Mr. Clifford was awake again now.
“Where have you been?” he asked querulously in a thin voice. “I wanted
you.” Then as the light from the candle shone upon it, he noted the
change that had come over her pale face, and added: “What has happened?
Is Meyer dead? Are we free?”
Benita shook her head. “He was alive a few hours ago, for I could hear
him raving and shouting outside the wall we built. But, father, it has
all come back to me; I believe that I have found it.”
“What has come back? What have you found? Are you mad, too, like Jacob?”
“What something told me when I was in the trance which afterwards I
forgot, but now remember. And I have found the passage which leads to
where they hid the gold. It begins behind the crucifix, where no one
ever thought of looking.”
This matter of the gold did not seem to interest Mr. Clifford. In his
state all the wealth beneath the soil of Africa would not have appealed
to him. Moreover, he hated the name of that accursed treasure, which was
bringing them to such a miserable end.
“Where does the passage run? Have you looked?” he asked.
“Not yet, but the voice in me said--I mean, I dreamed--that it goes down
to the river-side. If you leant on me do you think that you could walk?”
“Not one inch,” he answered. “Here where I am I shall die.”
“No, no, don’t talk like that. We may be saved now that I have found
a way. Oh, if only you could--if only you could walk, or if I had the
strength to carry you!” and she wrung her hands and began to weep, so
weak was she.
Her father looked at her searchingly. Then he said:
“Well, love, I cannot, so there’s an end. But you can, and you had
better go.”
“What! And leave you? Never.”
“Yes, and leave me. Look, there is but a little oil left and only a
few candles. The biscuits are done and neither of us can swallow
that biltong any more. I suppose that I am dying, and your health and
strength are failing you quickly in this darkness; if you stop here
you must soon follow me. And what is the alternative? The madman
outside--that is, if you could find strength to pull down the wall,
which I doubt. You had best go, Benita.”
But still she said she would not.
“Do you not see,” he added, “that it is my only chance of life? If you
go you may be able to bring me help before the end comes. Should there
be a passage the probability is that, although they know nothing of
it, it finishes somewhere by the wall of the first enclosure where the
Makalanga are. If so, you may find the Molimo, or if he is dead, Tamas
or one of the others, and they will help us. Go, Benita, go at once.”
“I never thought of that,” she answered in a changed voice. “Of course,
it may be so, if the passage goes down at all. Well, at least I can look
and come back to tell you.”
Then Benita placed the remainder of the oil close by her father’s
side, so that he could refill the lamp, for the use of his hands still
remained to him. Also, she set there such crumbs of biscuit as were
left, some of the biltong, a flask of Hollands, and a pail of water.
This done, she put on her long cloak, filled one of its pockets with
biltong, and the other with matches and three of the four remaining
candles. The fourth she insisted on leaving beside her father’s bed.
When everything was ready she knelt down at his side, kissed him, and
from her heart put up a prayer that they might both live to meet again,
although she knew well that this they could scarcely hope to do.
Had two people ever been in a more dreadful situation, she wondered, as
she looked at her father lying there, whom she must leave to fight with
Death alone in that awful place, while she went forth to meet him in the
unknown bowels of the earth!
Mr. Clifford read her thoughts. “Yes,” he said, “it is a strange parting
and a wild errand. But who knows? It may please Providence to take you
through, and if not--why, our troubles will soon be over.”
Then once more they kissed, and not daring to try to speak, Benita tore
herself away. Passing into the passage whereof the lower half of the
crucifix formed the door, she paused for a moment to examine it and to
place a fragment of rock in such fashion that it could not shut again
behind her. Her idea was that it worked by aid of some spring, but now
she saw that this was not so, as the whole mass hung upon three stone
hinges beautifully concealed. The dust and corrosion of ages which had
made this door so hard to open, by filling up the tiny spaces between it
and its framework, had also rendered these cracks utterly imperceptible
to the eye. So accurately was it fashioned, indeed, that no one who did
not know its secret would have discovered it if they searched for months
or years.
Though at the time Benita took little note of such details, the
passage beyond and the stair descending from it showed the same perfect
workmanship. Evidently this secret way dated not from the Portuguese
period, but from that of the Phoenicians or other ancients, to whose
treasure-chamber it was the approach, opening as it did from their
holy of holies, to which none were admitted save the head priests. The
passage, which was about seven feet high by four wide, had been hewn out
of the live rock of the mountain, for thousands of little marks left by
the workmen’s chisels were still discernible upon its walls. So it was
with the stair, that had been but little used, and remained fresh as the
day when it was finished.
Down the steps, candle in hand, flitted Benita, counting them as she
went. The thirtieth brought her to a landing. Here it was that she saw
the first traces of that treasure which they had suffered so much to
find. Something glittered at her feet. She picked it up. It was a little
bar of gold weighing two or three ounces that doubtless had been dropped
there. Throwing it down again she looked in front of her, and to her
dismay saw a door of wood with iron bolts. But the bolts had never been
shot, and when she pulled at it the door creaked upon its rusty hinges
and opened. She was on the threshold of the treasure-chamber!
It was square and of the size of a small room, packed on either side
almost to the low, vaulted roof with small bags of raw hide, carelessly
arranged. Quite near to the door one of these bags had slipped down
and burst open. It was filled with gold, some in ingots and some in raw
nuggets, for there they lay in a shining, scattered heap. As she stooped
to look it came into the mind of Benita that her father had said that in
her trance she had told them that one of the bags of treasure was burst,
and that the skin of which it had been made was black and red. Behold!
before her lay the burst bag, and the colour of the hide was black and
red.
She shivered. The thing was uncanny, terrible. Uncanny was it also
to see in the thick dust, which in the course of twenty or more of
centuries had gathered on the floor, the mark of footprints, those of
the last persons who had visited this place. There had been two of them,
a man and a woman, and they were no savages, for they wore shoes. Benita
placed her foot in the print left by that dead woman. It filled it
exactly, it might have been her own. Perhaps, she thought to herself,
that other Benita had descended here with her father, after the
Portuguese had hidden away their wealth, that she might be shown where
it was, and of what it consisted.
One more glance at all this priceless, misery-working gold, and on she
went, she who was seeking the gold of life and liberty for herself and
him who lay above. Supposing that the stairway ended there? She stopped,
she looked round, but could see no other door. To see the better she
halted and opened the glass of her lantern. Still she could perceive
nothing, and her heart sank. Yet why did the candle flicker so fiercely?
And why was the air in this deep place so fresh? She walked forward a
pace or two, then noticed suddenly that those footprints of the dead
that she was following disappeared immediately in front of her, and she
stopped.
It was but just in time. One step more and she would have fallen down
the mouth of a deep pit. Once it had been covered with a stone, but this
stone was removed, and had never been replaced. Look! there it stood
against the wall of the chamber. Well was this for Benita, since her
frail strength would not have sufficed to stir that massive block, even
if she had discovered its existence beneath the dust.
Now she saw that down the pit ran another ladderlike stair of stone,
very narrow and precipitous. Without hesitation she began its descent.
Down she went and down--one hundred steps, two hundred steps, two
hundred and seventy-five steps, and all the way wherever the dust had
gathered the man’s and the woman’s footprints ran before her. There was
a double line of them, one line going down and the other line returning.
Those that returned were the last, for often they appeared over those
that descended. Why had these dead people returned, Benita wondered.
The stair had ended; now she was in a kind of natural cave, for its
sides and roof were rugged; moreover, water trickled and dripped from
them. It was not very large, and it smelt horribly of mud and other
things. Again she searched by the feeble light of her candle, but could
see no exit. Suddenly she saw something else, however, for stepping
on what she took to be a rock, to her horror it moved beneath her. She
heard a snap as of jaws, a violent blow upon the leg nearly knocked
her off her feet, and as she staggered backwards she saw a huge and
loathsome shape rushing away into the darkness. The rock that she had
trodden on was a crocodile which had its den here! With a little scream
she retreated to her stair. Death she had expected--but to be eaten by
crocodiles!
Yet as Benita stood there panting a blessed hope rose in her breast. If
a crocodile came in there it must also get out, and where such a great
creature could go, a woman would be able to follow. Also, she must be
near the water, since otherwise it could never have chosen this hole for
its habitation. She collected her courage, and having clapped her hands
and waved the lantern about to scare any alligators that might still be
lurking there, hearing and seeing nothing more, she descended to where
she had trodden upon the reptile. Evidently this was its bed, for
its long body had left an impress upon the mud, and all about lay the
remains of creatures that it had brought in for food. Moreover, a path
ran outwards, its well-worn trail distinct even in that light.
She followed this path, which ended apparently in a blank wall. Then it
was that Benita guessed why those dead folks’ footprints had returned,
for here had been a doorway which in some past age those who used it
built up with blocks of stone and cement. How, then, did the crocodile
get out? Stooping down she searched, and perceived, a few yards to the
right of the door, a hole that looked as though it were water-worn.
Now Benita thought that she understood. The rock was softer here, and
centuries of flood had eaten it away, leaving a crack in the stratum
which the crocodiles had found out and enlarged. Down she went on her
hands and knees, and thrusting the lantern in front of her, crept along
that noisome drain, for this was what it resembled. And now--oh! now she
felt air blowing in her face, and heard the sound of reeds whispering,
and water running, and saw hanging like a lamp in the blue sky,
a star--the morning star! Benita could have wept, she could have
worshipped it, yet she pushed on between rocks till she found herself
among tall reeds, and standing in water. She had gained the banks of the
Zambesi.
Instantly, by instinct as it were, Benita extinguished her candle,
fearing lest it should betray her, for constant danger had made her very
cunning. The dawn had not yet broken, but the waning moon and the stars
gave a good light. She paused to look. There above her towered the
outermost wall of Bambatse, against which the river washed, except at
such times as the present, when it was very low.
So she was not in the fortress as she had hoped, but without it, and oh!
what should she do? Go back again? How would that serve her father or
herself? Go on? Then she might fall into the hands of the Matabele whose
camp was a little lower down, as from her perch upon the top of the cone
she had seen that poor white man do. Ah! the white man! If only he lived
and she could reach him! Perhaps they had not killed him after all. It
was madness, yet she would try to discover; something impelled her to
take the risk. If she failed and escaped, perhaps then she might call to
the Makalanga, and they would let down a rope and draw her up the wall
before the Matabele caught her. She would not go back empty-handed, to
die in that dreadful place with her poor father. Better perish here in
the sweet air and beneath the stars, even if it were upon a Matabele
spear, or by a bullet from her own pistol.
She looked about her to take her bearings in case it should ever be
necessary for her to return to the entrance of the cave. This proved
easy, for a hundred or so feet above her--where the sheer face of the
cliff jutted out a little, at that very spot indeed on which tradition
said that the body of the Señora da Ferreira had struck in its fall, and
the necklace Benita wore to-day was torn from her--a stunted mimosa grew
in some cleft of the rock. To mark the crocodile run itself she bent
down a bunch of reeds, and having first lit a few Tandstickor brimstone
matches and thrown them about inside of it, that the smell of them might
scare the beast should it wish to return, she set her lantern behind a
stone near to the mouth of the hole.
Then Benita began her journey which, when the river was high, it would
not have been possible for her to make except by swimming. As it was,
a margin of marsh was left between her and the steep, rocky side of the
mount from which the great wall rose, and through this she made her way.
Never was she likely to forget that walk. The tall reeds dripped
their dew upon her until she was soaked; long, black-tailed
finches--saccaboolas the natives call them--flew up undisturbed, and
lobbed away across the river; owls flitted past and bitterns boomed at
the coming of the dawn. Great fish splashed also in the shallows, or
were they crocodiles? Benita hoped not--for one day she had seen enough
of crocodiles.
It was all very strange. Could she be the same woman, she wondered,
who not a year before had been walking with her cousins down Westbourne
Grove, and studying Whiteley’s windows? What would these cousins say
now if they could see her, white-faced, large-eyed, desperate, splashing
through the mud upon the unknown banks of the Zambesi, flying from death
to death!
On she struggled, above her the pearly sky in which the stars were
fading, around her the wet reeds, and pervading all the heavy low-lying
mists of dawn. She was past the round of the walls, and at length stood
upon dry ground where the Matabele had made their camp. But in that fog
she saw no Matabele; probably their fires were out, and she chanced
to pass between the sentries. Instinctively, more than by reason, she
headed for that hillock upon which she had seen the white man’s waggon,
in the vague hope that it might still be there. On she struggled, still
on, till at length she blundered against something soft and warm, and
perceived that it was an ox tied to a trek-tow, beyond which were other
oxen and a white waggon-cap.
So it _was_ still there! But the white man, where was he? Through the
dense mist Benita crept to the disselboom. Then, seeing and hearing
nothing, she climbed to the voorkissie and kneeling on it, separated
the tent flaps and peered into the waggon. Still she could see nothing
because of the mist, yet she heard something, a man breathing in his
sleep. Somehow she thought that it was a white man; a Kaffir did not
breathe like that. She did not know what to do, so remained kneeling
there. It seemed as though the man who was asleep began to feel her
presence, for he muttered to himself--surely the words were English!
Then quite suddenly he struck a match and lit a candle which stood in
a beer bottle by his side. She could not see his face while he lit the
match, for his arm hid it, and the candle burned up slowly. Then the
first thing she saw was the barrel of a revolver pointing straight at
her.
“Now, my black friend,” said a pleasant voice, “down you go or I shoot.
One, two! Oh, my God!”
The candle burned up, its light fell upon the white, elfish face of
Benita, whose long dark hair streamed about her; it shone in her great
eyes. Still she could see nothing, for it dazzled her.
“Oh, my God!” said the voice again. “Benita! Benita! Have you come to
tell me that I must join you? Well, I am ready, my sweet, my sweet! Now
I shall hear your answer.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and crawling forward down the cartel Benita fell
upon his breast.
For she knew him at last--dead or living she cared not--she knew him,
and out of hell crept to him, her heaven and her home!