The Golden Rock Part 64

"Ask what you like; but be quick, or it will be worse for you--I swear it!"

"Do not threaten," said the other darkly; "I want my life!"

"Yes--yes."

"My liberty, and safe pa.s.sage from the valley."

"Ay, I will see you out myself; but, for G.o.d's sake, be quick!"

"And more--a full half-share of any treasure there may be here. I have lived years for it, and less I will not take."

"I know nothing of any treasure; but if there is any, halt is yours--the whole if you will hasten."

"Nay, half will do; I would not try you with the loss of the whole. How do I know you can dispose of it?"

Hume swore under his breath, and made a step forward.

"Stop!" cried the other, with so menacing a voice that Hume reeled back.

"You are wasting time now, and I feel her heart beats more slowly.

What claim have you to give half the treasure away?"

"I--I am captain of this party."

"Ay, but you are not the chief of the people here."

"No," said Hume quickly; "but here he is. Sirayo!" And he spoke hurriedly to the chief.

"Half is his," said Sirayo.

"Good!" said the man, this time in Zulu. "Swear it. I think I will trust you--since I have watched you for many nights--had your lives in my power, but spared you."

"Then bring her out!"

"Take her yourself."

And the next minute Hume was staggering blindly, fiercely through the dark and tortuous pa.s.sage, with his precious burden.

Then the stranger overturned the burning vessel in the middle of the room, and stamped on the smouldering herbs; next he lifted Webster's heavy form, to stagger off with it; while Sirayo did the same for Klaas, both returning to carry the chief, Umkomaas. They were all taken to the spring, shelters of rushes built over them, and a medicine man called to attend them. They had been all stupefied by the fumes of burning herbs, by the same fumes which, stealing through the cracks in the floor, had overcome them on their first night in the ruins; and the witch-doctor, after much waste of time over muttered incantations, brought them slowly to their senses, though they were too languid to move.

When Hume found that they had shaken off the stupor in which they were locked, he went down to the spring and stooped to quench his burning thirst; but he paused as he knelt, appalled by the reflection he saw in the clear pool--the reflection of a terrible face: the eyes red, inflamed, without eyelashes; the forehead blackened, as though covered by a mask. In his anxiety for Laura, in his joy at her recovery, he had forgotten about his injury; and now this sudden revelation filled him with horror. He turned away from the pool with a feeling of repulsion for himself, and went off to the now deserted ruins, where he faced this new trouble, and all that it meant to him of ruined hopes. With these awful eyes of his he could not face her--no, nor mingle among his fellows. He remembered how the Portuguese had exclaimed at seeing his face; and he writhed at the thought that men would start at sight of him, and women would turn shuddering away. A great bitterness filled his heart, and when he thought of Webster, he ground his teeth at the cursed chance which left him maimed, while leaving his friend free. A feeling of resentment towards Laura sprang up also, because she had feared him even in the dark.

"Would to Heaven," he muttered savagely, "I had been killed!"

And he sat staring blankly at the wall before him, and suddenly there came before him the calm face of Mr Dixon, the engineer, going to his death, cooped up in the bowels of the _Swift_, and the stern features of Captain Pardoe. Then he rose with a faint smile about his lips and went to the inner chamber, where he found Ferrara preparing a torch, while Sirayo sat near, as calm and indifferent as though he had pa.s.sed an uneventful day.

"Are your mends better?" asked Ferrara.

"Yes," was the curt reply. "What do you hope to find here?"

"That which has brought you to this valley, and led us upon your tracks, and sent many of us on the longest journey of all--the love of gain."

"And what good, after all?"

"Very little good to you, my friend; but for me--I am not too old to have one last fling after having lived the life of a savage. Now let us find and share."

He lit the torch and held it close to the arched roof, and the flaming light was reflected on a double row of shining objects. His eyes glittered as he examined them closely.

"Ah," he muttered, "the man did not lie, then. These are the teeth of gold."

"Teeth," said Hume, throwing off his moody air--"teeth of what?"

"Why, of this serpent. Have you not been through the coils?--and this place is the head. The temple above was reared on the coils of a serpent, and the simple people of the valley have kept alive the old worship in some of its forms. These two points of light at the narrow end are the nostrils. But you knew of this."

"Nothing. We came in search of the Golden Rock."

"Yes; I have seen that wondrous thing, but it was not to be carried away bodily, while these treasures may."

And with a strong tug he wrenched one of the curved teeth from its socket, and as it lay in the broad palm, the three heads bent over to examine it--a finely-wrought piece of pure metal, two inches in length, and about a quarter of a pound in weight. There were altogether forty-eight of these teeth, and in an hour they had all been wrenched from the sockets which had retained them in glittering rows for many centuries.

"My knowledge of values is rather musty. What would you judge the worth of these?"

"About a thousand," said Hume, after a mental calculation.

"Is that all? Then my share will not purchase a month's enjoyment. You gave me half for the life of that girl, yet I had you all at my mercy, and spared you. Come, comrade, what say you to my taking the whole?

Remember, you offered me all."

Hume divided the yellow pile into two parts, and emptied one half into Sirayo's skin bag.

"There! that is your share," he said sternly, and Ferrara, muttering to himself, stored the precious burden about his person.

Hume looked curiously at the tall dark man.

"Who are you?" he asked, "and why have you followed us so closely?"

"Who am I? Ho, ho! I scarcely know. Ask the Zulus; they will tell you I am the great Witch-Doctor, whose coming and going no man knows. Ask the white traders--they will tell you I am the Hermit of the River. Ask the Portuguese--they will say I am Alfonse Ferrara, the lieutenant who killed his captain at Delagoa Bay. I am all these, and for twenty years I have lived on the banks of the river, alone--alone with the running water, the brooding trees, and the things that move in the night."

"The animals?" whispered Hume, awed by the light which smouldered in the dark eyes opposite him.

"The animals--phaugh! they shrink at my coming. No, no, the soft, silent, gliding things that lurk in the shadows; that watch me looking over their shoulders, or peeping from the shelter of rocks, or from out the dark pool. I want to get away from them;" and he glared round the cavern, shuddering.

Hume shuddered too at the glimpse of madness in Ferrara's gesture.

"But why did you dog us?"

"Because I knew what you were after, and I wanted it for myself. Years ago I knew of the secret of this valley. It was I who set your uncle upon the quest, in the hope I might afterwards rob him. I have haunted this place, but in vain, for they kept too close a watch. It was necessary to have help, and before you came, I sent a message to a Portuguese trader. You came when my plans were ready, and if it had not been that I mistrusted my countrymen, you would have been killed while you slept; but if they had played me false, I would have sought your help."

"You appeared to us as a savage," said Hume, repressing a feeling of abhorrence.

"Yes," replied Ferrara with a mysterious air, and dropping his voice.