the flat was not a large one, but the new-comers could see it was most luxuriously furnished and fitted with every modern convenience. uzali led the way into a cosy dining-room where he switched on the electric lights. the walls were dark red, showing up the pictures and china to perfection, and the overmantel was fitted with a bookcase. with a wave of his hand uzali bade his guests be seated.
"oh, yes, it is fairly comfortable," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "i am getting to the time of life when one takes a philosophic view of things. after all, i have little more than i want. i have my many friends in london and i have my books. still, i cannot forget that if i had my deserts i should be in a very different position. i ought to be a prince in my native country, with the control of some thousands of men, and there are times when the longing for the old life grips me and i could commit a thousand crimes to feel my feet on my native soil again. but all that is past and done with. i am waiting my time, and when one man pays the penalty for his crime i shall be free to go my own way again. but i did not bring you here to talk about myself. on the contrary, i am anxious to hear mr. russell's story."
"i am afraid there is very little story i have to tell," russell replied. "i have been a rolling stone all my life, always seeing a fortune and never finding one. i have no doubt if i had stayed at home like the average man i should have done well enough, but from my earliest days the fever of adventure has been in my blood and i cannot settle down. i have been everywhere where gold is to be found. i have risked my life a score of times only to come out of each adventure a little poorer than i went in. three years ago i was stranded at key west penniless and without a notion how to get a night's shelter. there by great good fortune i found a man i had met years before, and to him i explained how i was situated. he had not much to offer me, save that he was going to borneo orchid-hunting, and he wanted some one to accompany him. i jumped at the chance. anything was better than the slow starvation that stared me in the face. to make a long story short, we landed five weeks later in north borneo and proceeded to push our way inland. it was all right for a day or two, then we began to have some notion of the difficulties which surrounded us.
"the natives were bad, to begin with, and matters were made all the worse by the discovery that those people regarded certain flowers as sacred. they attacked us one night when we were quite unprepared for an assault, and in the morning i was the only one of our party who was left alive. my life was spared by accident. i happened to have in my possession a medicine-chest out of which i had given one of our native followers some quinine which cured him of ague. of course i need not tell you that we were betrayed, and that my native patient was one of the traitors. i thought my time had come as i lay there before one of the camp fires, picking out words here and there from their jargon, a portion of which was familiar to me. after a day or two i gathered that i was going to be taken up country and brought into the presence of one of the chiefs who was suffering from some illness.
"well, we jogged along for two or three weary days until we came to what, at one time, must have been a considerable town. i was surprised to find huge stone buildings divided into streets. i was amazed to see what must have been a magnificent circus. i saw scores of baths hewn out of the side and filled with most deliciously cool lake water. it was only afterwards that i learnt that the town was situated at the foot of a lake, and that hundreds of years ago a great dam had been built across the waters to keep them from flowing into the town. i have seen nothing so remarkable since i visited old towns in mexico. one thing struck me as particularly strange. for all the town was so large, there could not have been more than five or six hundred inhabitants. oh, you will pardon me, mr. uzali, but they were, for the most part, the image of yourself. the natives who had destroyed our expedition were a different class of men altogether. they were big, ugly black men. there were thousands of them up in the mountains, but they appeared to be terribly afraid of the people who occupied the town."
"a matter of civilization," uzali muttered.
"well, perhaps so," russell went on. "at any rate, they made me comfortable. i was led to understand that they regarded me with a certain amount of reverence, and i felt safe so long as i made no attempt to escape. i was free to roam the mountains, and the valleys below the town, indeed, i was free to do everything i pleased so long as i showed up at twilight. by this time i had established my reputation as a doctor. i was well in with the chief of the tribe. i had learnt a great deal of their past history. i had learnt something on my own account, too, which i regarded as still more valuable. below the town in one of the valleys i found traces of gold. i worked a place for weeks until i was certain that the gold was alluvial and that it had been washed down from the lake during hundreds of centuries. i calculated the amount of gold there. it was worth perhaps a couple of hundred thousand pounds, and when all that was extracted there would be nothing left. there was nothing for it but to bide my time and hope for the best. sooner or later my store of drugs would be exhausted, and then it was possible that i might be allowed to go down to the coast and replenish the chest.
"there was another discovery i made about the same time and that was a large amount of treasure which was hidden away in the chief's palace, i found it out by accident, too, though i feared at one time that the accident was going to cost me my life. i don't think i have ever seen a man so majestically angry as the chief was when he caught me gloating over his treasures.
"'the cause of all our troubles,' he said. 'but for those accursed things i should be master of this island from one side to the other. they bred greed and murder amongst my followers, they caused the shedding of blood. base treachery followed wherever they went. no one knows they are here but myself. no one shall ever know but myself, for after my death there shall be no more chiefs of the clan, and gradually we shall fade away and die, as our brethren perished across the seas in mexico. i will make a bargain with you, if you like. if i die first you shall have your freedom, you shall take six of my mules and six of my ponies, and you shall load them up with everything here that you most desire. with my seal upon them they will be safe from all men until you reach the coast.'
"there was nothing more to be said or done after that, only to wait my time and trust to fortune for a means of escape. so far as the chieftain's offer was concerned i thought no more about it, for he was a man in the prime of life and likely to last as long as i should.
"but one never knows. a week or two later came rumours from the mountains that certain white men had penetrated there and that they meant to make a raid on the town, accompanied by a gang of desperadoes whom they had bought over by promises of reward. we thought nothing of it, though it occurred to me once or twice that the chief looked grave and that he did not go quite so far afield as usual. it was late one afternoon when he came limping back into camp, and a messenger came to me post-haste to say that he had poisoned his foot with a prickly cactus. no sooner had the attendants left us alone than the chief turned to me eagerly.
"'i have deceived them all,' he whispered. 'it is no cactus which is the cause of the trouble. i was attacked in the woods this afternoon by a handful of natives who have hitherto been faithful. i managed to escape under cover of darkness, but not before i received this wound in my heel, which will be fatal.'
"i smiled at the chief's fears, but he shook his head with the utmost gravity.
"'i tell you i am right,' he said. 'i know the poison well. there is nothing in your box that can cure me, and when i am out of the way those people will swoop upon the town and not one of my followers will live to tell the tale. say nothing to anybody about this, but gather my most faithful men about you and let them know what has happened, so that they may be ready when the times comes, but not to-night—wait till the morrow. meanwhile, all i want to do is to be left alone to sleep.'
"there was nothing to be done but to obey the chief's commands and i went sorrowfully out. i did not return to the palace till the moon was high and the town asleep. the chief was slumbering peacefully, but his leg had swollen horribly, and it was evident that he had told me no more than the truth.
"sick at heart and utterly undetermined in my mind what to do i climbed the moonlit street till at length i came to the majestic weir which bordered the lake and kept the tide back from flooding the town. it seemed to me as i stood there that i could hear whispered voices, and i hastened to hide myself behind a mimosa bush. then a figure emerged into sight—a face and figure quite familiar to me. the light fell full upon his features and disclosed the last man i expected——"
"i know," uzali cried, "samuel flower!"
