Then the pillage started. By now the meaning of the mutterings on shipboard began to be understood. For there was a conspiracy on foot. The crew were divided into two parties, one abiding by the captain, the other having elected a captain of their own intending to mutiny when the hour was ripe and follow their own leader. Moreover they allied themselves with the wretched slaves, promising them their freedom if they obeyed. And so when half the treasure was carried from the shrine, there was a sudden slashing of bonds and crying of orders and shouts and curses and the noise of stampeding men; for the mutineers had so contrived it that they should free the slaves who had sworn obedience to them, and at a given signal fly from the shrine, and rolling a tremendous boulder down the narrowing tunnel block up the entrance and so entomb their enemies alive. The plan was well arranged, and the signal was given. There was a rush for the door, for a party outside had loosened the great boulder till it needed but a push to send it crashing down the passage. So the last of the conspirators came flying for safety, and behind him, not quite understanding the business, but knowing something terrible was on foot, came the immense form of the mate, rolling out oaths and curses. But the boulder was already loosened, and lurching forward it gathered speed, and grinding the shrieking mate to the wall crashed into place, sealing up the door for ever and entombing the wretches beyond in a living death. Then there began a terrible journey back to the coast; for it seemed to the rebels that the curse of the old priest clung about their spoil. Their leader, whom they now called captain, would wake at night to hear cryings out of the earth, and whenever he lay down to sleep the voices of his enemies seemed to echo through the ground, muffled but pitiful. And sometimes he awoke to think he was lying in a pool of blood, and sprang up shouting that the smell of murder was making him mad. And others too said they were being followed by an underground rumbling like the hollow presage of earthquake, and they declared the earth heaved beneath them as though something were struggling to break through. Even the natives felt the terror in their hearts, and by ones and twos they dropped their burdens and slunk away into the night, for they said they were touching accursed stuff and the gods were angry. So the watch became more strict; and as the number of bearers diminished the remnant were again chained and driven, and the new masters were little better than the old. But it wasn't now the lust of gold that was making them cruel, but the secret dread that gnawed at their souls maddening them and making them like frenzied beasts rather than like men.