The others saw also, and the sight proved too much for our shattered nerves.  One and all we scrambled out of the cave as fast as our half-frozen limbs would carry us.

CHAPTER VII

SOLOMON’S ROAD

Outside the cavern we halted, feeling rather foolish.

“I am going back,” said Sir Henry.

“Why?” asked Good.

“Because it has struck me that—­what we saw—­may be my brother.”

This was a new idea, and we re-entered the place to put it to the proof.  After the bright light outside, our eyes, weak as they were with staring at the snow, could not pierce the gloom of the cave for a while.  Presently, however, they grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, and we advanced towards the dead man.

Sir Henry knelt down and peered into his face.

“Thank God,” he said, with a sigh of relief, “it is not my brother.”

Then I drew near and looked.  The body was that of a tall man in middle life with aquiline features, grizzled hair, and a long black moustache.  The skin was perfectly yellow, and stretched tightly over the bones.  Its clothing, with the exception of what seemed to be the remains of a woollen pair of hose, had been removed, leaving the skeleton-like frame naked.  Round the neck of the corpse, which was frozen perfectly stiff, hung a yellow ivory crucifix.

“Who on earth can it be?” said I.

“Can’t you guess?” asked Good.

I shook my head.

“Why, the old Dom, Jose da Silvestra, of course—­who else?”

“Impossible,” I gasped; “he died three hundred years ago.”

“And what is there to prevent him from lasting for three thousand years in this atmosphere, I should like to know?” asked Good.  “If only the temperature is sufficiently low, flesh and blood will keep fresh as New Zealand mutton for ever, and Heaven knows it is cold enough here.  The sun never gets in here; no animal comes here to tear or destroy.  No doubt his slave, of whom he speaks on the writing, took off his clothes and left him.  He could not have buried him alone.  Look!” he went on, stooping down to pick up a queerly-shaped bone scraped at the end into a sharp point, “here is the ‘cleft bone’ that Silvestra used to draw the map with.”

We gazed for a moment astonished, forgetting our own miseries in this extraordinary and, as it seemed to us, semi-miraculous sight.

“Ay,” said Sir Henry, “and this is where he got his ink from,” and he pointed to a small wound on the Dom’s left arm.  “Did ever man see such a thing before?”