leaves. The tree is hollow and we shall soon see…"
"A tree can be as hollow as you please," said Otto, "but there are always roots to it; and I can hardly believe in a passage through the roots."
"I repeat, we shall see. Move the leaves, Conrad, clear them away."
"No, I won't," said Conrad, bluntly.
"What do you mean, you won't? Why not?"
"Have you forgotten Maguennoc? Have you forgotten that he tried to touch the God-Stone and had to cut his hand off?"
"But this isn't the God-Stone!" Vorski snarled.
"How do you know? Maguennoc was always speaking of the gate of hell. Isn't this what he meant when he talked like that?"
Vorski shrugged his shoulders:
"And you, Otto, are you afraid too?"
Otto did not reply: and Vorski himself did not seem eager to risk the attempt, for he ended by saying:
"After all, there's no hurry. Let's wait till daylight comes. We will cut down the tree with an axe: and that will show us better than anything how things stand and how to go to work."
They agreed accordingly. But, as the signal had been seen by others besides themselves and as they must not allow themselves to be forestalled, they resolved to sit down opposite the tree, under the shelter offered by the huge table of the Fairies' Dolmen.
[Pg 255]"Otto," said Vorski, "go to the Priory, fetch us something to drink and also bring an axe, some ropes and anything else that we're likely to want."
The rain was beginning to pour in torrents. They settled themselves under the dolmen and each in turn kept watch while the other slept.
Nothing happened during the night. The storm was very violent. They could hear the waves roaring. Then gradually everything grew quiet.
At daybreak they attacked the oak-tree, which they soon overthrew by pulling upon the ropes.
They now saw that, inside the tree itself, amid the rubbish and the dry rot, a sort of trench had been dug, which extended through the mass of sand and stones packed about the roots.
They cleared the ground with a pick-axe. Some steps at once came into sight: there was a sudden drop of earth: and they saw a staircase which followed a perpendicular wall and led down into the darkness. They threw the light of their lantern before them. A cavern opened beneath their feet.
Vorski was the first to venture down. The others followed him cautiously.
The steps, which at first consisted of earthen stairs reinforced by flints, were presently hewn out of the rock. The cave which they entered was in no way peculiar and seemed rather to be a vestibule. It communicated, in fact, with a sort of crypt, which had a vaulted ceiling and walls of rough masonry of unmortared stones.
All around, like shapeless statues, stood twelve small menhirs, each of which was surmounted by a horse's skull. Vorski touched one of these skulls; it crumbled into dust.
[Pg 256]"No one has been to this crypt," he said, "for twenty centuries. We are the first men to tread the floor of it, the first to behold the traces of the past which it contains."
He added, with increasing emphasis:
"It is the mortuary-chamber of a great chieftain. They used to bury his favourite horses with him… and his weapons too. Look, here are axes… and a flint knife; and we also find the remains of certain funeral rites, as this piece of charcoal shows and, over there, those charred bones…"
His voice was husky with emotion. He muttered: "I am the first to enter here. I was expected. A whole world awakens at my coming."
Conrad interrupted him:
"There are other doorways, another passage; and there's a sort of light showing in the distance."
A narrow corridor brought them to a second chamber, through which they reached yet a third. The three crypts were exactly alike, with the same masonry, the same upright stones, the same horses' skulls.
"The tombs of three great chieftains," said Vorski. "They evidently lead to the tomb of a king; and the chieftains must have been the king's guards, after being his companions during his lifetime. No doubt it's the next crypt."
He hesitated to go farther, not from fear, but from excessive excitement and a sense of inflamed vanity which he was enjoying to the fulclass="underline"
"I am on the verge of knowledge," he declaimed, in dramatic tones. "Vorski is approaching the goal and has only to put out his hand to be regally rewarded for his labours and his struggles. The God-[Pg 257]Stone is there. For ages and ages men have sought to fathom the secret of the island and not one has succeeded. Vorski came and the God-Stone is his. So let it show itself to me and give me the promised power. There is nothing between it and Vorski, nothing but my will. And I declare my will! The prophet has risen out of the night. He is here. If there be, in this kingdom of the dead, a shade whose duty it is to lead me to the divine stone and place the golden crown upon my head, let that shade arise! Here stands Vorski."
He went in.
The fourth room was much larger and shaped like a dome with a slightly flattened summit. In the middle of the flattened part was a round hole, no wider than the hole left by a very small flue; and from it there fell a shaft of half-veiled light which formed a very plainly-defined disk on the floor.
The centre of this disk was occupied by a little block of stones set together. And on this block, as though purposely displayed, lay a metal rod.
In other respects, this crypt did not differ from the first three. Like them it was adorned with menhirs and horses' heads, like them it contained traces of sacrifices.
Vorski did not take his eyes off the metal rod. Strange to say, the metal gleamed as though no dust had ever covered it. He put out his hand.
"No, no," said Conrad, quickly.