Already the dusk made the forest gloomy, but as this was precisely what I wanted, I struck off without delay, picking a path cautiously through the growth. The neighbourhood seemed remarkably still, but finally the rumble from the cauldron disturbed the quiet and gave me a guide by which I corrected my course.
Laden as I was, with the necessary things for the labour, I should have presented a most amazing aspect, had any of the Blacks discovered my presence. I thought of that, and knew that even if I got down in the normal position of a bear, the juxtaposition of my bag and the clubs might easily arouse the most dangerous suspicions in the brain of any Link beholding them and me. However, nothing happened.
“Why this is going to be a pic-nic,” I muttered. “I couldn’t ask for anything nicer.”
Indeed fortune seemed to be smiling upon me, for I came immediately upon a continuation of the cliff of rock, which backed the camp of the Blacks, and was soon confronted by a jagged heap of stone and quartz, at the top of which appeared a dark, irregular cave. Before I could clamber up the pile to this opening, the mighty roar came belching forth. I knew I stood on the threshold of the cavern of wealth and wonder.
CHAPTER XXXIX
STEALING THE ENEMY’S FIRE
No sooner had the demonstration ceased than I hastened up the rock-heap to the cave. I found the mouth of the place somewhat choked and hard to enter, but I forced my way over massed-in boulders to a vestibule of the great treasure-house itself. Then suddenly my hopes were blighted and failure loomed before me. It was as dark as tar and I had clean forgotten to fetch a torch!
“But how could I have fetched a torch?” my brain demanded. I had no civilised matches; I could not have carried a brand all day, for the sake of having it now, and if I had, the smoke might have attracted the attention of the Blacks. Had they caught a bear with a torch in his hand they would unquestionably have desired an explanation. I thought of my knife, which was steel, and the flints on my arrows. Could I not produce a spark, ignite some tinder and then make some faggots take fire? Yes, I could, but the arrows were all in the boat and I had about as much tinder handy as a fellow could carry in his eye.
In desperation I groped ahead for a rod and nearly broke my neck, by jolting down an unseen step in the floor. It was useless to tackle the cavern in this inky blackness; I might easily get boiled to death by the fountain of scalding water. In bitter regret, I reproached myself for having come away from camp without consulting the goddess and without maturing my plans. But any ass should have known the place would be dark! I acknowledged that I was a fool, and that after all this bother I should have to give it up. Even if I did come again next day, it would be no easy matter to fetch a torch, and I might try a hundred times and not have the luck I had this evening in avoiding those villains, the Blacks.
More than ready to swear at my folly, mad as a hornet to think of abandoning all the gold, which was right there, almost within reach of my hands, I pinched myself viciously and groped my way out to the heap of rocks at the entrance.
Already a star was shining in the heavens. What good were stars, I would have liked to know. It was fire I wanted—fire at the end of a stick. A crazy idea of hunting for something highly inflammable, on which to try my flint and steel, tried to get started in my brain. I rejected the notion with scorn. I might as well begin a search for glow-worms or incandescent electric globes.