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"You must excuse me," said the old gentleman, sitting rather stiffly, "if I appear to take a somewhat limited interest in this great Simiacine discovery, of which there has been considerable talk in some circles. The limit to my interest is drawn by a lamentable ignorance. I am afraid the business details are rather unintelligible to me.
The cloth fluttered as they lowered him into his narrow resting-place, and the face they covered had a strange mystic grin, as if he saw something that they could not perceive. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he saw the Simiacine Plateau, and knew that, after all, he had won the last throw; for up there, far above the table-lands of Central Africa, there lay beneath high Heaven a charnel-house.
"No, I shouldn't think you were." "Remains Africa. I am not a clever chap, like you, Meredith." "For which you may thank a gracious Providence," interposed Jack. "Chaps like me are what some people call 'fools' in their uncouth way." "But I know a little about Africa, and I know something about Durnovo. That man has got a mania, and it is called Simiacine.
Of course, I had to bring a pretty large escort. I brought down sixty thousand pounds worth of Simiacine." "Yes," she said; "and you take all the men back to-morrow?" He did not remember having stated for certain that he was leaving the next day. "Or the day after," he amended. "Have you had any more sickness among the men?" she asked at once, in a tone of irony which made him wince.
Happiness is self-absorbed. Four months elapsed, and the excitement created in the small world of Western Africa by the first dazzling success of the Simiacine Expedition began to subside. The thing took its usual course. At first the experts disbelieved, and then they prophesied that it could not last.
Do you think that all Loango, even to the boatmen on the beach, ignores the fact that you are here in Loango now because you are afraid to go through a savage country to the Simiacine Plateau as you are pledged to do? You were afraid of the small-pox once; there is something else that you are afraid of now. I do not know what it is, but I will find out. Coward! Go!
Piled up in neat square cases, such as could be carried in pairs by a man of ordinary strength, was the crop of Simiacine, roughly valued by Victor Durnovo at forty thousand pounds. Ten men could carry the whole of it, and the twenty cases set close together on the ground made a bed for Guy Oscard.
What money have you?" Jack moved uneasily in his chair. "I have completed the sale of the last consignment of Simiacine," he began categorically. "The demand for it has increased. We have now sold two hundred thousand pounds worth in England and America. My share is about sixty thousand pounds. I have invested most of that sum, and my present income is a little over two thousand a year."
So that which the placid moon shone down upon was the break-up of the great Simiacine scheme. Victor Durnovo had not come off so badly. He had the larger half of the men by his side. He had all the finest crop the trees had yielded but he had yet to reckon with high Heaven. We shut our hearts up nowadays, Like some old music-box that plays Unfashionable airs.
"Not for nine hundred thousand pounds. There is a curse on that place." "I believe there is," said Meredith. And such was the end of the great Simiacine Scheme the wonder of a few seasons. Some day, when the great Sahara is turned into an inland sea, when steamers shall ply where sand now flies before the desert wind, the Plateau may be found again.
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