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"Well, my cold-blooded friend, what will you say when I tell you that Lilama was an orphan, and had inherited from her father the only island in the archipelago upon which precious stones were found, and that even in that strange land she was wealthier than the king?
Why should a stranger come through ten thousand perils to add to all my untold agonies. Here for a moment his voice softened, almost to a gentle whisper. 'Ah, Lilama, once, only once, you shall, of your own free will, clasp those arms around me if not in love, then in terror.
Questioned closely, she said that after Pym had gone, Lilama suddenly bethought her of a former servant, an old nurse, who for some years past had lived quite alone, and that Lilama had decided to have the poor old woman found, and cared for.
Exposure to danger had made Pym in times of trouble a rapid thinker, and the thoughts which I have mentioned passed through his mind in less than a minute of time. Then he turned to Lilama, and asked if there was beneath the house a cellar.
Within twenty minutes of the time Peters had suggested to Pym the danger of freezing to be apprehended, Lilama and her maids were safely placed in the cellar, and were making merry over their strange surroundings and attire. Then Pym and Peters hastened from the house, to see what could be done for others.
As I took my leave of Doctor Castleton, and after he had spoken of the death of Lilama, he said: "I trust, young man, that you are pleased with your discovery I know that Bainbridge is;" and he accompanied the remark with a searching glance of those large black eyes, the meaning of which I could not then fathom, and the recollection of which has often puzzled me.
These were, of course, the sapphire, ruby, topaz, amethyst, and other varieties of corundum, the islands evidently containing no emeralds or diamonds. Lilama selected from a tray a stone the color of pigeon-blood, and about the size of an English walnut, which she handed to Pym as she might have handed him a beautiful rose. In Europe or America this stone would have purchased a fair-sized town.
He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save her which was unlikely, even if possible or unless we could invent some plan of capture so peculiar as to baffle the madman a man, by the bye, of enormous physical strength, and with a madman's cunning.
How much longer would this scene of terror last? Oh, the thought of that awful leap into space! The maniac might any moment end the scene each time as he approached in that wild rush backward and forward might be the last. The slightest move, the slightest sound, might precipitate the dire calamity and Lilama as well as Pym and Peters seemed to feel this truth.
Yes, and you may see her, too. Then Ahpilus stepped off behind some thick, stunted bushes of a variety of evergreen, whence, in a moment, he returned, leading by the wrist Lilama. 'Great Jove above! Girl, do you see your lover over there?
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