She had saved him, but at what a fearful cost!  The agonized lover realized it all, as he tenderly placed her on the rock beside which they were standing.  Then, like the man who, knowing he has been fatally struck by the rattlesnake or cobra, turns to stamp the life out of the reptile, before looking after his own wound, he faced about and brought his rifle to his shoulder.  The dusky miscreant cowered low, but he could not save himself, for the bullet which left the Winchester, entering at the skull, ranged through the length of his body, and he rolled off the ledge like a rotten log and went down the yawning abyss that afforded a fit sepulture for such as he.

King Haffgo was standing erect, as if defying the white man to fire at him.  He had seen the result of the shot and he did not regret it.

“Die the death you deserve!” he called out in English; “for you are not the daughter of Haffgo!”

Then he turned about and moved along the ledge, while Ashman stood for an instant, with weapon levelled, feeling that the awful occurrence had absolved him from the pledge made a short time before.

He was aiming, when a faint voice at his side said: 

“No, hurt him not; I shall get well!”

Letting the rifle fall from his grasp, he wheeled around as if he had been shot himself.

What did he see?

The brave Ariel had drawn the arrow from her arm, and was sitting erect.  In her right hand, was a small earthen bottle such as was in common use among the Murhapas.

“Great heaven! what does this mean?” demanded her lover, uncertain whether he was awake or dreaming.

She smiled faintly, and said: 

“I feel a little faint, but the danger is past.”

“But,—­but,”—­he added, “the arrow was poisoned!”

“Yes, but the poison has a remedy; it is in that,” she added, holding up the bottle; “my parent always carried it; I brought it with me when I left home.”

The overjoyed lover could not repress a shout of joy,—­a shout which penetrated every portion of the cavern of diamonds, but whose meaning, fortunately for the couple, was not understood by the ears on which it fell.

He knelt beside her, so that the bowlders shut both from the view of any prowlers who might seek to reach them.  He kissed the happy face again and again; he called her the sweetest names that ever mortal uttered, and he assured her that they should both live and be happy forever.

In his overflowing bliss, he could not realize that they were still walled in on every hand.  All that he could know and feel, was, that she was spared from a dreadful death,—­that she had interposed her own precious body to protect him from harm.

Enwrapped in his arms, she was obliged to confess that the bringing of the potent remedy was an inspiration, when she stole out of her father’s house, for she never dreamed of the use to which it would be put.