A to Z Classics - Bram Stoker - The Complete Novels

“Well, it seems to me that the mountain is giving up its secrets to-day. We have found the Frenchmen’s treasure, and now we may expect, I suppose, to find the lost crown. By George, though, it is strange! They said the Snake became the Shifting Bog, and that it went out by the Shleenanaher, as we saw the bog did.”

When we got well into the chine we began to look about us curiously. There was something odd — something which we did not expect. Dick was the most prying, and certainly the most excited of us all. He touched some of the rock and then almost shouted:

“Hurrah! this a day of discoveries! — Hurrah! hurrah!”

“Now, Dick, what is it?” I asked — myself in a tumult, for his enthusiasm, although we did not know the cause, excited us all.

“Why, man, don’t you see? This is what we have wanted all along.”

“What is? Speak out, man dear! We are all in ignorance.”

Dick laid his hand impressively on the rock.

“Limestone! There is a streak of it here, right through the mountain; and, moreover, look, look! This is not all Nature’s work; these rocks have been cut in places by the hands of men.”

We all got very excited, and hurried up the chine; but the rocks now joined over our heads, and all was dark beyond, and the chine became a cave.

“Has anyone a match? We must have a light of some kind here,” said Joyce.

“There is the lantern in the house. I shall run for it. Don’t stir until I get back,” I cried; and I ran out and climbed the side of the ravine, and got to Joyce’s house as soon as I could.

My haste and impetuosity frightened Miss Joyce, who called in terror:

“Is there anything wrong — not an accident I hope?”

“No, no; we only want to examine a rock, and the place is dark. Give us the lantern — quick — and some matches.”

“Aisy, aisy, alanna!” she said. “The rock won’t run away.”

I took the lantern and matches and ran back. When we had lit the lantern, Norah suggested that we should be very careful, as there might be foul air about. Dick laughed at the idea.

“No foul air here, Norah; it was full of water a few hours ago,” and, taking the lantern, he went into the narrow opening. We all followed, Norah clinging tightly to me. The cave widened as we entered, and we stood in a moderate-sized cavern, partly natural and partly hollowed out by rough tools. Here and there were inscriptions in strange character, formed by straight vertical lines something like the old telegraph signs, but placed differently.

“Ogham! — one of the oldest and least known of writings,” said Dick, when the light fell on them as he raised the lantern.

At the far end of the cave was a sort of slab or bracket, formed of a part of the rock carven out. Norah went towards it, and called us to her with a loud cry. We all rushed over, and Dick threw the light of the lantern on her; and then exclamations of wonder burst from us also.

In her hand she held an ancient crown of strange form. It was composed of three pieces of flat gold joined all along one edge, like angle-iron, and twisted delicately. The gold was wider and the curves bolder in the centre, from which they were fined away to the ends and then curved into a sort of hook. In the centre was set a great stone, that shone with the yellow light of a topaz, but with a fire all its own.

Dick was the first to regain his composure, and, as usual, to speak.

“The Lost Crown of Gold! — the crown that gave the Hill its name, and was the genesis of the story of St. Patrick and the King of the Snakes. Moreover, see, there is a scientific basis for the legend. Before this stream cut its way out through the limestone, and made this cavern, the waters were forced upward to the lake at the top of the Hill, and so kept it supplied; but when its channel was cut here — or a way opened for it by some convulsion of nature, or the rending asunder of these rocks — the lake fell away.”

He stopped, and I went on:

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, the legend is true: that the Lost Crown would be discovered when the water of the lake was found again.”

“Begor, that’s thrue, anyhow!” said the voice of Andy in the entrance. “Well, yer ‘an’r, iv all the sthrange things what iver happened, this is the most shtrangest! Fairies isn’t in it this time, at all, at all!”

I told Andy something of what had happened, including the terrible deaths of Murdock and Moynahan, and sent him off to tell the head-constable of police, and anyone else he might see. I told him also of the two skeletons found beside the chest.

Andy was off like a rocket. Such news as he had to tell would not come twice in a man’s lifetime, and would make him famous through all the country-side. When he was gone we decided that we had seen all that was worth while, and agreed to go back to the house, where we might be on hand to answer all queries regarding the terrible occurrences of the night. When we got outside the cave, and had ascended the ravine, I noticed that the crown in Norah’s hands had now none of the yellow glare of the jewel, and feared the latter had been lost. I said to her:

“Norah, dear, have you dropped the jewel from the crown?”

She held it up, startled, to see; and then we all wondered again, for the jewel was still there, but it had lost its yellow colour, and shone with a white light, something like the lustre of a pearl seen in the midst of the flash of diamonds. It looked like some kind of uncut crystal, but none of us had ever seen anything like it.

We had hardly got back to the house when the result of Andy’s mission began to be manifested. Every soul in the country-side seemed to come pouring in to see the strange sights at Knockcalltecrore. There was a perfect babel of sounds; and every possible and impossible story, and theory, and conjecture was ventilated at the top of the voice of everyone, male and female.

The head-constable was one of the first to arrive. He came into the cottage, and we gave him all the required details of Murdock’s and Moynahan’s death, which he duly wrote down, and then went off with Dick to go over the ground.

Presently there was a sudden silence among the crowd outside, the general body of which seemed to continue as great as ever from the number of new arrivals, despite the fact that a large number of those present had followed Dick and the head-constable in their investigation of the scene of the catastrophe. The silence was as odd as noise would have been under ordinary circumstances, so I went to the door to see what it meant. In the porch I met Father Ryan, who had just come from the scene of the disaster. He shook me warmly by the hand, and said loudly, so that all those around might hear:

“Mr. Severn, I’m real glad and thankful to see ye this day. Praise be to God, that watched over ye last night, and strengthened the arms of that brave girl to hold ye up.”

Here Norah came to join us; and he took her warmly by both hands, while the people cheered.

“My, but we’re all proud of ye! Remember that God has given a great mercy through your hands, and ye both must thank him all the days of your life. And those poor men that met their death so horribly — poor Moynahan, in his drunken slumber. Men, it’s a warning to ye all. Whenever ye may be tempted to take a glass too much, let the fate of that poor soul rise up before ye and forbid ye to go too far. As for that unhappy Murdock, may God forgive him and look lightly on his sins! I told him what he should expect — that the fate of Ahab and Jezebel would be his. For Ahab coveted the vineyard of his neighbor Naboth, and as Jezebel wrought evil to aid him to his desire, so this man hath coveted his neighbor’s goods and wrought evil to ruin him. And now behold his fate, even as the fate of Ahab and Jezebel! He went without warning and without rites, and no man knows where his body lies. The fishes of the sea have preyed on him, even as the dogs on Jezebel.”