So they toiled up the endless steps, a very strange procession, for the two Zulus, bold men enough outside, were shaking with fright, till at length Benita clambered out of the trap door on to the floor of the treasure chamber, and turned to help Robert, whose lameness made him somewhat slow and awkward. “What’s all that?” he asked, pointing to the hide sacks, while they waited for the two scared Kaffirs to join them. “Oh!” she answered indifferently, “gold, I believe. Look, there is some of it on the floor, over Benita da Ferreira’s footsteps.” “Gold! Why, it must be worth----! And who on earth is Benita da Ferreira?” “I will tell you afterwards. She has been dead two or three hundred years; it was her gold, or her people’s, and those are her footprints in the dust. How stupid you are not to understand! Never mind the hateful stuff; come on quickly.” So they passed the door which she had opened that morning, and clambered up the remaining stairway. So full was Benita of terrors that she could never remember how she climbed them. Suppose that the foot of the crucifix had swung to; suppose that her father were dead; suppose that Jacob Meyer had broken into the cave? Well for herself she was no longer afraid of Jacob Meyer. Oh, they were there! The heavy door _had_ begun to close, but mercifully her bit of rock kept it ajar. “Father! Father!” she cried, running towards the tent. No answer came. She threw aside the flap, held down the lantern and looked. There he lay, white and still. She was too late! “He is dead, he is dead!” she wailed. Robert knelt down at her side, and examined the old man, while she waited in an agony. “He ought to be,” he said slowly; “but, Benita, I don’t think he is. I can feel his heart stir. No, don’t stop to talk. Pour out some of that squareface, and here, mix it with this milk.” She obeyed, and while he held up her father’s head, with a trembling hand emptied a little of the drink into his mouth. At first it ran out again, then almost automatically he swallowed some, and they knew that he was alive, and thanked Heaven. Ten minutes later Mr. Clifford was sitting up staring at them with dull and wondering eyes, while outside the two Zulus, whose nerves had now utterly broken down, were contemplating the pile of skeletons in the corner and the white towering crucifix, and loudly lamenting that they should have been brought to perish in this place of bones and ghosts. “Is it Jacob Meyer who makes that noise?” asked Mr. Clifford faintly. “And, Benita, where have you been so long, and--who is this gentleman with you? I seem to remember his face.” “He is the white man who was in the waggon, father, an old friend come to life again. Robert, can’t you stop the howling of those Kaffirs? Though I am sure I don’t wonder that they howl; I should have liked to do so for days. Oh! father, father, don’t you understand me? We are saved, yes, snatched out of hell and the jaws of death.”