King Solomon's Mines
us, pointing out how, after all, it was only anticipating an end which
must come to us all, that it would soon be over, and that death from
exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not true). Then, in a diffident
sort of way, as once before I had heard him do, he suggested that we
should throw ourselves on the mercy of a higher Power, which for my
part I did with great vigour.
His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong.
And so somehow the day went as the night had gone, if, indeed, one can
use these terms where all was densest night, and when I lit a match to
see the time it was seven o’clock.
Once more we ate and drank, and as we did so an idea occurred to me.
“How is it,” said I, “that the air in this place keeps fresh? It is
thick and heavy, but it is perfectly fresh.”
“Great heavens!” said Good, starting up, “I never thought of that. It
can’t come through the stone door, for it’s air-tight, if ever a door
was. It must come from somewhere. If there were no current of air in
the place we should have been stifled or poisoned when we first came
in. Let us have a look.”
It was wonderful what a change this mere spark of hope wrought in us.
In a moment we were all three groping about on our hands and knees,
feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardour
received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was dead
Foulata’s face.
For an hour or more we went on feeling about, till at last Sir Henry
and I gave it up in despair, having been considerably hurt by
constantly knocking our heads against tusks, chests, and the sides of
the chamber. But Good still persevered, saying, with an approach to
cheerfulness, that it was better than doing nothing.
“I say, you fellows,” he said presently, in a constrained sort of
voice, “come here.”
Needless to say we scrambled towards him quickly enough.
“Quatermain, put your hand here where mine is. Now, do you feel
anything?”
“I _think_ I feel air coming up.”
“Now listen.” He rose and stamped upon the place, and a flame of hope
shot up in our hearts. _It rang hollow._
With trembling hands I lit a match. I had only three left, and we saw
that we were in the angle of the far corner of the chamber, a fact that
accounted for our not having noticed the hollow sound of the place
during our former exhaustive examination. As the match burnt we
scrutinised the spot. There was a join in the solid rock floor, and,
great heavens! there, let in level with the rock, was a stone ring. We
said no word, we were too excited, and our hearts beat too wildly with
hope to allow us to speak. Good had a knife, at the back of which was
one of those hooks that are made to extract stones from horses’ hoofs.
He opened it, and scratched round the ring with it. Finally he worked
it under, and levered away gently for fear of breaking the hook. The
ring began to move. Being of stone it had not rusted fast in all the
centuries it had lain there, as would have been the case had it been of
iron. Presently it was upright. Then he thrust his hands into it and
tugged with all his force, but nothing budged.
“Let me try,” I said impatiently, for the situation of the stone, right
in the angle of the corner, was such that it was impossible for two to
pull at once. I took hold and strained away, but no results.
Then Sir Henry tried and failed.
Taking the hook again, Good scratched all round the crack where we felt
the air coming up.
“Now, Curtis,” he said, “tackle on, and put your back into it; you are
as strong as two. Stop,” and he took off a stout black silk
handkerchief, which, true to his habits of neatness, he still wore, and
ran it through the ring. “Quatermain, get Curtis round the middle and
pull for dear life when I give the word. _Now._”
Sir Henry put out all his enormous strength, and Good and I did the
same, with such power as nature had given us.
“Heave! heave! it’s giving,” gasped Sir Henry; and I heard the muscles
of his great back cracking. Suddenly there was a grating sound, then a
rush of air, and we were all on our backs on the floor with a heavy
flag-stone upon the top of us. Sir Henry’s strength had done it, and
never did muscular power stand a man in better stead.
“Light a match, Quatermain,” he said, so soon as we had picked
ourselves up and got our breath; “carefully, now.”
I did so, and there before us, Heaven be praised! was the _first step
of a stone stair._
“Now what is to be done?” asked Good.
“Follow the stair, of course, and trust to Providence.”
“Stop!” said Sir Henry; “Quatermain, get the bit of biltong and the
water that are left; we may want them.”
I went, creeping back to our place by the chests for that purpose, and
as I was coming away an idea struck me. We had not thought much of the
diamonds for the last twenty-four hours or so; indeed, the very idea of
diamonds was nauseous, seeing what they had entailed upon us; but,
reflected I, I may as well pocket some in case we ever should get out
of this ghastly hole. So I just put my fist into the first chest and
filled all the available pockets of my old shooting-coat and trousers,
topping up—this was a happy thought—with a few handfuls of big ones
from the third chest. Also, by an afterthought, I stuffed Foulata’s
basket, which, except for one water-gourd and a little biltong, was
empty now, with great quantities of the stones.
“I say, you fellows,” I sang out, “won’t you take some diamonds with
you? I’ve filled my pockets and the basket.”
“Oh, come on, Quatermain! and hang the diamonds!” said Sir Henry. “I
hope that I may never see another.”
As for Good, he made no answer. He was, I think, taking his last
farewell of all that was left of the poor girl who had loved him so
well. And curious as it may seem to you, my reader, sitting at home at
ease and reflecting on the vast, indeed the immeasurable, wealth which
we were thus abandoning, I can assure you that if you had passed some
twenty-eight hours with next to nothing to eat and drink in that place,
you would not have cared to cumber yourself with diamonds whilst
plunging down into the unknown bowels of the earth, in the wild hope of
escape from an agonising death. If from the habits of a lifetime, it
had not become a sort of second nature with me never to leave anything
worth having behind if there was the slightest chance of my being able
to carry it away, I am sure that I should not have bothered to fill my
pockets and that basket.
“Come on, Quatermain,” repeated Sir Henry, who was already standing on
the first step of the stone stair. “Steady, I will go first.”
“Mind where you put your feet, there may be some awful hole
underneath,” I answered.
“Much more likely to be another room,” said Sir Henry, while he
descended slowly, counting the steps as he went.
When he got to “fifteen” he stopped. “Here’s the bottom,” he said.
“Thank goodness! I think it’s a passage. Follow me down.”
Good went next, and I came last, carrying the basket, and on reaching
the bottom lit one of the two remaining matches. By its light we could
just see that we were standing in a narrow tunnel, which ran right and
left at right angles to the staircase we had descended. Before we could
make out any more, the match burnt my fingers and went out. Then arose
the delicate question of which way to go. Of course, it was impossible
to know what the tunnel was, or where it led to, and yet to turn one
way might lead us to safety, and the other to destruction. We were
utterly perplexed, till suddenly it struck Good that when I had lit the
match the draught of the passage blew the flame to the left.
“Let us go against the draught,” he said; “air draws inwards, not
outwards.”
We took this suggestion, and feeling along the wall with our hands,
whilst trying the ground before us at every step, we departed from that
accursed treasure chamber on our terrible quest for life. If ever it
should be entered again by living man, which I do not think probable,
he will find tokens of our visit in the open chests of jewels, the
empty lamp, and the white bones of poor Foulata.
When we had groped our way for about a quarter of an hour along the
passage, suddenly it took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by
another, which we followed, only in course of time to be led into a
third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone
labyrinth that led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course I
cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a
mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and
thither as the ore led them. This is the only way in which we could
account for such a multitude of galleries.
At length we halted, thoroughly worn out with fatigue and with that
hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and ate up our poor
remaining piece of biltong and drank our last sup of water, for our
throats were like lime-kilns. It seemed to us that we had escaped Death
in the darkness of the treasure chamber only to meet him in the
darkness of the tunnels.
As we stood, once more utterly depressed, I thought that I caught a
sound, to which I called the attention of the others. It was very faint
and very far off, but it _was_ a sound, a faint, murmuring sound, for
the others heard it too, and no words can describe the blessedness of
it after all those hours of utter, awful stillness.
“By heaven! it’s running water,” said Good. “Come on.”
Off we started again in the direction from which the faint murmur
seemed to come, groping our way as before along the rocky walls. I
remember that I laid down the basket full of diamonds, wishing to be
rid of its weight, but on second thoughts took it up again. One might
as well die rich as poor, I reflected. As we went the sound became more
and more audible, till at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet. On,
yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of
rushing water. And yet how could there be running water in the bowels
of the earth? Now we were quite near it, and Good, who was leading,
swore that he could smell it.
“Go gently, Good,” said Sir Henry, “we must be close.” _Splash!_ and a
cry from Good.
He had fallen in.
“Good! Good! where are you?” we shouted, in terrified distress. To our
intense relief an answer came back in a choky voice.
“All right; I’ve got hold of a rock. Strike a light to show me where
you are.”
Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to
us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How wide it was we could
not see, but there, some way out, was the dark form of our companion
hanging on to a projecting rock.
“Stand clear to catch me,” sung out Good. “I must swim for it.”
Then we heard a splash, and a great struggle. Another minute and he had
grabbed at and caught Sir Henry’s outstretched hand, and we had pulled
him up high and dry into the tunnel.
“My word!” he said, between his gasps, “that was touch and go. If I
hadn’t managed to catch that rock, and known how to swim, I should have
been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom.”
We dared not follow the banks of the subterranean river for fear lest
we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested
a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and
fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we could,
we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to retrace
our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in front of us.
At length we came to another gallery leading to our right.
“We may as well take it,” said Sir Henry wearily; “all roads are alike
here; we can only go on till we drop.”
Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly exhausted, along