"All!" echoed Schoverling. "Sure there's nothing else? Here, let me get down there."
For the first time Charlie remembered the gold-dust. But although the explorer poked around in the cave-like hole beneath with one of the Masai knives, he finally had to climb up with the admission that the boys had been right. There was no gold-dust.
For a few moments they stood around the huge pile of tusks, while von Hofe counted them. All were wrapped securely in canvas, mouldy and rotted away with the damp of the ground. Charlie tore at one and it came loose in his fingers.
"Thirty-two," announced the big German excitedly. "They vas all goot, but none fery large, too. Ach, vat a pile of ifory!"
"I'm sorry there was no gold-dust, though," said Schoverling. "Funny Mowbray mentioned it. Prob'ly he took it for granted that it was down there with the tusks. You don't suppose there could be a cache under that other post, do you?"
"One o' these would be plenty to build," returned Jack. "Let's have a look at the ivory, Chuck."
He pulled out his knife and ripped off the covering of the tusk Charlie had been pulling at. The ivory gleamed yellow and discolored in the sunlight, while a gasp of surprise went up from the Masai, as for the first time they realized what these things were. The gun-bearers gazed stolidly.
One slash of the knife, and out trickled a little stream of yellow grains into the brown fist of the explorer.
"What's this?"