“With Golconda and Potosi beneath our very feet,” he exclaimed at last, “to be held up by this scurvy pock-marked ruffian, I swear ’I like it not.’  No news from your duck-shooting friend either.  It is a slow-moving world, and the Bird of Time has either lost his wings, or been captured as a specimen on behalf of the Smithsonian Institute.”

At last there came a message from Charlie Webster, another of his Caesarian notes:  “Sorry delayed a few days longer.  Any news?”

That seemed to decide the “King.”

“What do you say, Ulysses,” he said, “if we begin digging to-morrow?  There are ten of us—­with as many guns, four revolvers and plenty of machetes—­not counting Calypso, who is an excellent shot herself.”

I agreed that nothing would please me better—­so, an early hour of the following morning found us with the whole garrison—­excepting Samson, whom it had been thought wise to leave at home as a bodyguard for Calypso—­lined up at the old ruined mansion, with picks and shovels and machetes, ready to commence operations.

The first thing was to get rid of the immense web, which, as I have already described, the forest had woven with diabolic ingenuity all around, and in and out the skeleton of the sturdy old masonry.  Till that was done, it was impossible to get any notion of the ground plan of the several connected buildings.  So the first day was taken up with the chopping and slashing of vegetable serpents, the tearing out of roots that writhed as if with conscious life, the shearing away of all manner of haunted leafage, all those dense fierce growths with which Nature loves to proclaim her luxuriant victory over the work of man’s hands—­as soon, so to say, as his back is turned for a moment—­like a stealthy savage foe ever on the watch in the surrounding darkness and only waiting for the hushing of human voices, for the cessation of human footsteps, to rush in and overwhelm.

“‘I passed by the walls of Balclutha and they were desolate’” quoted the “King,” touched, as a less reflective mind must have been, by this sinister triumph of those tireless natural forces that neither slumber nor sleep.

“Here,” said he, “is the future of London and Paris—­in miniature.  The flora and fauna will be different.  There will be none of these nasty centipedes” (he had just crushed one with his foot), “and oaks, beeches, and other such friendly trees will take the place of these outlandish monstrosities.  That pretty creature, the wild rose, will fill the desolation with her sweet breath, but the incredible desolation will be there; and as we here to-day watch this gum-elemi tree, flourishing where the good Teach ‘gloried and drank deep,’ so the men of future days will hear the bittern booming in the Rue de la Paix and their children will go a-blackberrying in Trafalgar Square.  Selah!”

Two days we were at it with axe and machete—­wearisome work which gave Tom and me occasion to exchange memories of the month we had put in together on the Dead Men’s Shoes.  We smiled at each other, as the other fellows groaned and sweated.  It seemed child’s play to us, after what we had gone through.