Next day, then, accompanied by Mbutu, half a dozen hunters to procure game, and twenty steady Bairo armed with picks and shovels, he set out with this object. He had some difficulty at first in overcoming the superstitious fears of his followers. Mbutu interpreted their objections, which, recited by their spokesman in fear and trembling and much grovelling on the earth, were quite unintelligible to Tom.
"This man say him berrah poor; him no can buy charms. Evil spirit plenty too much strong, him burn up black man in big fire; hot mud drown black man; smoke choke black man. Sah no afraid, no, no; him white man, big medicine; black man him no medicine, afraid too much too much."
Remembering the proverbial pill to cure the earthquake, Tom solemnly handed to each of his followers an empty cartridge-case, which he explained was the strongest magic he possessed against the spirit of the mountain. The device gave him some qualms; but he remembered that Dr. Arbuthnot himself, the great eighteenth-century physician, had practised similar innocent deceptions on noble lords, and he felt that in this case the end justified the means.
The road for nearly half the distance was fairly easy, but it then became very rugged, and progress was slow and laborious. Tom found many traces of game, and in one place, approaching down wind, the party disturbed a large herd of elephants. Tom resisted the impulse to pursue them, although it cost him an effort, and pressed forward towards the peak, which was visible as a truncated cone of no great height, for the most part bare, but showing here and there patches of scrub and belts of forest growth. The party had started early in the day, but it was nearing sunset when they arrived within climbing distance of the peak, and Tom decided to camp for the night and begin prospecting next morning. Making an early start, he was on the slopes of the mountain not long after dawn, and then began a toilsome search for traces of sulphur in workable form. He felt sure that thousands of tons of the desired substance lay around him, but unless he could find it in the free state, or at least mechanically mixed with earth, with the rough-and-ready appliances he could devise on the spot it would be quite beyond his reach.
His first step was to build a fire on the slopes of the mountain, and place two men in charge of it, with instructions to pile on a plentiful supply of fuel. Then, dividing his men into squads of four, he made a series of excavations in various spots simultaneously, going from one to another to examine the earth that was dug up. Several times he thought he had discovered the object of his quest, and a number of basketfuls of earth were carried to the improvised furnace. There the ore was heaped into a pile and ignited from the top, in the hope that the heat above would melt any sulphur that might be contained in the lower part of the mass, and cause it to run down into the specially-prepared cavity at the bottom. This process was a wasteful one, but it had the merit of simplicity, and Tom knew that if only a sufficient quantity of sulphur-bearing earth could be obtained it would serve his purpose.
After several disappointments he at last came upon undoubted traces of sulphur from the combustion of a quantity of earth obtained very close to the crater. He wished to make another trial, but it was growing late, and his men implored him not to remain on the mountain after nightfall. His magic might suffice for the day, but nothing could preserve them from the wrath of Irungo if he found them within his gates during the hours of darkness. Their terror was so extreme that Tom reluctantly withdrew to the site of the previous night's camp; but at the first streak of daylight he roused his men, who were feeling the effects of their unaccustomed labours, and after breakfast led them back to the spot at which the only promising find of the previous day had been made. Removing nearly half a ton of earth, he made the experiment this time on a larger scale, and when the mass had burned for some two hours he was delighted to find a considerable quantity of crude sulphur in the little cavity beneath the pile. He had used up a large amount of wood in the process, for there was not sufficient sulphur in the ore materially to assist the process of combustion, but there was fortunately no lack of fuel within a few hundred yards of the place from which the ore was taken, and by nightfall Tom was in possession of some lumps of a dirty-brown substance which, when refined, might yield half their weight of pure sulphur. When darkness fell he piled up an unusually large heap of the ore, left a fire smouldering above it, and was rewarded in the morning with a correspondingly large quantity of crude sulphur in the receiver.
"This is glorious!" he said to Mbutu. "We have a good many pounds of stuff now; the next thing is to see if sufficiently pure sulphur can be refined from it to make powder. We can't do that here, at any rate; and besides, to-morrow is the day fixed for our grand palaver, so I think we must be content for the present with what we have, and come again if we find it successful. One thing is certain," his unspoken thought continued, "there's enough sulphur on this mountain to make powder for all the army corps in the world, and if only there were means of transit it might pay someone to lease it from the Congo Government. For all I know, in fact, I may be trespassing; but I fancy the authorities won't mind much if they hear about it and know what I am doing it for.--Well, my men, now for home. We have got what I wanted, and, as you see, haven't been molested by Irungo. You won't mind coming again, eh?"
They returned to the village with their load. A mile before they reached it, Mbutu all at once drew his master's attention to a fresh trail crossing their path from the east. There were the clear marks of men's feet, and also of small hoofs, which Mbutu declared were the hoof-marks of donkeys.
"It looks as though a caravan of some sort were making for our village," said Tom. "Surely it cannot be Arabs?"
"No, sah; white man, sah. Donkeys; must be white man. Oh yes!"