On the table was a confusion of things
brilliantly phosphorescent, emitting soft light, and mingled with
bulbs, coils and crucibles lying in a litter of egg-shells,
feathers, ivory and paper. But it was not these that held St. George
incredulous; it was the fire that glowed in their midst--a fire that
leaped and trembled and blazed inextinguishable colour, smouldering,
sparkling, tossing up a spray of strange light, lambent with those
wizard hues of the pennons and streamers floating joyously from the
dome of the Palace of the Litany--the fire from the subject hearts
of a thousand jewels. There could be no doubting what he saw. There,
flung on the table from the mouth of a carven casket and harbouring
the captive light of ages gone, glittered what St. George knew
would be the gems of the Hereditary Treasure of the kings of Yaque.
But for old Malakh to know where the jewels were--that was as
amazing as was their discovery. St. George, breathing hard in his
corner, watched the long, fine hands of the old man trembling among
the delicate tubes and spindles, lingering lovingly among the
stones, touching among the necklaces and coronals of the dead queens
whose dust lay not far away.
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