“We trade it to the Fanti tribes,” she said. “It is of no use, too soft to make weapons, too heavy for arrow points; but they use it to wear around their fingers and ankles. They give us many skins for it, and sometimes they try to capture our territory and take the entire ledge. If I had my way we would stop making the ornaments. Our people do not like the metal, and never use it. Having it here just makes trouble for us, and the Fantis are fierce people. They are killing off our entire tribe.”
I nodded as wise as a dozen owls on a limb.
“Yeah,” I told her, “the stuff always makes trouble. Seems to me it’d be better to get rid of it.”
The old goldsmith raised his head, twisted his pipe in his mouth and screwed his rheumy eyes at me. For a minute or two he acted like he was goin’ to say somethin’, an’ then he went back to his work.
It was a close call. Right then I knew I’d been goin’ too fast. But I had my eye on that ledge o’ gold.
I guess it was a Fanti that saved my life; if it hadn’t been for seein’ him, the ants would have got me sure. Those ants looked pretty fierce when I saw ’em boilin’ out in military formation, but by the time it came dark they didn’t seem so much.
I got to thinkin’ things over. Bein’ a slave wasn’t near so bad as it might be, an’ one of these days I was goin’ to get away in the jungle an’ work down to a port. All I needed was to have about ninety pounds o’ pure gold on my back when I went out an’ I wouldn’t be workin’ as a sailor no more.
Sittin’ there in the warm night, while the other folks had all rolled into their huts, I got to thinkin’ things over. As a slave, I wasn’t given a hut. I could sleep out. If the animals got bad I could either build up the fire or climb a tree. But there was fifty or sixty other slaves, mostly captured warriors of other tribes, an’ it wasn’t so bad.
There was a place in the jungle where the hills formed a bottleneck, an’ there the tribe kept sentries so the Fantis couldn’t get in, an’ so the slaves couldn’t get out. Gettin’ through the jungle where there wasn’t a trail was plain impossible.
I picked up a lot of this from the girl, an’ a lot from usin’ my eyes.
Night time the ants didn’t see so much, an’ the gold seemed a lot more. I wondered how I could work it, an’ then a scheme hit me. I’d go out an’ make a quick run for the ledge, chop off a few chunks o’ quartz, an’ then beat it back quick. I’d be in an’ out before the ants could come boilin’ out of their thirty-foot ant hill. It seemed a cinch.
I sneaked away an’ managed to find my way down the trail to the gold ledge. It was dark in the jungle. The stars were all misty, an’ a squall was workin’ somewheres out to sea. I could hear the thunder of the surf an’ smell the smells of the jungle. There wasn’t any noise outside of the poundin’ surf.
I’d taken my shoes off when I dropped onto the raft, an’ they’d got lost while I was rollin’ around in the water, so I was barefoot. The ground had been beaten hard by millions of bare feet, an’ so I made no noise. The hard part was tellin’ just when I got to the gold ledge, because I didn’t want to steer a wrong course an’ fetch up against the ant heap.
I needn’t have worried. I smelled the faint smell o’ smoke, an’ then a pile o’ coals gleamed red against the black of the jungle night. It was the coals of the goldsmith’s fire. I chuckled to myself. What a simple bunch o’ people this tribe was!
An’ then, all of a sudden, I knew someone else was there in the jungle. It was that funny feelin’ that a man can’t describe. It wasn’t a sound, because there wasn’t any sound. It wasn’t anything I could see, because it was as dark as the inside of a pocket. But it was somethin’ that just made my hair bristle.
I slipped back from the path and into the dark of the jungle. Six feet from the trail an’ I was hidden as well as though I’d been buried.
I got my eye up against a crack in the leaves an’ watched the coals of the camp fire, tryin’ to see if anything moved.
All of a sudden those coals just blotted out. I thought maybe a leaf or a vine had got in front of my eyes, but there wasn’t. It was just somethin’ movin’ between me an’ the fire. An’ then it stepped to one side, an’ I saw it, a black man, naked, rushin’ into the cliff of gold. He worked fast, that boy. The light from the coals showed me just a blur of black motion as he chipped rocks from the ledge.
Then he turned and sprinted out.
I chuckled to myself. The boy had got my system. It was a cinch, nothin’ to it.
An’ then there came a yell of pain. The black man began to do a devil’s dance, wavin’ his hands and legs. He’d got right in front of me, within ten feet he was, an’ I could just make him out when he moved.
From the ground there came a faint whisperin’ noise, an’ then I could sense things crawlin’. I felt my blood turn to lukewarm water as I thought of the danger I was in. If those ants found me there—
I was afraid to move, an’ I was afraid to stand still.
But the black boy solved the problem for me. He made for a tree, climbin’ up a creeper like a monkey. Up in the tree, I could hear his hands goin’ as he tried to brush the ants off. And he kept up a low, moanin’ noise, sort of a chatter of agony.
I couldn’t tell whether the ants were leavin’ him alone or whether they were watchin’ the bottom of the tree, waitin’ for him.
But the creeper that he’d climbed up stretched against the starlit sky almost in front of my nose. I could see it faintly outlined against the stars. And then I noticed that it was ripplin’ and swayin’. For a minute I couldn’t make it out. Then I saw that those ants were swarmin’ up the tree.
That was the end. The moanin’ became a yellin’, an’ then things began to thud to the ground. That must be the gold rock the fellow had packed away with him, probably in a skin bag slung over his shoulder.
Then the sounds quit. Everything was silent. But I sensed the jungle was full of activity, a horrid activity that made me want to vomit. I could smell somethin’ that must have been blood, an’ there was a drip-drip from the tree branches.
Then the coals flickered up an’ I could see a little more. The ground was black, swarmin’. The ants were goin’ back and forth, up an’ down the creepers, up into the tree.
Finally somethin’ fell to the ground. It couldn’t have been a man, because it was too small, hardly bigger than a hunk o’ deer meat; but the firelight flickered on it, an’ I could see that the heap was all of a quiver. An’ it kept gettin’ smaller an’ smaller. Then I knew. The ants were finishin’ their work.
I held my hands to my eyes, but I couldn’t shut out the sight. If I’d moved I was afraid the ants would turn to me. I hadn’t been across the deadline, but would the ants know it? I shuddered and turned sick.
After a while I looked out again. The ground was bare. All of the ants were back in their pile of sticks. The last of the firelight flickered on a bunch o’ white bones. Near by was the gleam of yellow metal — gold from the rocks the Fanti had stolen.
Sick, I went back along the trail, back to the camp, not tellin’ anybody where I’d been or what I’d seen. I still wanted that gold, but I didn’t want it the way I’d figured I did.
I didn’t sleep much. They gave me a tanned skin for a bed and that was all. It was up to me to make myself comfortable on the ground. The ground was hard, but my bunk on the ship had been hard. It was the memory of that little black heap that kept gettin’ smaller an’ smaller that tortured my mind.
I lived through the night, an’ I lived through the days that followed; but I saw a lot that a white man shouldn’t see. After all, I guess we think too much of life. Life didn’t mean so much to those people, an’ they didn’t feel it was so blamed precious.