Meanwhile the travellers, having enjoyed a most excellent night’s rest, rose betimes in the morning and prepared for a thorough systematic investigation of the ruins. They bathed and breakfasted in due course, and then, armed to the teeth, set out upon a tour of general inspection, the professor carrying his camera, and Sir Reginald his sketch-block and colour-box, whilst Mildmay and the colonel, provided with a box-sextant and a light measuring chain, set themselves the task of making a rough survey of the ruins and a portion of the surrounding country. The tour of the ruins, the taking of an occasional sketch or photograph, and the making of the survey, kept the party fully occupied for the whole of the first day; and they returned to the ship just before sunset, tired and hungry, but thoroughly satisfied with their day’s work, and fully convinced that their success in penetrating to this interesting spot would alone more than repay them for all the trouble and expense connected with the outfit of the expedition. One important fact at least had been clearly ascertained by them in the course of the day, which was, that the ruins were extremely ancient, their antiquity being demonstrated by the circumstance that during successive ages the soil had gradually accumulated about the ruins until they were nearly half buried. The most interesting discovery made by them during the day was that of an enormous block of ruins, which, from its extent and the imposing character of its architecture, they felt convinced must have been a temple or other public building, and it was resolved that their investigations should commence with it. It was situated about a mile distant from the spot occupied by the Flying Fish, and their first intention had been to move the ship somewhat nearer; but an inspection of the intervening ground had shown it to be so encumbered with ruins that it was soon apparent that she must be left where she was.
A very large amount of excavation—much more than they could possibly manage alone—would be necessary before the lower portion of the walls and the pavement of the building could be laid bare, and they decided to go over to M’Bongwele’s village on the following morning and arrange with him if possible for the hire of some fifty or a hundred men. This, however, proved to be unnecessary, for whilst they were at breakfast next day the sound of a horn was heard without, and, going on deck, they discovered Lualamba below in charge of a party of some twenty women bearing a present of milk (in closely woven grass baskets), eggs, fowls, and fruit, and a message from the king asking whether his visitors required assistance of any kind in the pursuit of their investigations.
“Capital!” exclaimed the baronet when von Schalckenberg had translated the message. “This is as it should be. Lower the ladder, professor, and ask Lualamba to come on deck. We must send back a present to the king in return for that which he has sent us; and we can at the same time forward a message explaining our wants.”
Lualamba quickly made his appearance on deck, where, after receiving a further small present for himself and a cast-off soldier’s coat, battered cocked-hat, an old pair of uniform trousers, the seams of which were trimmed with tarnished gold braid, and half a dozen strings of beads, as a present for the king, the wants of the travellers were explained to him. The chief shook his head; he feared it would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet the wishes of the illustrious strangers in the particular manner spoken of. The male inhabitants of the village were all warriors, to whom work of any description would be an unspeakable degradation. But he would see what could be done. If women, now, would serve the strangers’ purpose as well as men, the thing could easily be arranged.
Had the travellers been less experienced than they were this suggestion as to the employment of women would have come upon them as a surprise; but they were well aware that among many savage races labour is looked upon as degrading, and therefore imposed solely upon the women; so they merely thanked Lualamba for his promise, and intimated that women would serve them equally as well as men. Upon which Lualamba withdrew, promising that a gang of at least fifty should be at the ruined temple—or whatever it was—“before the sun reached the top of the sky;” in other words, before noon. This promise was faithfully fulfilled, for at eleven o’clock the explorers saw the gang of labourers come filing in among the ruins, armed with rude wooden mattocks and spades, and provided with large baskets in which to convey away the soil as it was dug out. They were as unprepossessing a lot of specimens of female humanity as could well be imagined. Naked, save for a filthy ragged skin petticoat round their waists and reaching to the knee, their faces wore, without exception, an expression of sullen stupidity, and they looked as though they had never experienced a joyous moment in their lives; but they were active and muscular, and soon showed that they thoroughly understood how to use their clumsy tools to the best advantage. They were led by and worked under the directorship of a lean, shrunken, withered old grey-haired hag of superlative ugliness, who did no work herself, but went constantly back and forth along the line of workers, bearing in her hand a long thin pliant rattan, which she did not hesitate to smartly apply to the shoulders of those who seemed to her to be doing less than their fair share of the work in hand. This bit of petty cruelty was, however, as a matter of course, promptly stopped by the professor, who thereby won for himself a look of withering scorn from the hag aforesaid, and glances of stupid wonder—in which in some cases could be also detected faint traces of an expression of gratitude—from the unfortunate sisterhood who laboured under her.
The amount of work performed was, as might naturally be expected, nothing approaching to that which would have been accomplished in the same time by the same number of white labourers; indeed, a gang of half a dozen good honest hard-working English navvies would have accomplished fully as much per diem as the fifty women who laboured among the ruins. But the explorers were quite satisfied; they were in no particular hurry; the climate was delightful; M’Bongwele was wonderfully civil, sending large supplies of provisions, fruit, and milk to the ship daily, accompanied by the most solicitous inquiries through Lualamba as to whether all things were going well with his visitors. There was no attempt whatever, so far as they could discover, to pry into their doings, not a single warrior, save Lualamba, having been seen by them since the day of the king’s visit, and everything seemed to be favourable to a thorough and leisurely execution of their purpose.
On the fourth day from the commencement of the excavation the explorers were gratified by the uncovering of a yard or two of what appeared to be a magnificent tesselated pavement of white and variegated marble; and by the end of a fortnight fully half of its supposed area was exposed, showing it to be of an entirely novel and exquisitely graceful design, the intricate outline of the pattern being emphasised by the insertion of plates of gold about a quarter of an inch wide between the tesserae. The pavement was smooth, level, and in perfect preservation, and the explorers were in the very highest of spirits at their exceptional good luck.
At the outset of the work the four friends had been in the habit of returning every day to the ship for luncheon, but as time passed on they felt that to do this in the very hottest part of the day was a wholly unnecessary waste of energy, and they accordingly transferred from the ship to the scene of their operations a spacious umbrella-tent (that is to say, a tent with a top but no sides), together with a small table and four chairs. And under the shadow of this tent they were wont to partake of the mid-day meal (usually a cold collation), which they generally finished off with a cup of chocolate or coffee and a cigar, the potables being prepared by a particular one of the women labourers, who speedily developed quite a special aptitude for the task, and who at length fell into the habit of regularly bringing with her, every day, the milk needed for the purpose. The tent being pitched on a spot which commanded a full view of the operations in progress, the quartette gradually acquired the habit of lingering somewhat over their luncheon, and especially over the final coffee and cigar, the inevitable result of which was that, for the next hour or two, they experienced a feeling of delicious languor and drowsiness, and an almost unconquerable disinclination to exchange the grateful shade of the tent for the scorching heat of the afternoon sun. At first they struggled resolutely and manfully against this overpowering temptation to idleness; but finding, or fancying, that they could supervise the work as efficiently from the tent as they could at a yard or two from its shelter, they gradually gave up the struggle, yielding day after day more completely to the seductive feeling of lassitude which seemed to have laid hold upon them.
Finally, one hot afternoon, overcome by the drowsy influence of the warm perfumed air which played about their languid bodies, they all fell asleep.