The Hausa sprinted away, and returned with the whole garrison at his heels.
"Back to your places, you idiots!" cried Royce. "Kulana, keep them at their posts. Give me the candle, Gambaru."
Holding the lighted candle, he stepped from the staple into a low dark passage, and groped his way stoopingly along it. For some forty or fifty yards it was narrow; then all at once it opened into a huge natural cavern, warm and stuffy, with an earthy smell.
Royce looked about him and gasped with astonishment. The candlelight fell on an enormous store of elephants' tusks, huge and massive objects ranged in close-packed rows, and filling nearly three parts of the cavern.
"My word! What a find!" Royce exclaimed.
He began to count the tusks, came to a hundred, and gave it up.
"Five hundred, at a guess," he thought. "They must be worth a fortune. No wonder Mr. Goruba wanted to strangle me! ... What's that yonder?"
He went farther into the cavern. Beyond the tusks lay an assortment of many things—ivory cups, vessels of gold, an old French musket, swords, scimitars, a kepi or two, a French officer's sash, some cartridge cases, several native spades and pickaxes—and, at the far end, objects which caused him to recoil. They were human skeletons.
At this gruesome sight Royce felt that he had had enough for the moment. The air was stifling, rendered still worse by the smoky candle. He retraced his steps, stood firmly on the staple in the slab, and this time pushing at the other staple, caused the stone to revolve on its pivot and set flush with the wall.
"What does it all mean?" he thought, as he sat in his room above, eating the frugal dinner which Kulana brought him.