There were objects here that might have graced any palace in Europe. Beautiful paintings hung on the walls. Sumptuous rugs covered the floors. Splendid chairs and divans were scattered here and there. Silken tapestries hung as portières at the entrances of various rooms that opened from the main hall. There were statues of marble, tables cunningly carved and inlaid with gold and precious stones, curious medallions and intaglios, suits of armor and swords of the finest steel, a vast number of objects of art of all kinds scattered about in profusion.
Bomba had never seen anything of the kind, never dreamed of them, never known that they existed. It was as though he had been translated to another world.
Where had these things come from? How had they been secured?
Then light flashed upon Bomba. They must have come from that city of which Hondura had spoken, the city whose very towers had been of gold! Somehow, Japazy had found access to that city—or what was left of it. No wonder that he guarded his secret so jealously!
Bomba had no knowledge of values. He had never seen money. But he knew vaguely that here was something infinitely precious, infinitely desirable. And the white blood in him, with its inheritance of taste and culture and love of the beautiful, as well as the little knowledge of wider things that Casson, before that devastating gun explosion, had given him, told him that he was in a treasure house.
Were things like these, he asked himself, the things that white people had in the homes and cities that Frank Parkhurst had told him about? Were they things that he, Bomba, might have, if he were living with the race to which he belonged?
He stole a glance at Abino. The savage was standing there stolidly, indifferently, in a bored attitude. Bomba sensed that the man had not the slightest appreciation of the beauty by which he was surrounded. He had the soul of a native of the jungle, incapable of being touched by anything but the most primitive needs of life.
But why should Japazy then appreciate and collect them? The explanation dawned on Bomba. Japazy was a half-breed. Some of his blood was white. And Sobrinini had known Japazy when they were both parts of that faraway country where the white people dwelt. So Japazy had learned what beauty was, and the part of him that was white had yearned for these things! He had gathered them from the sunken city, where once a great civilization had flourished, and had furnished his dwelling with the splendor of the distant white civilization.
Bomba felt an increased respect for the chief he had come to see. Part of the blood, anyway, of this man was white. And were not all white men brothers? Would not Japazy feel a touch of kinship and give him freely the information that he sought?
It never occurred to Bomba that in giving Japazy credit for taste and a love of beauty for its own sake he might be paying too high a tribute to the half-breed. That the latter should be collecting these things for mercenary purposes with the design, when he should have enough, of shipping them overseas and selling them at fabulous prices, and then following them to live for the rest of his life in wealth and luxury amid the civilization whose value he knew, did not enter Bomba’s mind.