The moment that her eyes fell upon the scene, Rhonda voiced an exclamation of surprised incredulity. "Diamonds!" she gasped. "The valley of diamonds!"
She stooped and gathered some of the precious stones in her hands. Balza looked at her in surprise; the gems meant nothing to her. Tarzan, more sophisticated, gathered several of the larger specimens.
"May I take some with me?" asked Rhonda.
"Why not?" inquired the ape-man. "Take what you can carry comfortably."
"We shall all be rich!" exclaimed the American girl. "We can bring the whole company here and take truck loads of these stones back with us—why there must be tons of them here!"
"And then do you know what will happen?" asked Tarzan.
"Yes," she replied. "I shall have a villa on the Riviera, a town house in Beverly Hills, a hundred and fifty thousand dollar cottage at Malibu, a place at Palm Beach, a penthouse in New York, a—"
"You will have no more than you have always had," the ape-man interrupted, "for if you took all these diamonds back to civilization the market would be glutted; and diamonds would be as cheap as glass. If you are wise, you will take just a few for yourself and your friends; and then tell nobody how they may reach the valley of diamonds."
Rhonda pondered this for a moment. "You are right," she admitted. "From this moment, as far as I am concerned, there is no valley of diamonds."
During the brief twilight Balza guided them to a trail that led down into the valley some distance below the cave dwellings of the tribe of mutants, and all during the night they moved southward toward the escarpment and Omwamwi Falls.