“The secret!” I questioned, as the Tuan Hakim paused.
“For one hundred and forty years were we at war with the invaders. Three generations were born and died with arms in their hands. No work was done on the land, save by women and children. Still we had plenty of gold with which to fit out fleet after fleet, with which to arm our soldiers and feed our people.
“It came from yonder mountain. Not even the Sultan knew its hiding-place. That was only trusted to one family, and handed from father to son by word of mouth.
“Long before the days of Solomon the Wise did my family hold that secret for the state. It was one of them that gave the four hundred and twenty talents to the laksamana of Huram’s fleet. Your Koran has made record of the gift. He did not know from whence it came. He asked, and we told him from the Ophirs, which means from the gold mines. Then it was that he called the mountain that raised its head four thousand feet above the sea, and was the first object his lookout saw as they neared the coast, ‘Mount Ophir.’
“No man, however so bold, ventured within a radius of fifteen miles around the foot of the mountain. It was haunted by evil spirits. No man save the laksamana, who went twice a year and brought away to his prau, which was moored on the bank of the Maur thirty miles from the mountains, ten great loads of pure gold, each time over one hundred bugels. I know not as to the truth, but it is told that there was one tribe consecrated to the mining of the gold, not one of whom had ever been outside the shadow of the mountain: that when the great admiral ceased to come, they blocked up the entrance to the mines, planted trees about the spot, and waited. One after another died, until not one was left.
“Such is the tradition of my family, Tuan.”
“But the great laksamana?” I asked. “I know of the ancient riches of Malacca. Barbosa tells us that gold was so common that it was reckoned by the bhar of four hundred weight.”
My companion contemplated the end of his manila. “Do you know how died his Highness, Montezuma of Mexico, Tuan?”
I bowed.
“So died my ancestor one hundred years later. I will tell you of it, that you may write his name in your histories by the side of the name of the murdered Sultan of Mexico.”