CHAPTER XXII
THE DISCOVERY OF RABEH'S HOARD
Royce spent several hours of the night of his discovery of Goruba's second entry in cudgelling his brains over his new problem.
Twice had Goruba made his way into the fort; twice had he escaped. Yet on neither occasion had anyone seen him on the ramparts, nor had anyone seen him in the interior except Challis and the man who had now been wounded.
What puzzled Royce almost as much as the secret of Goruba's means of entry and of exit was the fact that he seemed to make no use of it. Being able to get in and out without being observed, why did he not make use of his power, and lead his followers into the fort?
"I wish Tom were here!" thought Royce. "I feel like Robinson Crusoe before he had Friday to talk to. John is the only Hausa at all equal to Friday. I almost wish they had not gone."
Next morning he set the men again to work on the ditch, and went through the fort from corner to corner, searching for some secret passage. The gaps in the walls had all been filled up. The stone slabs of the floor all seemed to be solid; none of them gave forth a hollow sound when he stamped on them. At the bottom of the well the spring bubbled constantly, the overflow passing away through a narrow slit through which a rabbit could hardly have crawled.
"It beats me altogether," he said to himself after his thorough survey.
He walked round inside the wall to see how the men were getting on with the ditch, and came to the foot or two of brickwork which had been uncovered.
"I wonder!" he exclaimed, as a sudden thought struck him. "Gambaru, fetch me the spade."
When the man returned, Royce began to dig away the earth on each side of the brickwork, which was itself too hard and to firmly imbedded to be cut into or prised up by the only tools he possessed.