From this room he was conducted into another of about the same size, and similarly arranged; but in this case the metal in the stacks was virgin gold, instead of silver, while the bulk of the stacks was, if anything, rather greater than those in the outer rooms. But, for the purposes of a rough estimate, Escombe assumed them to be of only equal bulk, upon the strength of which assumption his figures informed him that the gold in this vault amounted to the not altogether insignificant weight of close upon fourteen hundred tons. The sight of such incredible quantities of the precious metals had so paralysing an effect upon the young Englishman that he could scarcely stammer an enquiry as to where it all came from. The custodian of this fabulous wealth replied, with a smile, that the mountains which hemmed the valley about were enormously rich in both gold and silver, and that some hundreds of men had been kept industriously employed in working the mines almost from the moment when the city had been first founded. “But, Lord,” he continued, flinging open a third door, “what you have already seen is by no means all our wealth; the most valuable part of it is to be found in this small room.”
Passing through the doorway, which, like the other two, was fitted with massive doors of solid bronze secured by an enormously strong lock of the same metal, the young Inca—who, as one of the results of his having been placed upon the throne, had become the absolute owner of all this wealth, with power to use it in such manner as might seem to him good—found himself in a much smaller room, its dimensions being about ten feet long by the same width, and some twelve feet high. To the sides of the room were fitted large chests of very heavy wood, three chests on each side occupying the entire length of the room, with a passage way about six feet wide between the two rows of chests. Each chest was fitted with a massive wooden cover secured to it by strong bronze hinges, and fastened by a ponderous bronze lock.
The custodian unlocked these chests one at a time, and, raising the heavy cover with difficulty, held the lamp which he carried over the yawning interior, disclosing its contents. The first chest opened was nearly full of what to Escombe appeared to be dull black stones, most of them with at least one smooth surface, ranging in size from that of a walnut to lumps as large as a man’s two fists. One of these lumps Harry’s conductor took out and handed to the young man for his inspection.
“Well, what do you call this?” demanded Harry, turning the stone about in his hands, and inspecting it curiously.
“That, Lord, is an amethyst,” answered the other; “and, as you see, the chest is nearly full of them. But, unless we should happen to discover a new mine, I am afraid we shall get no more of them, for the mine from which those were extracted appears to be exhausted; and it was never very productive even at its best. We did not know what the stones were when they were first discovered, but, as it was suspected that they might possess a certain value, steps were taken to determine the question, with the result that we were told they are amethysts. They are not especially valuable, I believe, but we make a point of never wasting anything, so it was decided to store these until wanted. Now here,”—opening the next chest—“we have another mineral about which we were a bit puzzled at first; but we were in less doubt in this case than we were with regard to the amethysts, as the appearance of the stone seemed to indicate that it possessed a value. We dealt with this as we did with the amethysts, and found that we had chanced upon a particularly rich opal deposit.”
The chest of opals was, like the one previously opened, almost full, and Harry took admiringly into his hand the great piece of rock representing the half of a mass of stone that had been accidentally broken in two, and found to contain a considerable quantity of iridescent, many-hued crystal. The next chest contained some very fine specimens of sapphire; but it was little more than half-full, the mine having only been discovered within the last decade, and even then not very industriously worked; but there were in the chest a few specimens that Escombe shrewdly suspected to be practically priceless.
Having completed the inspection of the contents of the coffers on one side of the room, the custodian crossed over to the other side, and threw up the lid of a chest, the interior of which at once began to glow as though each of the stones—looking very much like lumps of ordinary washing soda—contained within it a morsel of phosphorus.
“Aha!” exclaimed Escombe, plunging his hand delightedly into the chest and fishing up two or three of the stones; “no need to ask what these are; there’s no possibility of mistaking them. Yes, there’s the genuine soapy feel about them all right,” as he ran his fingers over the smooth surface of the crystals. “But I didn’t know that you had diamonds in Peru.”
“There is at all events one mine in the country, Lord, namely that from which these stones came,” answered the Indian. “But the existence and locality are known only to the few who work it and who guard the approach to it; for we believe it to be the richest mine in the whole world, and we are naturally anxious to retain possession of it for ourselves exclusively. It is not in this valley; it lies a long three-days’ journey from here, in a particularly wild and desolate part of the country which is practically inaccessible, save to the boldest and hardiest mountaineers among us. It has only been known for about twenty years, and the contents of this coffer represent the labour of only six men during that time. But the mine is enormously rich, and, as you may see, the size and quality of the stones improve as the miners penetrate deeper, the largest and finest stones, which are those most recently extracted, being at the top of the others in the chest.”
Harry stooped over and picked up a particularly fine specimen, larger than one of his clenched fists, which glowed and scintillated in the light of the lamp as though it were on fire.