Chapter Thirty Six.
The Underground Chamber.
Sirayo’s leadership had prevailed. He attacked the main body of the enemy before sunrise, and the young warriors of the Rock, fired by his ferocious courage, had withstood the desperate rush of the Zulus until Chanda’s regiment came up on the trail of the second detachment, when the enemy, terribly thinned, took the path to the mountain wisely left open for them.
Before the fight Sirayo had taken the long throwing assegai from Inyami and snapped the haft across his knee within three feet of the blade.
“Do ye likewise,” he said to the regiment, “and you will fight the Zulus hand-to-hand with their own weapons, for it is by their short assegais they have conquered.”
The young warriors obeyed, and for the first time they went into a fight without hurling their spears.
After the great fight, which left the ground about a lonely rock of strange shape strewn with dead and dying, the women flocked to the scene, to attend to the wounded, and Sirayo, with the remnant of his band, marched to the ruins. As they neared the place, the men broke out with their song of victory—a deep-throated roar tossed to the mountain—and the warriors about the ruins formed up to meet them, whistling shrilly and drumming on their shields, while the boy-chief stood before the ranks, his black eyes glittering.
“Bayate!” they thundered. “Great is Sirayo, the big black bull, the swooping eagle!”
The air vibrated to their shouts, and the warriors of the Rock, with the marks of battle on them, gave an answering shout, and proclaimed Sirayo as their chief.
If the Zulu had been a younger man, he would perhaps have seized the opportunity and grasped the proffered honour, which would have meant instant death to the little chief, and a fierce attack upon any suspected of supporting him.
As it was, the chief took a pinch of snuff, while his bloodshot eyes glared fiercely at the son of Umkomaas, standing within reach of his red and dripping assegai.
“Do you hear, little chief?” he said in his deep tones.
“I hear, and I know. Strike if you will.”
Sirayo took from his head the broken eagle plume, and fixed it on the head of the child.
“Behold your chief!” he cried, lifting his assegai and letting his dark glance sweep along the ranks of excited men. “He is a babe, but he has the heart of a lion. Chief, see your men; they fought like my own Zulus of the far south. Take thought that your heart never turns black towards them.”
Then Sirayo turned into the ruins, and found Hume wetting with his dripping handkerchief the lips of the old woman, who lay bleeding slowly from a wound in the breast. The chief looked at the fallen stones and at the prone body of the Portuguese Captain.
“What evil has happened?” he asked.
“I heard them shout your name, chief,” said Hume, keeping his face bent over the woman; “you have triumphed?”
“Yebo! it was well done, and it was a great fight. Your eyes are no longer dark; that is better than my victory. Ay, it is good! Where are the others?”
“Down there;” and he pointed at the hole.
“Did they go before the fight, and leave you alone?”
“I could not see, and they were hurried. They forgot me.”
“Yoh! And do they hide there like jackals? It was not a good thing to leave a blind man.”
“They did it without thought I fear there is something dark thereunder, chief, for a strange man, I think, has gone down. I would have followed, but my head was dizzy from a fall; and then I heard this old woman crying feebly for water, and I went out to the spring. We must go down.”
Sirayo called for men, and when a few came in with wild looks he bid them carry the old woman to the spring and tend to her. The men exclaimed, when they saw Hume, and clapped their hands to their mouths, but Sirayo sternly bid them go.
“They do not like my face,” said Hume, with a bitter smile.
“They are not women, that they should be terrified at a scar received in battle.”
“Then my face would frighten a woman;” and he shuddered. “Will you go first, chief?”
A faint smile flickered for a second about the grim mouth of the warrior; then he lowered himself into the hole. “We shall need a light,” he said, and split the haft of an assegai. They found themselves in a narrow passage curiously arched and ribbed, which coiled round and widened as they advanced, turning always to the left. The walls were polished, as if by constant friction, and where the ribs met overhead was a well-defined ridge, or backbone, regularly articulated. It was very still, the stagnant air heavy with a sickly odour, and twice they paused to struggle against a feeling of dizziness; but a slight current of air, coming with a cooling touch, freshened them, so they were able to struggle on, through a short length where the passage suddenly narrowed, to a large wedge-shaped chamber.
They stood peering by the flickering and waning light at some dim forms stretched upon the floor, at two spots of light at the far end through which the air came, at a double row of shining objects on either side the narrow end of the wedge, and at an object in the centre from which there came a wreath of smoke, spreading the odour that had so disturbed them.
As Hume hesitated, with a sharp fear at his heart, one of the figures moved, then rose up, swaying to the side for support.
“Thank God!” he cried; and at the sound of the voice the figure started back, moved his head from side to side as though he tried in vain to pierce the gloom behind the spark of fire, and then cried hoarsely:
“Quien es?”
“Ah, it is you! Surrender; we are armed.”
The man made no answer; but, stooping, he appeared to grope among the prostrate forms; then with a fierce growl of satisfaction lifted one, and by the light that filtered through the two openings they caught the sheen of steel in his hand; they saw, too, the face of Laura, white and deathlike.
“I will not surrender!” he said slowly; “and if I die she dies also.”
“Don’t!” cried Hume hoarsely. “Give her to me, for Heaven’s sake!”
“Not I,” he growled, and placed her face in the stream of light, so that Hume could see the closed eyes and white cheeks.
Hume trembled and went faint with terror. “For mercy’s sake, take her out of this, into the fresh air.”
“And what of me?”
“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 passage from the valley.”
“Ay, I will see you out myself; but, for God’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 passage, 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 passed 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. “You see, I have donned this clothing to deceive them—the voiceless people who are searching for me. If they found me”—and he looked cautiously round—“they would drag me back to the river.”
After another glance round the chamber, Hume and Sirayo withdrew, leaving Ferrara alone, and Hume, surrendering himself again to gloomy thoughts of his maimed face, sat on the outer coping of the wall, with his face resting on his hand.
Long he sat there thinking whether he, too, would not do well to lead the life of a hermit, rather than be an object of disgust to his friends, when he heard a hoarse cry behind him, and, turning, saw Ferrara standing with his head turned, looking back along the passage.
The strange being had stripped himself of his clothes. His huge form stood naked as that of a savage, his breast was heaving, the muscles of his arms rigid, and when he turned his face it was contorted with the passion of terror and rage.
“What in Heaven’s name is it now?” cried Hume, springing to his feet.
Ferrara fixed his eyes on Hume; his lips moved, but without sound, and he seized his throat savagely. Then with a wild cry in Zulu of “They come! they come!” he sprang over the wall and fled towards the mountain, while Hume faced the passage, expecting he knew not what. Presently he entered cautiously, until he came once again to the underground coil without meeting anyone; but while he stood peering down into the dark pit, he realised that Ferrara had in the stillness of that gloomy retreat fallen a victim to his dark fancies of the “voiceless people.”