CHAPTER 17. SOLOMON'S TREASURE CHAMBER

While we were engaged in recovering from our fright, and in examining

the grisly wonders of the Place of Death, Gagool had been differently

occupied. Somehow or other--for she was marvellously active when she

chose--she had scrambled on to the great table, and made her way to

where our departed friend Twala was placed, under the drip, to see,

suggested Good, how he was "pickling," or for some dark purpose of her

own. Then, after bending down to kiss his icy lips as though in

affectionate greeting, she hobbled back, stopping now and again to

address the remark, the tenor of which I could not catch, to one or

other of the shrouded forms, just as you or I might welcome an old

acquaintance. Having gone through this mysterious and horrible

ceremony, she squatted herself down on the table immediately under the

White Death, and began, so far as I could make out, to offer up

prayers. The spectacle of this wicked creature pouring out

supplications, evil ones no doubt, to the arch enemy of mankind, was

so uncanny that it caused us to hasten our inspection.

"Now, Gagool," said I, in a low voice--somehow one did not dare to

speak above a whisper in that place--"lead us to the chamber."

The old witch promptly scrambled down from the table.

"My lords are not afraid?" she said, leering up into my face.

"Lead on."

"Good, my lords;" and she hobbled round to the back of the great

Death. "Here is the chamber; let my lords light the lamp, and enter,"

and she placed the gourd full of oil upon the floor, and leaned

herself against the side of the cave. I took out a match, of which we

had still a few in a box, and lit a rush wick, and then looked for the

doorway, but there was nothing before us except the solid rock. Gagool

grinned. "The way is there, my lords. /Ha! ha! ha!/"

"Do not jest with us," I said sternly.

"I jest not, my lords. See!" and she pointed at the rock.

As she did so, on holding up the lamp we perceived that a mass of

stone was rising slowly from the floor and vanishing into the rock

above, where doubtless there is a cavity prepared to receive it. The

mass was of the width of a good-sized door, about ten feet high and

not less than five feet thick. It must have weighed at least twenty or

thirty tons, and was clearly moved upon some simple balance principle

of counter-weights, probably the same as that by which the opening and

shutting of an ordinary modern window is arranged. How the principle

was set in motion, of course none of us saw; Gagool was careful to

avoid this; but I have little doubt that there was some very simple

lever, which was moved ever so little by pressure at a secret spot,

thereby throwing additional weight on to the hidden counter-balances,

and causing the monolith to be lifted from the ground.

Very slowly and gently the great stone raised itself, till at last it

had vanished altogether, and a dark hole presented itself to us in the

place which the door had filled.

Our excitement was so intense, as we saw the way to Solomon's treasure

chamber thrown open at last, that I for one began to tremble and

shake. Would it prove a hoax after all, I wondered, or was old Da

Silvestra right? Were there vast hoards of wealth hidden in that dark

place, hoards which would make us the richest men in the whole world?

We should know in a minute or two.

"Enter, white men from the Stars," said Gagool, advancing into the

doorway; "but first hear your servant, Gagool the old. The bright

stones that ye will see were dug out of the pit over which the Silent

Ones are set, and stored here, I know not by whom, for that was done

longer ago than even I remember. But once has this place been entered

since the time that those who hid the stones departed in haste,

leaving them behind. The report of the treasure went down indeed among

the people who lived in the country from age to age, but none knew

where the chamber was, nor the secret of the door. But it happened

that a white man reached this country from over the mountains--

perchance he too came 'from the Stars'--and was well received by the

king of that day. He it is who sits yonder," and she pointed to the

fifth king at the table of the Dead. "And it came to pass that he and

a woman of the country who was with him journeyed to this place, and

that by chance the woman learnt the secret of the door--a thousand

years might ye search, but ye should never find that secret. Then the

white man entered with the woman, and found the stones, and filled

with stones the skin of a small goat, which the woman had with her to

hold food. And as he was going from the chamber he took up one more

stone, a large one, and held it in his hand."

Here she paused.

"Well," I asked, breathless with interest as we all were, "what

happened to Da Silvestra?"

The old hag started at the mention of the name.

"How knowest thou the dead man's name?" she asked sharply; and then,

without waiting for an answer, went on--

"None can tell what happened; but it came about that the white man was

frightened, for he flung down the goat-skin, with the stones, and fled

out with only the one stone in his hand, and that the king took, and

it is the stone which thou, Macumazahn, didst take from Twala's brow."

"Have none entered here since?" I asked, peering again down the dark

passage.

"None, my lords. Only the secret of the door has been kept, and every

king has opened it, though he has not entered. There is a saying, that

those who enter there will die within a moon, even as the white man

died in the cave upon the mountain, where ye found him, Macumazahn,

and therefore the kings do not enter. /Ha! ha!/ mine are true words."

Our eyes met as she said it, and I turned sick and cold. How did the

old hag know all these things?

"Enter, my lords. If I speak truth, the goat-skin with the stones will

lie upon the floor; and if there is truth as to whether it is death to

enter here, that ye will learn afterwards. /Ha! ha! ha!/" and she

hobbled through the doorway, bearing the light with her; but I confess

that once more I hesitated about following.

"Oh, confound it all!" said Good; "here goes. I am not going to be

frightened by that old devil;" and followed by Foulata, who, however,

evidently did not at all like the business, for she was shivering with

fear, he plunged into the passage after Gagool--an example which we

quickly followed.

A few yards down the passage, in the narrow way hewn out of the living

rock, Gagool had paused, and was waiting for us.

"See, my lords," she said, holding the light before her, "those who

stored the treasure here fled in haste, and bethought them to guard

against any who should find the secret of the door, but had not the

time," and she pointed to large square blocks of stone, which, to the

height of two courses (about two feet three), had been placed across

the passage with a view to walling it up. Along the side of the

passage were similar blocks ready for use, and, most curious of all, a

heap of mortar and a couple of trowels, which tools, so far as we had

time to examine them, appeared to be of a similar shape and make to

those used by workmen to this day.

Here Foulata, who had been in a state of great fear and agitation

throughout, said that she felt faint and could go no farther, but

would wait there. Accordingly we set her down on the unfinished wall,

placing the basket of provisions by her side, and left her to recover.

Following the passage for about fifteen paces farther, we came

suddenly to an elaborately painted wooden door. It was standing wide

open. Whoever was last there had either not found the time to shut it,

or had forgotten to do so.

/Across the threshold of this door lay a skin bag, formed of a goat-

skin, that appeared to be full of pebbles./

"/Hee! hee!/ white men," sniggered Gagool, as the light from the lamp

fell upon it. "What did I tell you, that the white man who came here

fled in haste, and dropped the woman's bag--behold it! Look within

also and ye will find a water-gourd amongst the stones."

Good stooped down and lifted it. It was heavy and jingled.

"By Jove! I believe it's full of diamonds," he said, in an awed

whisper; and, indeed, the idea of a small goat-skin full of diamonds

is enough to awe anybody.

"Go on," said Sir Henry impatiently. "Here, old lady, give me the

lamp," and taking it from Gagool's hand, he stepped through the

doorway and held it high above his head.

We pressed in after him, forgetful for the moment of the bag of

diamonds, and found ourselves in King Solomon's treasure chamber.

At first, all that the somewhat faint light given by the lamp revealed

was a room hewn out of the living rock, and apparently not more than

ten feet square. Next there came into sight, stored one on the other

to the arch of the roof, a splendid collection of elephant-tusks. How

many of them there were we did not know, for of course we could not

see to what depth they went back, but there could not have been less

than the ends of four or five hundred tusks of the first quality

visible to our eyes. There, alone, was enough ivory to make a man

wealthy for life. Perhaps, I thought, it was from this very store that

Solomon drew the raw material for his "great throne of ivory," of

which "there was not the like made in any kingdom."

On the opposite side of the chamber were about a score of wooden

boxes, something like Martini-Henry ammunition boxes, only rather

larger, and painted red.

"There are the diamonds," cried I; "bring the light."

Sir Henry did so, holding it close to the top box, of which the lid,

rendered rotten by time even in that dry place, appeared to have been

smashed in, probably by Da Silvestra himself. Pushing my hand through

the hole in the lid I drew it out full, not of diamonds, but of gold

pieces, of a shape that none of us had seen before, and with what

looked like Hebrew characters stamped upon them.

"Ah!" I said, replacing the coin, "we shan't go back empty-handed,

anyhow. There must be a couple of thousand pieces in each box, and

there are eighteen boxes. I suppose this was the money to pay the

workmen and merchants."

"Well," put in Good, "I think that is the lot; I don't see any

diamonds, unless the old Portuguese put them all into his bag."

"Let my lords look yonder where it is darkest, if they would find the

stones," said Gagool, interpreting our looks. "There my lords will

find a nook, and three stone chests in the nook, two sealed and one

open."

Before translating this to Sir Henry, who carried the light, I could

not resist asking how she knew these things, if no one had entered the

place since the white man, generations ago.

"Ah, Macumazahn, the watcher by night," was the mocking answer, "ye

who dwell in the stars, do ye not know that some live long, and that

some have eyes which can see through rock? /Ha! ha! ha!/"

"Look in that corner, Curtis," I said, indicating the spot Gagool had

pointed out.

"Hullo, you fellows," he cried, "here's a recess. Great heavens! see

here."

We hurried up to where he was standing in a nook, shaped something

like a small bow window. Against the wall of this recess were placed

three stone chests, each about two feet square. Two were fitted with

stone lids, the lid of the third rested against the side of the chest,

which was open.

"/See!/" he repeated hoarsely, holding the lamp over the open chest.

We looked, and for a moment could make nothing out, on account of a

silvery sheen which dazzled us. When our eyes grew used to it we saw

that the chest was three-parts full of uncut diamonds, most of them of

considerable size. Stooping, I picked some up. Yes, there was no doubt

of it, there was the unmistakable soapy feel about them.

I fairly gasped as I dropped them.

"We are the richest men in the whole world," I said. "Monte Christo

was a fool to us."

"We shall flood the market with diamonds," said Good.

"Got to get them there first," suggested Sir Henry.

We stood still with pale faces and stared at each other, the lantern

in the middle and the glimmering gems below, as though we were

conspirators about to commit a crime, instead of being, as we thought,

the most fortunate men on earth.

"/Hee! hee! hee!/" cackled old Gagool behind us, as she flitted about

like a vampire bat. "There are the bright stones ye love, white men,

as many as ye will; take them, run them through your fingers, /eat/ of

them, /hee! hee! drink/ of them, /ha! ha!/"

At that moment there was something so ridiculous to my mind at the

idea of eating and drinking diamonds, that I began to laugh

outrageously, an example which the others followed, without knowing

why. There we stood and shrieked with laughter over the gems that were

ours, which had been found for /us/ thousands of years ago by the

patient delvers in the great hole yonder, and stored for /us/ by

Solomon's long-dead overseer, whose name, perchance, was written in

the characters stamped on the faded wax that yet adhered to the lids

of the chest. Solomon never got them, nor David, or Da Silvestra, nor

anybody else. /We/ had got them: there before us were millions of

pounds' worth of diamonds, and thousands of pounds' worth of gold and

ivory only waiting to be taken away.

Suddenly the fit passed off, and we stopped laughing.

"Open the other chests, white men," croaked Gagool, "there are surely

more therein. Take your fill, white lords! /Ha! ha!/ take your fill."

Thus adjured, we set to work to pull up the stone lids on the other

two, first--not without a feeling of sacrilege--breaking the seals

that fastened them.

Hoorah! they were full too, full to the brim; at least, the second one

was; no wretched burglarious Da Silvestra had been filling goat-skins

out of that. As for the third chest, it was only about a fourth full,

but the stones were all picked ones; none less than twenty carats, and

some of them as large as pigeon-eggs. A good many of these bigger

ones, however, we could see by holding them up to the light, were a

little yellow, "off coloured," as they call it at Kimberley.

What we did /not/ see, however, was the look of fearful malevolence

that old Gagool favoured us with as she crept, crept like a snake, out

of the treasure chamber and down the passage towards the door of solid

rock.

*****

Hark! Cry upon cry comes ringing up the vaulted path. It is Foulata's

voice!

"/Oh, Bougwan! help! help! the stone falls!/"

"Leave go, girl! Then--"

"/Help! help! she has stabbed me!/"

By now we are running down the passage, and this is what the light

from the lamp shows us. The door of the rock is closing down slowly;

it is not three feet from the floor. Near it struggle Foulata and

Gagool. The red blood of the former runs to her knee, but still the

brave girl holds the old witch, who fights like a wild cat. Ah! she is

free! Foulata falls, and Gagool throws herself on the ground, to twist

like a snake through the crack of the closing stone. She is under--ah!

god! too late! too late! The stone nips her, and she yells in agony.

Down, down it comes, all the thirty tons of it, slowly pressing her

old body against the rock below. Shriek upon shriek, such as we have

never heard, then a long sickening /crunch/, and the door was shut

just as, rushing down the passage, we hurled ourselves against it.

It was all done in four seconds.

Then we turned to Foulata. The poor girl was stabbed in the body, and

I saw that she could not live long.

"Ah! Bougwan, I die!" gasped the beautiful creature. "She crept out--

Gagool; I did not see her, I was faint--and the door began to fall;

then she came back, and was looking up the path--I saw her come in

through the slowly falling door, and caught her and held her, and she

stabbed me, and /I die/, Bougwan!"

"Poor girl! poor girl!" Good cried in his distress; and then, as he

could do nothing else, he fell to kissing her.

"Bougwan," she said, after a pause, "is Macumazahn there? It grows so

dark, I cannot see."

"Here I am, Foulata."

"Macumazahn, be my tongue for a moment, I pray thee, for Bougwan

cannot understand me, and before I go into the darkness I would speak

to him a word."

"Say on, Foulata, I will render it."

"Say to my lord, Bougwan, that--I love him, and that I am glad to die

because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as I am, for

the sun may not mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black.

"Say that, since I saw him, at times I have felt as though there were

a bird in my bosom, which would one day fly hence and sing elsewhere.

Even now, though I cannot lift my hand, and my brain grows cold, I do

not feel as though my heart were dying; it is so full of love that it

could live ten thousand years, and yet be young. Say that if I live

again, mayhap I shall see him in the Stars, and that--I will search

them all, though perchance there I should still be black and he would

--still be white. Say--nay, Macumazahn, say no more, save that I love

--Oh, hold me closer, Bougwan, I cannot feel thine arms--/oh! oh!/"

"She is dead--she is dead!" muttered Good, rising in grief, the tears

running down his honest face.

"You need not let that trouble you, old fellow," said Sir Henry.

"Eh!" exclaimed Good; "what do you mean?"

"I mean that you will soon be in a position to join her. /Man, don't

you see that we are buried alive?/"

Until Sir Henry uttered these words I do not think that the full

horror of what had happened had come home to us, preoccupied as we

were with the sight of poor Foulata's end. But now we understood. The

ponderous mass of rock had closed, probably for ever, for the only

brain which knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath its weight.

This was a door that none could hope to force with anything short of

dynamite in large quantities. And we were on the wrong side!

For a few minutes we stood horrified, there over the corpse of

Foulata. All the manhood seemed to have gone out of us. The first

shock of this idea of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was

overpowering. We saw it all now; that fiend Gagool had planned this

snare for us from the first.

It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would have

rejoiced in, the idea of the three white men, whom, for some reason of

her own, she had always hated, slowly perishing of thirst and hunger

in the company of the treasure they had coveted. Now I saw the point

of that sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds. Probably

somebody had tried to serve the poor old Dom in the same way, when he

abandoned the skin full of jewels.

"This will never do," said Sir Henry hoarsely; "the lamp will soon go

out. Let us see if we can't find the spring that works the rock."

We sprang forward with desperate energy, and, standing in a bloody

ooze, began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the passage.

But no knob or spring could we discover.

"Depend on it," I said, "it does not work from the inside; if it did

Gagool would not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It

was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazards,

curse her."

"At all events," said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh,

"retribution was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is

likely to be. We can do nothing with the door; let us go back to the

treasure room."

We turned and went, and as we passed it I perceived by the unfinished

wall across the passage the basket of food which poor Foulata had

carried. I took it up, and brought it with me to the accursed treasure

chamber that was to be our grave. Then we returned and reverently bore

in Foulata's corpse, laying it on the floor by the boxes of coin.

Next we seated ourselves, leaning our backs against the three stone

chests which contained the priceless treasure.

"Let us divide the food," said Sir Henry, "so as to make it last as

long as possible." Accordingly we did so. It would, we reckoned, make

four infinitesimally small meals for each of us, enough, say, to

support life for a couple of days. Besides the "biltong," or dried

game-flesh, there were two gourds of water, each of which held not

more than a quart.

"Now," said Sir Henry grimly, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we

die."

We each ate a small portion of the "biltong," and drank a sip of

water. Needless to say, we had but little appetite, though we were

sadly in need of food, and felt better after swallowing it. Then we

got up and made a systematic examination of the walls of our prison-

house, in the faint hope of finding some means of exit, sounding them

and the floor carefully.

There was none. It was not probable that there would be any to a

treasure chamber.

The lamp began to burn dim. The fat was nearly exhausted.

"Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "what is the time--your watch goes?"

I drew it out, and looked at it. It was six o'clock; we had entered

the cave at eleven.

"Infadoos will miss us," I suggested. "If we do not return to-night he

will search for us in the morning, Curtis."

"He may search in vain. He does not know the secret of the door, nor

even where it is. No living person knew it yesterday, except Gagool.

To-day no one knows it. Even if he found the door he could not break

it down. All the Kukuana army could not break through five feet of

living rock. My friends, I see nothing for it but to bow ourselves to

the will of the Almighty. The search for treasure has brought many to

a bad end; we shall go to swell their number."

The lamp grew dimmer yet.

Presently it flared up and showed the whole scene in strong relief,

the great mass of white tusks, the boxes of gold, the corpse of the

poor Foulata stretched before them, the goat-skin full of treasure,

the dim glimmer of the diamonds, and the wild, wan faces of us three

white men seated there awaiting death by starvation.

Then the flame sank and expired.

Read next: CHAPTER 18. WE ABANDON HOPE

Read previous: CHAPTER 16. THE PLACE OF DEATH

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