CHAPTER XXIV.

THE TRUE GOLD . * . A;- , , . 329
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"' Have done with this nonsense '" . • • • Frontis. " Like a stranded fish upon the shingle " . facing page 42
" She looked at him leaning there lost in thought " „ 52
" Benita saw Jacob Meyer for the first time " . „ 70
" There they stood, all four of them, staring at
the white Benita " „ 92
"'Behold the City of my people'" „ 108
" Down— dead or dying— went the Matabele " . „ 126
"Great numbers of shrouded forms" „ 150
" Benita heard the bullet clap upon the hide shield " ,, 204
'"Now good-bye, and go on'" . . . . „ 210
" He looked like a panther about to spring " . „ 226
" ' Great Heaven ! ' said Meyer, ' it is Portuguese ' " „ 254
" She stood quite still, afraid to move " . . „ 274
" ' Who are you ? '" „ 280
" Flying from death to death " . . , ,, 312
" Meyer was disarmed and bound fast to a tree " . „ 336
BENITA.
NOTE.
IT may interest readers of this story to know that its author believes it to have a certain founda- tion in fact.
It was said about five-and-twenty or thirty years ago that an adventurous trader, hearing from some natives in the territory that lies at the back of Quilimane, the legend of a great treasure buried in or about the sixteenth century by a party of Portuguese who were afterwards massacred, as a last resource attempted its dis- covery by the help of a mesmerist. According to this history the child who was used as a sub- ject in the experiment, when in a state of trance, detailed the adventures and death of the un- happy Portuguese men and women, two of whom leapt from the point of a high rock into the Zam- besi. Although he knew no tongue but English, this clairvoyant child is declared to have repeated in Portuguese the prayers these unfortunates offered up, and even to have sung the very hymns they sang. Moreover, with much other detail, he described the burial of the great treasure and its exact situation so accurately that the
2 BENITA.
white man and the mesmerist were able to dig for and find the place where it had been — for the bags were gone, swept out by the floods of the river.
Some gold coins remained, however, one of them a ducat of Aloysius Mocenigo, Doge of Venice. Afterwards the boy was again thrown into a trance (in all he was mesmerised eight times), and revealed where the sacks still lay ; but before the white trader could renew his search for them, the party was hunted out of the country by natives whose superstitious fears were aroused, barely escaping with their lives.
It should be added that, as in the following tale, the chief who was ruling there when the tragedy happened, declared the place to be sacred, and that if it were entered evil would befall his tribe. Thus it came about that for generations it was never violated, until at length his descend- ants were driven farther from the river by war, and from some of them the white man heard the legend.