"Bulwer_Lytton_the_Incantation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bulwer-Lytton Edward George)

solemn eyes, and said, in English, though with a foreign accent:
"The nurse born in Asia is but wise through her love; the pale son
of Europe is wise through his art. The nurse says, 'Forbear!' Do
you say, 'Adventure'?"

"Peace!" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot on the ground. "I
take no counsel from either; it is for me to resolve, for you to
obey, and for him to aid. Night is come, and we waste it; move
on."

The woman made no reply, nor did I. He took my arm and walked back
to the hut. The barbaric escort followed. When we reached the
door of the building, Margrave said a few words to the woman and to
the litter bearers. They entered the hut with us. Margrave
pointed out to the woman his coffer, to the men the fuel stowed in
the outhouse. Both were borne away and placed within the litter.
Meanwhile I took from the table, on which it was carelessly thrown,
the light hatchet that I habitually carried with me in my rambles.

"Do you think that you need that idle weapon?" said Margrave. "Do
you fear the good faith of my swarthy attendants?"

"Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever the gold from
the quartz in which we may find it imbedded, or to clear, as this
shovel, which will also be needed, from the slight soil above it,
the ore that the mine in the mountain flings forth, as the sea
casts its waifs on the sands."

"Give me your hand, fellow laborer!" said Margrave, joyfully. "Ah,
there is no faltering terror in this pulse! I was not mistaken in
the man. What rests, but the place and the hour?--I shall live, I
shall live!"


III


Margrave now entered the litter, and the Veiled Woman drew the
black curtains round him. I walked on, as the guide, some yards in
advance. The air was still, heavy, and parched with the breath of
the Australasian sirocco.

We passed through the meadow lands, studded with slumbering flocks;
we followed the branch of the creek, which was linked to its source
in the mountains by many a trickling waterfall; we threaded the
gloom of stunted, misshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark
which makes one of the signs of the strata that nourish gold; and
at length the moon, now in all her pomp of light, mid-heaven among
her subject stars, gleamed through the fissures of the cave, on
whose floor lay the relics of antediluvian races, and rested in one