CHAPTER XXII
THE DISCOVERY OF RABEH'S HOARD
Royce spent several hours of the night of his discovery of Goruba's second entry in cudgelling his brains over his new problem.
Twice had Goruba made his way into the fort; twice had he escaped. Yet on neither occasion had anyone seen him on the ramparts, nor had anyone seen him in the interior except Challis and the man who had now been wounded.
What puzzled Royce almost as much as the secret of Goruba's means of entry and of exit was the fact that he seemed to make no use of it. Being able to get in and out without being observed, why did he not make use of his power, and lead his followers into the fort?
"I wish Tom were here!" thought Royce. "I feel like Robinson Crusoe before he had Friday to talk to. John is the only Hausa at all equal to Friday. I almost wish they had not gone."
Next morning he set the men again to work on the ditch, and went through the fort from corner to corner, searching for some secret passage. The gaps in the walls had all been filled up. The stone slabs of the floor all seemed to be solid; none of them gave forth a hollow sound when he stamped on them. At the bottom of the well the spring bubbled constantly, the overflow passing away through a narrow slit through which a rabbit could hardly have crawled.
"It beats me altogether," he said to himself after his thorough survey.
He walked round inside the wall to see how the men were getting on with the ditch, and came to the foot or two of brickwork which had been uncovered.
"I wonder!" he exclaimed, as a sudden thought struck him. "Gambaru, fetch me the spade."
When the man returned, Royce began to dig away the earth on each side of the brickwork, which was itself too hard and to firmly imbedded to be cut into or prised up by the only tools he possessed.
He found, after some little time, that the brick-work was about four feet wide and very deep, and that it extended inwards. Dropping the spade, he walked into the fort in the same straight line as the brickwork.
"This may be the clue," he thought with some excitement. "At any rate, I must see."
The direction of his walk led him straight to the well.
"A false scent," he said to himself, more puzzled than ever.
He went back to the ditch, to make sure that he had not been mistaken in his course. No; there was no doubt, about it; he felt sure that if he uncovered the brickwork completely it would end at or near the wall of the well.
Just as he was beginning to dig again, another idea occurred to him.
"It would take me a couple of hours to clear all the earth away," he thought. "Perhaps it would be waste labour. I'll have another look at the well."
He returned, Gambaru following, much puzzled at his master's strange proceedings.
Standing on the brink, he peered down into the well, which was wide and fairly light. He had seen nothing extraordinary about it when he supervised the clearing out of the rubbish; there was nothing extraordinary about it now.
In the walls there were rusty iron staples, intended as footholds, and so used by the men. He descended, examining the walls and the staples; there was nothing strange about them.
"The brickwork is just about six feet below the surface," he thought. "I'll measure the same distance here."
At a little more than his own height below the ground he scrutinised the masonry carefully. There were slight clefts where the separate stones met, but nothing unusual in their appearance. He pushed and strained at the stonework, without effect.
Then he noticed, just within arm's reach to his right, a staple quite out of line with the rest. It seemed to have been fixed in the wall without purpose. Leaning over, he pulled at it, at first cautiously, then more and more vigorously.
Suddenly he felt a shock of surprise. Was the staple moving, or was he himself? He planted his foot firmly on the staple on which he was standing, and still pulled. There was no doubt about it; he was slowly swinging round. The huge slab of stone against which he was supporting himself had moved inwards on his right, outwards on his left, and he was turning with it.
Now thoroughly excited, he tugged steadily, and in a few moments found himself looking into a dark aperture in the wall.
"Eureka!" he exclaimed joyfully, and Gambaru, leaning over the brink of the well above, gasped with terrified amazement as he saw his master disappearing.
"A candle!" shouted Royce.
The Hausa sprinted away, and returned with the whole garrison at his heels.
"Back to your places, you idiots!" cried Royce. "Kulana, keep them at their posts. Give me the candle, Gambaru."
Holding the lighted candle, he stepped from the staple into a low dark passage, and groped his way stoopingly along it. For some forty or fifty yards it was narrow; then all at once it opened into a huge natural cavern, warm and stuffy, with an earthy smell.
Royce looked about him and gasped with astonishment. The candlelight fell on an enormous store of elephants' tusks, huge and massive objects ranged in close-packed rows, and filling nearly three parts of the cavern.
"My word! What a find!" Royce exclaimed.
He began to count the tusks, came to a hundred, and gave it up.
"Five hundred, at a guess," he thought. "They must be worth a fortune. No wonder Mr. Goruba wanted to strangle me! ... What's that yonder?"
He went farther into the cavern. Beyond the tusks lay an assortment of many things—ivory cups, vessels of gold, an old French musket, swords, scimitars, a kepi or two, a French officer's sash, some cartridge cases, several native spades and pickaxes—and, at the far end, objects which caused him to recoil. They were human skeletons.
At this gruesome sight Royce felt that he had had enough for the moment. The air was stifling, rendered still worse by the smoky candle. He retraced his steps, stood firmly on the staple in the slab, and this time pushing at the other staple, caused the stone to revolve on its pivot and set flush with the wall.
"What does it all mean?" he thought, as he sat in his room above, eating the frugal dinner which Kulana brought him.
He remembered what the old chief had told him about Goruba—that he had been lieutenant of Rabeh, the extraordinary negro who had risen from the position of a slave to the lordship of a great territory in the Sahara, tyrannised over the natives, and long defied the efforts of the French to put him down.
Was this secret hoard of wealth Rabeh's? Had he stored it in this cavern in the side of the hill, hoping some day, when he had defeated the French, to dispose of it?
"That must be the explanation," Royce concluded. "I don't know anything about the ivory trade, but those tusks must be of immense value, and must have represented a vast fortune even to a potentate like Rabeh. I suppose he let Goruba into the secret. When he was killed and his empire broken up, Goruba was for years a fugitive, the old man said. But he was ambitious, like his master. He always meant to get hold of this treasure. What Rabeh had done, he thought he could do. No doubt he joined the Tubus because their country is near this fort, and has gradually made himself a power with them. That's why he comes on his lonely visits—to see that Rabeh's hoard is safe. I don't suppose the Tubus know anything about it. It wouldn't suit his plans to inform them until he has made himself their absolute master."
Then his thoughts turned in another direction.
"How many villages were sacked, how many thousands of poor wretches were killed or enslaved in the gathering of this hoard? And Goruba is like his master in that, too—he is the same blood-thirsty tyrant and oppressor. But, please God, Tom will give him a shake.
"Ah! those skeletons—how did they come there?"
He pondered for a time without arriving at a conclusion.
"I see!" he said to himself at last. "They are the skeletons of the poor slaves who dug the passage Rabeh killed them to preserve his secret. Horrible! ... But I haven't discovered everything yet. Where is the entrance at the other end, by which Goruba reaches the cavern? I must go again—but not to-day. I can't face those skeletons again to-day; to-morrow, perhaps."
