By a stroke of exceeding bad fortune two of them had struck each of the water-barrels and started the staves.

The contents quietly ebbed away beneath the broad sheet, and flowing inwards by reason of the sharp slope of the ledge, percolated through the fault.

Iris and he, notwithstanding their frenzied efforts, were not able to save more than a pint of gritty discolored fluid.

The rest, infinitely more valuable to them than all the diamonds of De Beers, was now oozing through the natural channel cut by centuries of storm, dripping upon the headless skeleton in the cave, soaking down to the very heart of their buried treasure.
Jenks was so paralyzed by this catastrophe that Iris became alarmed.

As yet she did not grasp its awful significance.