Toiling onward, like driven cattle, they swerved from the road presently and breasted a sharp incline.  Their boots squelched on the sodden turf; the wind bore on them heavily.

George saw the dancing lanthorn go up the slope in front of him like a will-o’-the-wisp—­stop, and swing steady, heard the loud cry of jubilation that issued from the withered throat.

“It is true!  The moment is realized!”

They stood together on the verge of the upper lip of the fissure.  It was a cliff now, twenty, thirty feet to its base.  The lower ground had fallen like a dead jaw; had slipped—­none so great a distance—­down the slope leading to the under-cliff, and lay a billowing mass subsided upon itself.

De Jussac would stand not an instant.

“We must climb down—­somehow, anyhow!” he cried feverishly.  “We must search all along what was once the bottom of the cleft.”

“It is a risk, sir.  Why not wait till the morning?”

“No, no! now!  My God!  I demand it.  Others may forestall us if we delay.  See, my friend, I wish but my own; and what proof of right have I if another should snatch the treasure?”

“The treasure?”

“It is our fortune that lies there—­yours, and mine, and the little Plancine’s.  Do I know what I say?  Hurry, hurry, hurry! while my heart does not burst.”

He forced the lanthorn into the young man’s hands.  He was panting and sobbing like a child.  Before the other realized his intention, he had flung himself upon his hands and knees, had slipped over the edge, and was scrambling down the broken wall of lias.

There was nothing for George but to take his own life in hand and humour his venerated elder.  He followed with the lanthorn, thinking of Plancine a little, and hoping he should fall on a soft place.

But they got down in safety, breathing hard and extremely dirty.  Caution, it is true, reacts very commonly upon itself.

The moment his companion’s feet touched bottom, De Jussac snatched the light from his hand, roughly enough to send him off his balance, and went scurrying to and fro along the face of the cliff like a mad thing.

“I cannot find it!” he cried, rushing back after an interval—­nervous, in an agony of restlessness—­a very pitiable old man.

George spoke up from the ground.

“Find what?” said he, feeling all sopped and dazed.

“The box—­the casket!  It could never perish.  It was of sheet-iron.  Look, look, my friend!  Your eyes are younger than mine—­a box, a foot long, of hard iron!”

“I am sitting upon something hard,” said George.

He sprang to his feet and took the lanthorn.

“Bones,” said he, peering down.  “Some old mastodon, I expect.  Is this your treasure?”

De Jussac was glaring.  His head drooped lower and lower.  His lips were parted, and the line of strong white teeth showed between them.  His voice, when he spoke, was quite fearful in its low intensity.