XXXI

The berg rose out of the level forest by the river, and to Colet it was anomalous. It was an isolated mass of white limestone, a lofty island in the ocean of jungle. Its pale cliffs fell sheer to the green billows. Its summit was flat, but was so near to the clouds that its trees were but a dark undulating strip. Its walls, when glimpsed from below through breaks in the roof of the forest, appeared to overhang, but there were scarves and girdles of green on their bare ribs. An eagle soaring athwart its loftier crags was a drifting mote. Stalactites were pendent before the black portholes of caves in upper stories, like corbels over the outlooks of a castle of the sagas. If the number of those dark apertures meant anything, then the berg was hollow, was honeycombed with cavities. This enormity was not inviting, even in a morning light; not in such a land as that. The unexplored dungeons of such a castle might hide anything.

But Norrie judged it with a casual and professional eye. It was curious, but only geologically. He had seen such lumps before, of course. It was only what was left of an earlier skin of Malaya, a fragment of that country’s prehistoric hide. Time and the weather had peeled off all the rest. Unnatural? Well, look at it; was it not there? So how could it be unnatural? What he wanted to do was to get at it.

That was not easy, near and great as it was. The climbing palms, the rattans, flourished about it. Their taloned cables were coiled over the low ground in barriers unfriendly to the haste and impatience of men. Colet, bleeding and perspiring, had forgotten the rock by the time they had reached it. A little journey in that kind of undergrowth, crouching and crawling, while following the sound of a Malay’s parang, leaves room in the mind for but one interest. He crawled into a little clear space beside Norrie and two of the men. The island stood over them. They were at the base of a wall, and almost under a high Gothic porch, the entrance to the retreat, by the look of it, of midnight. Norrie but briefly inspected this rude resemblance of architecture, and was as indifferent to the sinister suggestions of the interior. He was not now discussing the ways of humanity, and so he appeared very cheerful. He declared that he loved caves, and insides that were convoluted and obscure. He was preparing to go in; he was testing some electric torches with a brisk assiduity which had its back to the forbidding fantasies of geological structure. The Malays, so they said, preferred to wait without. Their interest was spent. They went down on their hams and began to roll cigarettes while watching the tuans preparing to disappear on a foolish quest.

The threshold of the cave was of dry sand strewn with fallen rock. The day, venturing within as far as it could, hinted at fretted columns and aisles receding till the last shapes became what Colet chose to see there. The berg was hollow. Its recesses were capricious, and the disturbance of a rock by the invaders awoke echoes in lofty transepts and high vaultings unseen. That sharp sound brought down the dark in flying atoms. Myriads of bats fell like night whirling in shreds. The gloom moved with a screaming rush. Norrie, though, went on as if unaware of it, except that he broke out against the smell of the little beasts. It certainly was lairish, that stench; not to be forgotten.

“Keep close,” said Norrie; “but if you lose me, keep still.”

It was not easy to keep close to such erratic activity in the dark. Norrie, intently inspecting the floor at times, developed an insatiable curiosity and energy. He said little. He kept going. He might have forgotten that such a preferable enjoyment as daylight was now well behind them.

“Come here,” he said at last. He stood then, relaxed and indifferent, as though here they would turn back, and with his lamp illuminated black sand at his feet. He idly scraped the ground with his foot.

“Know what that is?”

“Sand.”

“Cassiterite.”

“What’s that?”

“Haven’t you brought that Highland fling with you? I’m showing you what we came for.”

“This stuff?”

“It’s as ripe as a freehold in Piccadilly. The floor of this hill is tin. It only wants spades.”

Norrie stooped, and poked the grains about with his fingers.

It only wanted spades. Colet felt a little hungry. It was near midday. Besides, Norrie himself was just scooping the sand as if he were a child at the seaside. Norrie twisted round, and turned up his torch to Colet’s face.

“I say, Colet, blast you, you haven’t got the expression of a lucky man. But you might try to behave like one. Sing something agreeable.”

“Me? Hang it, you’re not setting a lively example. I thought it was dirt.”

“So it is. So it is. There’s acres of it. Well, we’ve found it. Let’s go and get something to eat.”