Part 3 (1/2)

”Come along. There's the cave mouth just ahead.”

The chums paused to stare at the tall posts that marked the entrance, each crowned with a polished human skull, then Raal got the torches flaring and pa.s.sed them out to light their way.

d.i.c.k followed close beside Raal, with Dan at his heels, as they plunged into the darkness of the cave. The narrow walls rose straight beside them as they proceeded slowly, and soon d.i.c.k reached the place where the pa.s.sage turned at right angles.

Here the walls were flat surfaces, smoothed and cut artificially. It was no longer a rugged cave but a tunnel.

”Look!” exclaimed Dan. ”The walls are all covered with drawings.”

d.i.c.k held up his torch to the rocky surface and saw that it was painted with pictures of hunting scenes, men pursuing boars and antelope. The drawings were done in outline and rubbed with some brownish color to make them show clearly.

”These are real Stone-Age pictures,” said d.i.c.k as they went deeper and deeper into the cave. ”They are like the ones that Umba is painting now in his cave, but they show animals that have died out long ago.

See, here are drawings of extinct animals. There is the sabre-tooth tiger. And look, that is a mastodon with long, curved tusks.”

”Jiminy, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could find one or two left over?” said Dan.

”A mastodon? Not likely! The climate has changed since the time that picture was made and those giants died out long ago,” d.i.c.k replied.

”Well, anyhow, some day we will go hunting in the high mountains.

Maybe we can find one or two animals that are extinct everywhere else.”

”We'll certainly do that little thing,” said d.i.c.k. He held his torch closer to the wall to examine a large crack in the surface. It was of rotten, crumbling stone in the fissure and as d.i.c.k pried at it with his flint knife, a handful of fragments dropped out.

Dan stooped to look at them. He rose to his feet with his eyes bright with excitement.

”Do you know what this is?” he exclaimed. ”Quartz! Rotten quartz!

And it's heavy with gold.”

d.i.c.k stared at the glittering bits of ore and echoed: ”Gold!”

”We have stumbled on the place where all that metal comes from,” said Dan. ”This is a mine. See how the pa.s.sage goes on at a right angle.

It was dug to follow the ledge of gold.”

”I wonder. These people don't value gold. They use it the way we use any common metal.”

”It's the only metal they know,” said Dan. ”And it's common here as old iron is with us.”

Raal showed no interest in their find. Gold was nothing more to him than lead or tin. He picked up a yellow nugget from the floor and carelessly threw it away again.

”I don't think the tribe hollowed this tunnel for gold,” said d.i.c.k. ”I believe they cut it for use as a temple. And from the rock that was dumped outside they collected the gold that happened to be mixed with the crushed stone.”

”What a find!” Dan repeated over and over. ”Why, d.i.c.k, this would lead to a gold rush if the news ever got out. Just like the California and Yukon stampedes.”

”I hope n.o.body lets the word get out!”

”If Jess Slythe knew about it, he'd be here with an army of ruffians,”

said Dan.