“Kumalo!”
Yes, even as he would have saluted the living, so he saluted the remains of the dead King. Yet he had already violated and was here to plunder the dead King’s grave.
What was this? Something glistening among the rotting heap of wrappings caught his eye. Bending down, he raised it eagerly. It was a large bead about the size of a marble. Two more lay beside them, the remnant of the leather lanyard on which they had been threaded, crumbling to his touch. Gold, were they? They were of solid weight. But a quick close examination convinced him that they were merely brass. Anyway, they would make valuable curios, and he slipped them into his pocket accordingly. Again he could not restrain a start as he raised his eyes. The skull when last he beheld it, of a dull, yellowy white in the deep shadows of the gloomy place was now shining like fire as it glowered at him, suffused as with a reddening incandescent glow. A wave of superstitious awe thrilled him from head to heel. What on earth did it mean? And then the real reason of this startling metamorphosis came home to him.
The sun had risen. High above through a chink between the huge boulders right over the entrance of the cleft, one single spear-like beam found entrance, and, piercing the gloomy shadows of the tomb, struck full upon the fleshless countenance of the dead King, illuminating it with a well-nigh supernatural glow; and with the clearing up of the mystery, the spectator was lost in admiration of the ingenuity that had contrived that the first ray of the rising sun should illuminate the countenance of the Great Great One, whom while living they hailed, among other titles of honour, as “Light of the Sun.” Then he remembered that the coincidence was purely accidental, for he himself had uncovered the skull and exposed it to view, and the illusion vanished. And as he gazed, the beam was withdrawn, leaving the Death’s head in its former shadow.
Leaning back against the rock wall, Blachland began to attune himself to the situation. At last he had explored the King’s grave, he, all by himself. What a laugh he would have over Sybrandt and Pemberton bye-and-bye—they who had scouted the feat as utterly impossible. Well, he had done it, he alone, had done what no white man had ever done before him—what possibly no white man would ever do again. And—it was intensely interesting.
And now, what about the buried treasure? He had all through been sceptical as to the existence of this, but had not insisted on his scepticism to Hlangulu, lest he might cool that acquisitive savage off the undertaking. The latter’s reply to his question as to how it was that others were not now in the know as well as he—that the matter was hlonipa, i.e. veiled, forbidden of mention—had not struck him as satisfactory. Well, as he was here he might as well take a thorough look round and make sure.
Acting upon this idea he once more approached the skeleton of the dead King, but a careful search all around it revealed nothing. All around it? Not quite, for he had not tried behind it. There was a dark recess extending perhaps three or four yards behind it—to where the cleft ended, and this too, seemed spread with old and mouldering wrappings.
These he began, as with the others, raking aside with the butt of his rifle. Then, suddenly his foothold began to tremble—then to move violently from under him. Was there no end to the weird surprises of this uncanny place, was the thought that flashed lightning-like through his mind; and then, as with a superlative effort he just managed to keep his footing—while staggering back a few paces, there befel something so appalling that his blood seemed to run ice within him, and the very hair of his head to stand up.