“So I followed your spoor, met the servants whom you had sent back, who told me all about you, and in due course, after many adventures, as they say in a book, walked into the camp of our friends, the Matabele.
“They were going to kill me at once, when suddenly you appeared upon that point of rock, glittering like—like the angel of the dawn. I knew that it must be you, for I had found out about your attempted escape, and how you were hunted back to this place. But the Matabele all thought that it was the Spirit of Bambatse, who has a great reputation in these parts. Well, that took off their attention, and afterwards, as I told you, it occurred to them that I might be an
engineer. You know the rest, don’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Benita softly. “I know the rest.”
Then they plunged into the reeds and were obliged to stop talking, since they must walk in single file. Presently Benita looked up and saw that she was under the thorn which grew in the cleft of the rock. Also, with some trouble she found the bunch of reeds that she had bent down, to mark the inconspicuous hole through which she had crept, and by it her lantern. It seemed weeks since she had left it there.
“Now,” she said, “light your candles, and if you see a crocodile, please shoot.”
XXIV.
The True Gold
“Let me go first,” said Robert.
“No,” answered Benita. “I know the way; but please do watch for that horrible crocodile.”
Then she knelt down and crept into the hole, while after her came Robert, and after him the two Zulus, who protested that they were not ant-bears to burrow under ground. Lifting the lantern she searched the cave, and as she could see no signs of the crocodile, walked on boldly to where the stair began.
“Be quick,” she whispered to Robert, for in that place it seemed natural to speak low. “My father is above and near his death. I am dreadfully afraid lest we should be too late.”
So they toiled up the endless steps, a very strange procession, for the two Zulus, bold men enough outside, were shaking with fright, till at length Benita clambered out of the trap door on to the floor of the treasure chamber, and turned to help Robert, whose lameness made him somewhat slow and awkward.
“What’s all that?” he asked, pointing to the hide sacks, while they waited for the two scared Kaffirs to join them.
“Oh!” she answered indifferently, “gold, I believe. Look, there is some of it on the floor, over Benita da Ferreira’s footsteps.”
“Gold! Why, it must be worth——! And who on earth is Benita da Ferreira?”
“I will tell you afterwards. She has been dead two or three hundred years; it was her gold, or her people’s, and those are her footprints in the dust. How stupid you are not to understand! Never mind the hateful stuff; come on quickly.”
So they passed the door which she had opened that morning, and clambered up the remaining stairway. So full was Benita of terrors that she could never remember how she climbed them. Suppose that the foot of the crucifix had swung to; suppose that her father were dead; suppose that Jacob Meyer had broken into the cave? Well for herself she was no longer afraid of Jacob Meyer. Oh, they were there! The heavy door had begun to close, but mercifully her bit of rock kept it ajar.
“Father! Father!” she cried, running towards the tent.
No answer came. She threw aside the flap, held down the lantern and looked. There he lay, white and still. She was too late!
“He is dead, he is dead!” she wailed. Robert knelt down at her side, and examined the old man, while she waited in an agony.
“He ought to be,” he said slowly; “but, Benita, I don’t think he is. I can feel his heart stir. No, don’t stop to talk. Pour out some of that squareface, and here, mix it with this milk.”
She obeyed, and while he held up her father’s head, with a trembling hand emptied a little of the drink into his mouth. At first it ran out again, then almost automatically he swallowed some, and they knew that he was alive, and thanked Heaven. Ten minutes later Mr. Clifford was sitting up staring at them with dull and wondering eyes, while outside the two Zulus, whose nerves had now utterly broken down, were contemplating the pile of skeletons in the corner and the white towering crucifix, and loudly lamenting that they should have been brought to perish in this place of bones and ghosts.