‘Don’t be a clot, Lo. I didn’t mean that. I just don’t want your rock hounds tearing up the countryside before I’ve had a chance to go over it.’
‘Okay, Ben. I promise,’ he laughed. ‘You can be here when we reopen the workings.’ He juggled the lump of quartz in his hand. ‘Let’s get back, I want to pan this and get some idea of its value.’
Using one of the stone mortars in the granite cap and a lump of ironstone as a pestle, Louren pounded a piece of the quartz to a fine white powder. This he collected in our cooking pot, and with well-water washed off the powdered stone. Swirling the contents of the pot with an easy circular motion, letting a little spill over the rim of the pot with each turn. It took him fifteen minutes to separate the ‘tail’ of gold. It lay curled around the bottom of the pot, greasy shiny yellow.
‘Pretty,’ I said.
‘They don’t come prettier!’ Louren grinned. ‘This stuff will go five ounces to the ton.’
‘You are an avaricious bastard, aren’t you,’ I teased him.
‘Put it this way, Ben,’ he was still grinning, ‘the profits from this will probably keep your Institute running for another twenty years. Don’t kick it, partner, money isn’t the root of all evil if you use it right.’
‘I won’t kick it,’ I promised him.
We camped that night beside the well, feasting on boiled elephant tongue and potatoes and keeping a bonfire going to compensate for our lack of blankets. We spent the following morning cutting out the tusks. These we buried beneath a huge pile of rocks to keep off the hyenas, and it was after noon before we started back for the Land-Rover.
Night caught us out again, but we reached the Land-Rover in the middle of the following morning. I had blisters on my heels the size of grapes and my lumps and bruises ached abominably. I collapsed thankfully into the passenger seat of the Land-Rover.
‘Up to this moment I have never truly appreciated the invention of the internal combustion engine,’ I announced gravely. ‘You can take me home now, James.’
We left Xhai and his small tribe to their eternal wanderings in the wilderness and we arrived back at the City of the Moon eight days after we left it. We were blackened by the sun and an accumulation of dirt, we had sprouted beards, and our hair was stiff with dust and grime. Louren’s beard came out a burnished red-gold that glistened in the sunlight.
He had been AWOL for three days, and the pack was clamorous. A tall pile of messages waited for him in the radio shack, and before he could shave or bath he had to spend an hour on the radio taking care of the most urgent matters that had arisen in his absence.
‘I should get on back to the salt mines right away,’ he told me as he came out of the shack. ‘It’s four-thirty. I could make it.’ He hesitated a moment, then his resolve hardened. ‘No, damn it! I’m going to steal one more night. Get out the Glen Grant while I take a bath.’
‘Now you are talking sense.’ I laughed.
‘All the way, partner.’ He punched my shoulder.
‘All the way, Lo,’ I assured him.
We talked a lot, and sang a little, and drank whisky until after midnight.
‘Bed!’ said Louren then, and rose to go, but suddenly he paused. ‘Ben you promised to let me have some photographs of the “white king” painting to take back with me.’
‘Sure, Lo.’ I stood up a little unsteadily and went through into the office. I took a sheaf of nine-by-six-inch glossy prints from my files and went back with them to Louren. Standing under the light he shuffled through them.
‘What’s wrong with this one, Ben?’ he asked suddenly, and handed it to me.
‘What? I can’t see anything.’
‘The face, Ben. There is a mark.’
I saw it then; a faint shadowy cross which marred the death-white face of the king. I studied it a moment. It puzzled me. I hadn’t noticed it before - like a dark grey hot cross bun.
‘It’s probably a flaw in the printing, Lo,’ I guessed. ‘Is it on the others?’ He glanced through the other prints quickly.
‘No. Just that one.’
I handed it back to him. ‘Just a faulty print,’ I said.
‘Okay.’ Louren accepted my explanation. ‘Goodnight.’
I poured myself a nightcap while Sally and the others trooped off after Louren, and I drank it slowly, sitting alone, running over in my mind the plans that Louren and I had formulated for the thorough investigation of the cavern.
I will admit that I never gave the mark on the white king’s face another thought. My excuse is that I was more than a little drunk.
The next two months passed swiftly. Ral and I devoted ourselves to a thorough excavation of the floor of the cavern.
The results were surprising only in their paucity. The cavern had never been used for human habitation, there was no midden or hearth level. We found an accumulation of animal detritus that extended down to bed-rock. On the bedrock itself we found a single square block of dressed stone, and that was the total bag.
Our excavations had given the cavern a forlorn and gutted appearance, and the bed-rock was uneven limestone, so I had the dig refilled and neatly levelled. Then we used the ancient blocks to lay a pavement around the emerald pool. I saw this as a concession to the convenience of the thousands of future visitors who would come
