* * * * * In a few joyous steps, Professor Prescott had reached his audacious companion. "Thank God!" he gasped. "I'd given you up for lost." "Why give me up for anything so unpleasant?" was the genial reply. "I've just been enjoying the view." "Then--then you reached the top?" with a quick intake of breath. "Well, not exactly, but I feel on top of the world, just the same." The professor's spirits fell. "Then I can't see--" "Of course you can't see!" interrupted Stoddard. "But look at this!" As he spoke, he drew from a pocket of his leather jacket something that caught the last light of the dying day and refracted it with weird brilliance. Professor Prescott blinked. "Well?" "A diamond. As big as your fist! And here's another!" His left hand reached into his jacket and produced a second sparkling gem. "But--but I don't understand--" "Granted. But you will, when I tell you I've found the Diamond Thunderbolt!" The professor gave a shrug of scorn. "And no doubt you've seen the snow people and have had a perfect afternoon, while--" "No, I haven't seen any snow people, but I've had a perfect afternoon, all right! As I said, I've found the Diamond Thunderbolt; and here are a couple of chips, picked up from around the edge." * * * * * So saying, Stoddard extended his two specimens toward Professor Prescott, who disdained at first to touch them. "Nothing but quartz!" was the deprecating comment. "The snow has affected your eyesight, as it has my own." "I'll say it's affected _yours_, if you don't recognize diamonds when you see them. But wait till I show you the old Thunderbolt itself! It's--" "More quartz!" brusquely. "Be sensible, Jack. This Diamond Thunderbolt thing is a pure myth, like the snow people business. Just because this section of India is known as The Land of the Diamond Thunderbolt you think you're going to find some precious meteor or other, whereas the term applies merely to the Lama's scepter." "Granted it does,"--a little impatiently--"but did it ever occur to you that where there's smoke, there's fire? Meteor is the word! One struck here once--a diamond meteor!--and I've found it. Take a look at these two specimens and see what you think." Whereupon Professor Prescott accepted the glinting gems from his young friend--to gasp a moment later, as he held them tremblingly: "Good Lord--they're diamonds, to be sure! Where did you find them?" * * * * * Stoddard hesitated before replying. "Not far from here," he said at length, moving off. "Come, I'll show you." But the professor stood firm on their narrow ledge. "You must be crazy!" he exclaimed. "We'll have trouble enough now, getting back. It's practically dark already." "Then what's the odds?" retorted the young geologist. "We've got all night." "But our friends at Camp No. 4. Even now, they must think we are lost."