“Untie him,” said Robert, at the same time drawing his pistol and covering the man; “he can’t do us any hurt.”
The Kaffirs obeyed, and Jacob, springing at the slashed bag, plunged his thin hands into it.
“No lie,” he screamed, “no lie,” as he dragged the stuff out and smelt at it. “Gold, gold, gold! Hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of gold! Let’s make a bargain, Englishman, and I won’t kill you as I meant to do. You take the girl and give me all the gold,” and in his ecstasy he began to pour the glittering ingots over his head and body.
“A new version of the tale of Danaë,” began Robert in a sarcastic voice, then suddenly paused, for a change had come over Jacob’s face, a terrible change.
It turned ashen beneath the tan, his eyes grew large and round, he put up his hands as though to thrust something from him, his whole frame shivered, and his hair seemed to erect itself. Slowly he retreated backwards, and would have fallen down the unclosed trap-hole had not one of the Kaffirs pushed him away. Back he went, still back, till he struck the further wall and stood there, perhaps for half a minute. He lifted his hand and pointed first to those ancient footprints, some of which still remained in the dust of the floor, and next, as they thought, at Benita. His lips moved fast, he seemed to be pleading, remonstrating, yet—and this was the ghastliest part of it—from them there came no sound. Lastly, his eyes rolled up until only the whites of them were visible, his face became wet as though water had been poured over it, and, still without a sound, he fell forward and moved no more.
So terrible was the scene that with a howl of fear the two Kaffirs turned and fled up the stairway. Robert sprang to the Jew, dragged him over on to his back, put his hand upon his breast and lifted his eyelids.
“Dead,” he said. “Stone dead. Privation, brain excitement, heart failure—that’s the story.”
“Perhaps,” answered Benita faintly; “but really I think that I begin to believe in ghosts also. Look, I never noticed them before, and I didn’t walk there, but those footsteps seem to lead right up to him.” Then she turned too and fled.
Another week had gone by. The waggons were laden with a burden more precious perhaps than waggons have often borne before. In one of them, on a veritable bed of gold, slept Mr. Clifford, still very weak and ill, but somewhat better than he had been, and with a good prospect of recovery, at any rate for a while. They were to trek a little after dawn, and already Robert and Benita were up and waiting. She touched his arm and said to him:
“Come with me. I have a fancy to see that place once more, for the last time.”
So they climbed the hill and the steep steps in the topmost wall that Meyer had blocked—re-opened now—and reaching the mouth of the cave, lit the lamps which they had brought with them, and entered. There were the fragments of the barricade that Benita had built with desperate hands, there was the altar of sacrifice standing cold and grey as it had stood for perhaps three thousand years. There was the tomb of the old monk who had a companion now, for in it Jacob Meyer lay with him, his bones covered by the débris that he himself had dug out in his mad search for wealth; and there the white Christ hung awful on His cross. Only the skeletons of the Portuguese were gone, for with the help of his Kaffirs Robert had moved them every one into the empty treasure-chamber, closing the trap beneath, and building up the door above, so that there they might lie in peace at last.
In this melancholy place they tarried but a little while, then, turning their backs upon it for ever, went out and climbed the granite cone to watch the sun rise over the broad Zambesi. Up it came in glory, that same sun which had shone upon the despairing Benita da Ferreira, and upon the English Benita when she had stood there in utter hopelessness, and seen the white man captured by the Matabele.