While we
waited, Edmund suddenly put his hand in his pocket, and withdrawing it
quickly, said, with a bitter smile:
"What a fool I have been in my carelessness. Ingra has had the key
abstracted from my pocket by some thief. That explains how he got the car
open."
The moment the ship came we hurriedly ascended to the platform. When
Edmund saw poor Juba's body lying in the car and learned how he had made
his way there to die, he was more affected than when he first heard of
his death.
"He has died for us," he said solemnly; "he has crawled here as to a
refuge, and here he shall remain until I can bury him among his people in
his old home. Would to God I had never taken him from it!"
"Then you will start at once for the dark hemisphere?" I asked.
"At the earliest possible moment; and it shall be on the way to our own
home."
But we were not to depart before even a more terrible tragedy had
darkened over us, for now the tide of fate was suddenly running at flood.
CHAPTER XX
THE CORYBANTIA OF THE SUN
I have several times mentioned Edmund's half-formed impression that there
was some very remarkable ceremony connected with the cyclical apparition
of the sun before the eyes of its worshipers.
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