The Golden Pool : a Story of a Forgotten Mine
Copyright© 2024 by R. Austin Freeman
I Assist in a Robbery and Become a Fugitive
The ground, as I have said, was not difficult to climb, since the surface was not quite perpendicular, and besides being rough and broken, was thickly covered with vegetation; so that without any great exertion I soon reached the top of the cliff, and landed on to a nearly level space, which I took to be the summit of a hill. From this point the view was very extensive in the one direction, although it was cut off in the other by the forest which clothed the summit. Looking back—that is, in the direction in which the cliff faced—my eye ranged over the ocean-like expanse of forest, out of which, at a distance of about three miles, rose a solitary, conical hill, while nearer—in fact, quite near—could be seen a river of some size, which I took—erroneously as it turned out—to be the Tano.
Following the edge of the summit, I walked on, each few hundred yards bringing into view a new vista, until I had gone half a mile; when I could tell, from the direction of the shadows, that I had reached the opposite side of the hill. Here I could see below me a village of some pretensions immediately at the foot of the hill, and this I guessed to be the abode of the fetish-men, while at a distance of less than a mile another village was visible, which, by the large silk-cotton tree in the middle of an open space, I identified as the one to which I had been first taken—indeed, on looking carefully, I thought I could make out the very hut in which I had been confined.
Having thus made clear the position of our hiding place, I struck off across the middle of the summit, guiding myself towards my starting point by watching my shadow. I had travelled about half way when I came to a rather deep hollow occupying, as I judged, nearly the centre of the summit; and, as it lay directly in my path, I commenced to descend, and had nearly reached the bottom when I was brought up with a start by the sound of voices.
Instantly I crouched down among the thick herbage and listened. There seemed to be several persons talking, but although the voices sounded near, I could not for a time make out the direction from which they came; and a peculiar hollow but muffled quality in the sounds puzzled me not a little. Presently one of the speakers laughed—a strange, hollow laugh that reverberated as if it came from the bottom of a well—and then I perceived that the noise proceeded from underground.
On this I crept forward cautiously, and after crawling a few yards, saw before me a large hole in the earth. I lay down flat on my face and drew myself softly to the edge of the chasm, and putting my head into a mass of fern, peered down between the stems. As I had expected, I looked down into the chamber that I had recently left—and left none too soon; for it was now occupied by a party of six fetish-men, all armed with long knives and guns, and provided with a stinking palm oil lamp.
They were mightily excited, for they chattered and gesticulated like a pack of monkeys, and I would have given a good deal to know what they were saying. That they had missed Bukári and me I had no doubt, but whether or not they had traced our progress thus far I had no means of judging. On one point, however, and that the most important, I soon became satisfied; they clearly had no knowledge of the existence of the tunnel by which we had finally escaped.
After a good deal of talk and searching the corners of the chamber and the entrance to the filled up tunnel, they commenced to examine the chests, and I was now most thankful that I had not allowed Bukári to satisfy his curiosity; for I could see an old fetish man, who had been poring over the lid of the larger chest (which was immediately beneath me) pointing out to his fellows the undisturbed coating of dust on it.
In spite of this demonstration, however, they were not quite convinced apparently, for to my intense satisfaction they proceeded to remove the skulls one by one and place them at a little distance on the floor. When the top was clear, they knocked a wooden pin out of a rude hasp—the only fastening that the chest had—and raised the lid, resting it against the wall.
From my position immediately overhead I could look down straight into the chest, and the sight that met my gaze when the lid was flung back, filled me with amazement.
For that great coffer was filled almost to the top with gold. Gold masks of strange design, gold armlets, gold anklets, great dumbbell-like sword-hilts, head-plates and trinkets of which I could not distinguish the forms, were there by the score; but the great bulk of the metal was in the form of manillas—the African equivalent of ingots—of which there must have been hundreds, all tied up in bunches of a dozen or so.
Here, indeed, was “wealth beyond the dreams of avarice”!
As I looked down into the great chest I felt myself unconsciously gloating over its shining contents; and when the fetish-men, apparently satisfied of the safety of the treasure, closed the lid and drove in the pin, I was conscious of quite a chill of regret, until I suddenly remembered my condition; when I almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of a naked, starving wretch like myself barely snatched from the jaws of death, and yet hankering after wealth.
When the priests had made the chest secure they replaced the skulls, and forthwith retired through the tunnel, having accomplished what was probably the principal object of their visit. The smaller chest they had not examined at all, and from this I judged that it contained nothing of intrinsic value—perhaps merely some mouldering relics of the old adventurers. When the last of the men had disappeared I drew myself carefully back on to the more solid ground, and resumed my journey across the little plateau.
In a few minutes I came out on to the edge a little to the right of the tunnel, as I could tell by comparing the positions of a large tree and the distant hill, and was about to turn when I noticed some objects moving, about a third of the way down the steep slope. I stopped to observe them, and was able to make out that they were vole-like animals about the size of rabbits, with blunt muzzles and short tails, and evidently lived in a large community in burrows in the hillside.
Zoophilists tell us that by nature man is a fruit-eating animal, which is possibly true—when there happens to be fruit to eat. At present, however, there was none, and the sight of those rodents frisking in and out of their burrows aroused in me a very pronounced carnivorous impulse. I had noticed on the plateau a great number of nodular lumps of iron-stone lying on the surface, and I now returned and gathered an armful of moderate-sized pieces, which I carried to the edge of the slope. Then I concealed myself behind a bush and waited.
Soon a little party of the rodents assembled on a small knoll immediately underneath, browsing on the herbage in leisurely security, all unconscious of the prowling carnivore above, until a lump of iron-stone about two pounds in weight dropped plump on to the back of one of them, rolling him over dead; when the parliament instantly dissolved, and I climbed down to gather up my spoil.
I had not been back in my hiding place many minutes when the foolish-looking brutes reappeared and began nibbling away at the grass as if nothing had happened, so that in quite a short time I was able to secure four of them, with which I started off for the tunnel very cheerfully.
Bukári was awaiting my return with the keenest anxiety, and reproached me for being so long absent.
“I thought thou hadst gone away altogether,” he grumbled. “Where hast thou been, and what hast thou found?”
“I have seen many strange things,” said I, “and I have found us a dinner,” and I put his hand upon the dead animals, which he felt with a grin of delight.
“Grass-cutters!” he exclaimed. “I have not tasted flesh since I came to the mine. Let us cook them at once, for I am famished.”
“How shall we cook them since we have no fire?” I asked.
He seemed greatly surprised at the question. “Why, then, we must make a fire, of course,” he replied.
This was a little embarrassing, for I had but the haziest notion of how to go about making a fire. I had, indeed, read in books of the fire-drill used by the Australian natives; but I had never tried to make one, and this was hardly a suitable occasion for amateur experiments. In our camp, the light had always been kindled by Musa, who had a flint and steel and kept a supply of tinder; without these appliances I was quite helpless, and had to admit the fact.
Bukári laughed grimly. “Get me a lump of quartz,” said he, “and a bit of dry bark from some dead wood, and gather some sticks. If thou canst get some clay, so much the better.”
I climbed up to the plateau, and soon found a dead branch, which I carried back bodily and handed it over to Bukári to strip of its bark, while I prised out a lump of quartz from the wall of the tunnel, and I then stood by to receive a lesson in the art of fire-making.
“Give me thy knife,” said Bukári, and on my handing it to him he struck its back skilfully a few times on the quartz, receiving the sparks on the prepared mass of bark, and blowing gently; and in a few minutes the bark was smouldering and smoking quite briskly.
There was no time to look for clay with which to coat the animals, so when the fire was fairly alight we fixed them over it, on long, pointed sticks, and sat by patiently while they frizzled in the smoke. To while away the interval—which was really a very trying one, for, when the hair had burnt off, the animals began to emit a most savoury aroma—I recounted to Bukári what I had seen when I looked down the opening into the chamber. He was violently excited, rather to my surprise, when I described the contents of the chest, and announced his intention of helping himself to some of the gold before finally leaving the mine.
The smoke-blackened carcases were not very agreeable to look at, but they furnished exceedingly good eating, and Bukári and I lingered over our cannibal-like repast until the bones were picked as clean as if they had been destined for some anatomical museum.
By this time the sun was getting low, so I made another journey to the plateau to gather wood for the night, and with what I had collected we made up a cheerful fire some distance down the tunnel, spreading a quantity of grass upon the floor that we might sleep in comfort.
Naturally, we were very tired after all our labours and excitements, and the food had made us rather drowsy, but we sat on our beds talking over our plans for a long time before we lay down to sleep.
We agreed on the necessity for getting away from the neighbourhood of the mine without delay—indeed, we were running no small risk by staying so long in the tunnel—but on one point Bukári was resolved; he would not leave the place until he had possessed himself of some of the gold.
I could not help admiring his bold adventurous spirit, unbroken by the long years of suffering and servitude, but at the same time his obstinacy was highly inconvenient, for any attempt to remove the treasure would enormously increase the danger of our situation, which was already sufficiently perilous.
“Why not leave the gold where it is?” I urged. “We know where to find it whenever we choose to come back.”
“We know where it is now,” he replied, “but the wizards may take it elsewhere. Thou didst see thyself that they were uneasy and fearful about it. They may put it in some safer place.”
I could not deny the truth of this; it was in fact highly probable that the priests would now look out for some more secure hiding-place for their treasure.
“How much dost thou wish to take?” I asked.
“I would take it all,” he replied.
“What!” I exclaimed. “Take it all! Thou art mad, Bukári. Why, there is more than thirty men could carry, and we are but two.”
“I know it,” he answered calmly. “We could not carry it all away, but what I would do is this. I would take out the gold and bury it in a safe place, where I would make a mark to find it again by. Then I would go to my country and tell my brothers of what I had done, and they should come to this country as if to buy guru, and when they had bought the guru at Juabin, they should come back this way, dig up the gold, and take it to my country.”
“Why bury the gold?” I asked. “Why not leave it in the tunnel. Nobody seems to know of the existence of this passage.”
“Who knows?” he answered. “Perhaps some hunters may know of this place and come here to sleep in the rains; besides, thinkest thou that the wizards, when they miss their treasure, will not search every place? They have only to bring a ladder to the treasure chamber to find this tunnel, and then all our labour would be in vain.”
I could not deny that Bukári’s reasoning was sound, that is, if one admitted the desirability of meddling with the treasure at all; and as I have already admitted, the sight of the gold had aroused my own cupidity to no small extent. Moreover the treasure had really been the object of my quest from the first, although I had never dreamed of laying my hands upon the actual hoard, so, in the end I fell in with the Moshi’s plan, and agreed to commence lifting the treasure at daybreak on the morrow.
There were, indeed, other matters to settle, such as the proportions of our respective shares and the security to be offered to me against treachery on the part of his brother Moshis, but as the marks must necessarily be made by me, and my assistance would be indispensable in identifying the locality, I left the details for settlement at a later date.
On the following morning we were awake and on the move before daybreak, and Bukári was full of childish eagerness to commence removing the gold. But there were one or two things to be done before we could begin. First it would be wise to settle on the place where the gold was to be buried, so that there should be no delay when once the removal was begun. Then it would never do to risk carrying the uncovered gold even a short distance, for if we were observed even by a chance stranger, disaster would be sure to follow. Lastly, we must have food of some kind.
As to the first question, we agreed that the gold would best be buried near to the river that I had seen from the plateau, as we should thus have a landmark that would help in the subsequent finding of the hoard; so, as soon as the sun had risen, I set off down the precipitous hillside to examine the river, leaving Bukári to plait a couple of wicker bags out of the grass on which we had slept.
A few minutes’ very easy climbing brought me to the foot of the hill by the great odúm tree, and I plunged at once into the forest, which was here rather dense, keeping a careful eye upon my shadow, that I might not lose my way. From the summit of the hill I had noted the position of the river, and I now struck out confidently in its direction.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.