"Smith, Wilbur - Ballantyne 03 - The Angels Weep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

"The devil is killing me!" screamed Jan Cheroot, and Ralph could see him pinned beneath the body of the horse. The horse must have broken its neck in the fall, it was a lifeless heap with head twisted up under its shoulder and the lion was ripping the carcass and saddle, trying to reach Jan Cheroot.

"Lie still," Ralph shouted down at him. "Give me a clear shot!"

But it was the lion that heard him. He left the horse and came up the vertical side of the pit with the ease of a cat climbing a tree, his glossy muscular hindquarters driving him lightly upwards and his pale yellow eyes fastened upon Ralph as he stood on the lip of the deep hole.

Ralph dropped on one knee to steady himself for the shot, and aimed down into the broad golden chest. The jaws were wide open, the fangs long as a man's forefinger and white as polished ivory, the deafening clamour from the open throat dinned into Ralph's face. He could smell the rotten-flesh taint of the lion's breath and flecks of hot saliva splattered against his cheeks and forehead.

He fired, and pumped the loading-handle and fired again, so swiftly that the shots were a continuous blast of sound. The lion arched backwards, hung for a long moment from the -wall of the pit, and then toppled and fell back upon the dead horse.

Now there was no movement from the bottom of the pit, and the silence was more intense than the shattering uproar that had preceded it.

"Jan Cheroot, are you all right?" Ralph called anxiously. There was no sign of the little Hottentot, he was completely smothered by the carcasses of horse and lion.

"Jan Cheroot, can you hear me?" The reply was in a hollow, sepulchral whisper. "Dead men cannot hear it's all over, they have got old Jan Cheroot at last." "Come out from under there,"Zouga Ballantyne ordered, as he stepped up to Ralph's shoulder. "This is no time to play the clown, Jan Cheroot." Ralph dropped a coil of manilla rope down to Jan Cheroot, and between them they hauled him and the saddle from the dead horse to the surface.

The excavation into which Jan Cheroot had fallen was a deep narrow trench along the crest of the ridge. In places it was twenty feet deep, but never more than six feet wide. Mostly it was choked with creepers and rank vegetation, but this could not disguise the certainty that it had been dug by men.

"The reef was exposed along this line," Zouga guessed, as they followed the edge of the old trench, "the ancient miners simply dug it out and did not bother to refill." "How did they blast the reef" Ralph demanded. "That's solid rock down there." "They probably built fires upon it, and then quenched it with water. The contraction cracked the rock." "Well, they seem to have taken out every grain of the ore body and left nary a speck for us." Zouga nodded. "They would have worked out this section first, and then when the reef pinched out they would have started sinking potholes along the strike to try and intercept it again." Zouga turned to Jan Cheroot and demanded, "Now do you recognize this place, Jan Cheroot?" And when the Hottentot hesitated, he pointed down the slope. "I'he swamp in the valley down there, and the teak trees--" "Yes, yes." Jan Cheroot clapped his hands, and his eyes twinkled with delight. "This is the same Place where you killed the bull elephant the tusks are on the stoep at King's Lynn." "The ancient dump will be just ahead." Zouga hurried forward.

He found the low mound covered by grass, and went down on his knees to scrabble amongst the grass roots, picking out the chips of white sugar quartz, examining each one swiftly and discarding it.

Occasionally he wet one with his tongue, held it to the sunlight to try and highlight the sparkle of metal, then frowned and shook his head with disappointment.

At last he stood and wiped his hands on his breeches.

"It's quartz all right, but the ancient miners must have hand-sorted this dump. We will have to find the old shafts if we want to see visible gold in the ore." From the top of the ancient dump Zouga orientated himself rapidly.

"The carcass of the bull elephant fell about there," he pointed, and to confirm it Jan Cheroot searched in the grass and lifted a huge thighbone, dry and white as chalk, and at last after thirty years beginning to crumble.

"He was the father of all elephant," Jan Cheroot said reverently.

"There will never be another like him, and it was he that led us to this place. When you shot him he fell here to mark it for us." Zouga turned a quarter-circle and pointed again. "The ancient shaft where we buried old Matthew will be there." Ralph recalled the elephant hunt as his father had described it in his celebrated book A Hunter's Odyssey.

The black gunbearer had not flinched from the great bull elephant's charge, but had stood it down and handed Zouga the second gun, sacrificing his own life for that of his master. So Ralph understood and remained silent, as Zouga went down on one knee beside the rock pile that marked the gunbearer's grave.

After a minute, Zouga rose and dusted off his knee, and said simply, "He was a good man." "Good, but stupid," Jan Cheroot agreed.

"A wise man would have run." "And a wise man would have chosen a better grave," Ralph murmured. "He is plumb in the centre of a gold reef. We will have to dig him out." But Zouga frowned. "Let him lie.

There are other shafts along the strike." He turned away, and the others followed him. A hundred yards farther on, Zouga stopped again. "Here!" he called with satisfaction. "The second shaft there were four of them altogether." This opening had also been refilled with chunks of native rock. Ralph shrugged off his jacket, propped his rifle against the hole of the nearest tree and climbed down into the shallow depression until he stooped over the narrow blocked entrance.

"I'm going to open it up." They worked for half an hour, pr ising loose the boulders with a branch of a lead wood and manhandling them aside until they had exposed the square opening to the shaft. It was narrow, so narrow that only a child could have passed through it. They knelt and peered down into it. There was no telling how deep it was, for it was impenetrably black in the depths and it stank of damp, of fungus and bats, and of rotting things.

Ralph and Zouga stared into the opening with a horrid fascination.

"They say the ancients used child slaves or captured Bushmen in the workings,"Zouga murmured.

"We have to know if the reef is down there," Ralph whispered.