But of a sudden a noiseless light of blinding whiteness flared out from the inside of the Talayot; and after an interval of black-velvet gloom it flashed out again. His fears still were strong, but curiosity trampled them under foot, and the man in the rope sandals dropped noiselessly on to the floor of the tunnel. Again the intense white glare shone out, and the watcher saw words of writing on the farther wall of the Talayot, and him of the spectacles holding his wooden box so as to face them. Afterwards, by the light of a candle, he who had made the flashes scraped this lettering from the plaster with his knife, and his companion, laughing, scribbled something else on the blank place. And then, as the cold earthy atmosphere was beginning to make him sweat, the son of the soil climbed out again. "Great Caesar!" exclaimed Haigh, when the narrative had reached this point. "I'm beginning to have an inkling of how it was all worked out. If that chap photographed the inscription by magnesium flashlight, I verily believe I know where the plates----But don't let me interrupt yet. Finish the tale first." And so Taltavull went on. The uncanny sights which he had witnessed impressed the Cavalleria fisherman mightily, and when he received a valuable banknote, he helped fill up the hole and departed, fully determined to hold his tongue. The man with the spectacles said that evil would assuredly befall if he spoke of the things he had seen, and that fisherman believed him implicitly. The two raiders walked rapidly down the narrow lanes till they came upon the broad road at that point where it is interrupted by a hedge of wheelbarrows and gang planks. Coming down the other branch road opposite to them was the zinc-roofed diligence, which had left Ciudadella in chill darkness at a quarter to five. At their sign the driver brought the ramshackle conveyance to a stand, and they squeezed into the stuffy interior. Then with an _arre-e-ee_, and an impartial basting with the short whip, the four wretched horses got into their shamble again, and forty minutes later were climbing in and out of the clean dry holes in Calle Isabella 2^a at Mahon. They only had one hitch in their enterprise. During one of these bumps in the uneven street the door flew open, and the camera fell out on the cobble stones with a thud and a sound of splintering glass. "And I thought that man a Juggins," said Haigh, "and imagined I was blarneying and greening him _ad libitum_, whilst all the time he was bamboozling me--me--me, gentlemen. But, Senor Taltavull, are you perfectly certain the fellow is blind? I think you must be mistaken there." "He is stone-blind; but, as I told you, he is marvellously clever at concealing it. You are by no means alone in being deceived." "But, _amigo_, he looked at me when we were talking, and pointed out things about the room, and, in fact, used his eyes the whole time. Brown eyes they were, and good to look upon."