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many pirates?" Kit wanted to know. "A few dozen, I guess. I didn't have time to count," was the reply. "What happened to them all when the ship sank?" The father answered, "The ones able to swim made it to shore, where the people were waiting for them." One of the ones who made it to shore was his father, but barely. That was all he had to say about the event, but word trickled through the jungle via messengers, tom-toms, and travelers.
    Single-handed, he had overcome a dozen vicious armed bandits and blown up their ship, scattering the remaining two dozen bandits to the tender mercies of the river crocodiles or the warriors waiting on the shore. There were no policemen in the jungle. No law. Only the Phantom. But Kit would learn more about that in time to come.

    CHAPTER 3
     
    MANY WONDERS
    There were no few wonders in the ancient realm of the Phantom, and in the weeks and months that followed, Kit was to see and hear many of them. First, the Cave itself contained amazing things in those rocky chambers he had glimpsed ever since he crawled about on all fours. There was the chamber filled with fiery flashes, called the "minor treasure room." Here, there were many chests, some open, some closed. The open ones were filled to the top and often overflowing with red, green, blue, and white stones, and with yellow metal discs of all sizes. These were gold, he was told. The colored stones had names: diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and others. They were also called gems or jewels. Some of the chests held cups and dishes of gold, and there were hundreds of rings with colored stones to be worn on the fingers, and yellow necklaces and bracelets-ornaments with the colored stones-to be worn on arms, ankles or around the neck.

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    Kit played with the heaps of jewels and gold coins, building castles and walls and pits, as a child does with sand in a sandbox or on the beach. He told Guran about the gold and jewels. Guran pondered for a moment and asked, "What is it for?" Kit didn't know, and passed on the question to his father, who explained that the gold- also called money-was used by people to buy things like food and clothes. The ideas of buying, and money, had to be explained, and this was all strange to Kit, for food and clothing were to be had for the taking in the jungle. "What do you use it for?" he asked. His father explained that he rarely had any need for money, and that the gold of the treasure room was used in the endless battle against evil. "What is evil?" Kit wanted to know. "I'll tell you about that another time," his father answered, standing up. "And the bracelets, and the rings, and the jewels?"
    Kit started to ask. "People-mostly women-like to wear them, to look pretty," he answered, walking out.

    Kit noticed that after a few hours of questions like that, his father always went out for a walk in the open air. "But dear," he overheard beautiful mother saying one night, "you must answer the child's questions. Be patient." "Patient?" his father said. "I answered at least three thousand questions today.
    They're endless." As Kit dozed off he heard his mother's voice saying, "How else can he learn?"
    How else? The next day he asked, "Where did you get all this gold and colored stones?" His father sighed, and answered patiently. "It was all here when I was your age," he said. "It's been piling up for centuries." He explained that his ancestors had on occasion done favors for rulers-kings, princes and emperors-and the grateful rulers had heaped presents upon them. "When an emperor or king gives you a chest of gold, it is impolite to refuse," he told the boy. Kit passed this lesson on to Guran the next day, gravely informing him that if an emperor or king ever gave him a chest of gold or jewels, he must accept it as it would be bad manners to refuse. Guran promised to remember.

    Next to this chamber was another one that his father called the "major" treasure room. He remembered this place with some qualms.