N OATH preceded commands in German. Following on the trodden trail into the arbor, there appeared a short, thick-set man with a blond beard in a patched uniform, a Mauser pistol in his hand. Behind the officer were two rankers, cadaverous of features, and several black soldiers.
“ !” growled the blond beard in German. “There are no more of the English pigs. Ach, that one has left his hat.”
Another white came up behind him and saluted.
“What shall be done with the prisoner, Excellenz? He is wounded in the leg and unconscious.”
“Good! Take him to the rest house. Is the tall one wounded or dead?”
“Dead, Excellenz. His companion seems to have killed him with his fist. He is a strong one, that. Undoubtedly they quarreled, yet neither has any diamonds.”
“Good. Perhaps Ahrenburg shot the other pigs if there were any, but he must be court martialed for letting these enter the valley. Throw this pork into the jungle. It is a pity, for he would have been perhaps a good specimen for the Herr Doktor. Go. I want my lunch.”
They stamped away in the direction of the hut.
“See?” whispered Plessons. “They haven’t tumbled that we’re here.”
“So much the better. Sawyer must have struck Bodiker mighty hard!”
“Them sparklers have driven him clean mad. I say, gov’nor, that bloke’s the Kommandant von Muhlhauser himself. Pretty foxy cove he useter be. We chaised him from hole ter hole, but we never fahnd this plaice.”
“How d’you know?”
“Lumme, I wus scaht and I useter crawl frough their lines,” returned Plessons as if that were nothing in particular.
“We’d better be getting a move on,” said Tony.
“Yus. Maike fer the hill and work along between the spiders and the forest.”
Thus they did, almost noiselessly gliding through the fringe of the jungle until they reckoned that they were far enough away to discard caution. Steep going they found among the broken, forest-covered débris at the base of the escarpment, and as hot as a boiler room of a liner in the Red Sea.
On their passage they saw no spoor of game; no sign of life of any sort except birds, lizards, snakes and insects. Mosquitoes, even before the sun set, attacked them in clouds. The Mbwa (dog) fly, which flies no higher than a big dog, chewed their wrists and ankles. The false twilight of the hidden valley had begun before they caught sight of the settlement, the lights of which they had seen the previous night.
The site was on a small plateau at the base of one of the volcanoes, the ground running up from light jungle to scrub where about a hundred feet higher glowed the spider belt, which evidently formed a band at the same altitude right around the landlocked valley. On examination through the glasses in the swiftly fading glow of a flamingo sunset, Tony was astonished to see a cluster of huts, what appeared to be a village of some size, exhibiting a good deal of activity. Clearly in the lower dusk he could distinguish a black, white and red blob at the top of a palm trunk, and as they looked a trumpet call rang out and the prewar flag came fluttering down.
Between the station and the main jungle, which ended as abruptly as a fence, was a low, open space looking like the bed of a dried-up river pocked with pits from which ran wires, gleaming like a spider’s web, up to the lip of the plateau. Unable to guess what they could be, Tony handed the Zeiss to Plessons, who after one look exclaimed:
“Sufferin’ Moses, if that ain’t the ruddy limit!”
“What? What?”
“W’y, look, gov’nor! Them holes yer see in the grahnd’re di’mond pits! Them blokes must have half a hundred or more black fellas working for ’em. Must be blue clay or I’m a liar! Blimey! It’s a young already, that’s what it is! ’Struth! Did yer see up there on the right?”
He switched the glasses swiftly about.
“That’s it. This here must have been a river afore them volcanoes busted out and blocked both ends of the valley.”
He stared perplexedly.
“Did yer notice that long shed up there? If that ain’t a sorting shed I’ll eat me bloomin’ boots! Yer see, they dig in the clay, shove it inter baskets and haul it up on them wire stays to the plateau, where it’s broken up and all the di’monds picked aht. See, there’s the dump jus’ ter the left. Crumbs! They must have a dozen fortunes there by the look of it; and fifty more in the grahnd. Look, there’s von Muhlhauser comin’ back—does hisself well in a machila (hammock) my oath!—and our maite.” He laughed. “Looks pretty sick if yer arsk me—ol’ slab-sides!”