Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/202

188 nubbins of hard stone at their base, not unlike enormous pegtops.

The lathe of the weather, the rush of water and of sand-charged winds, had worn away their softer parts and left them in suggestive shapes. There were sphinxes, crouching or on tall pedestals, mammoth oysters set on edge, enormous mushrooms, antediluvian monsters standing here and there as if turned to stone like the unfortunates in the blue pool; heraldic monuments of a bygone age, mutilated by storm and time. Of red and white sand and limestone, they gave a first swift impression to Stone of being the pieces of a giants' chessboard, left at haphazard after an undecided game.

They lit a fire beside the pool and tethered the burros which munched away contentedly at the grass. All four lit their pipes and Harvey made a pot of coffee that they sipped out of tin cups. Sleep did not come readily. They were too eager for the morning. It was easy to see that Healy might have hard work finding any especial rock among all these shadowed shapes and stone nightmares but it was also hard work to sit quietly. So Ali Baba might have felt, arrived at the robbers' cave, thought Stone, suddenly realizing he had forgotten the magic word.

"Wot kind of a rock was it?" asked Larkin. "If we hall 'unted for it, mebbe we could find it."

But Healy was stubborn.

"Couldn't be done. No use tiring ourselves out."

"Ho! Very well, then, I won't tell you my hend of it. To 'ell wiv your rock!" But Larkin did not