For a long minute, the eyes of the Master and of Bara Miyan met, in silence, with the torch-flare glinting strange lights from them. Then the Olema spoke.
"Hast thou seen enough?" demanded he.
"Mine eyes are filled."
"And dost thou still ask rewards of gold?"
"Nay, it is as I have already told thee; let the cut jewels of theCaliph el Walid suffice!"
"It is well spoken. Let us descend."
In silence, again, they left the gruesome gallery and went down the stairway with the Olema's torch leaving vague, fantastic wreaths of odorous smoke curling up along the polished, dull-yellow slant of the pyramid. Back on the floor again, the Master said to his men:
"This pyramid is filled with skulls of men who have tried to carry gold from El Barr. For the present, we must dismiss gold from our minds. Common prudence dictates that we abandon all idea of gold, take whatever reward we can get, and leave this city at once.
"The gold is of no importance, whatever. On the way back over the outer foothills of the Iron Mountains, many outcrops of gold exist.Nissrcan poise above some of these; and a few hours' labor will load her with all the gold we can carry. There can be no sense in trying to get any here. It would simply add to our peril.
"Everything is therefore quite satisfactory. But watch every move. If nothing breaks, in two hours from now we should be on our way. Again I caution you all, keep silent and make no move without my orders. The prize is at our very finger-tips. So long as we shed no blood and as nothing happens to the Myzab and the Black Stone, we are safe. But remember—be careful!"
The Olema touched him on the elbow.
"Now," the old man asked, "now, O Frank, wouldst thou see the cut jewels of the Caliph el Walid?"
"Even so!"
"Come, then!" And Bara Miyan gestured toward another door that led, at the left, out of the Chamber of the Pyramid.
Again the strange procession formed itself, as before, with the gorilla-like Maghrabi stranglers a rear guard. A few minutes through still another passage in the gold brought them to a door of ebony, banded with silver. No door of gold, it seemed, sufficed for this chamber they were about to enter. Stronger materials were needed here.
This door, like the others, swung silently on its massive hinges.
"Come, O Master of the fighting-men of Feringistan!" exclaimed the Olema. "In Allah's name, take of the gifts that I have already offered thee, and then in peace depart!"
Before the Master could reply, a shuddering concussion shivered through the solid gold all about them. The tremor of this shock, like that of an earthquake, trembled the cressets on the walls and made the huge ebony door, ajar into a dim-lighted hall, groan on its hinges.
Stupefied, Legionaries and Arabs alike, stared silently under the vague gleam of the torches.
Then, far and faint, as though coming along tortuous passages from distances above, a muffled concussion smote their ears. The shock of the air-wave was distinctly felt, eloquent of the catastrophe that in a second of time had shattered every plan and hope.
As if an echo of that thunderous, far explosion, a faint wailing of voices—echoing from very far above—drifted eerily along the passage; voices in blended rage and fear, in hate, agony, despair.
"God above—!" the major gulped. "Captain Alden" whipped her pistol from its holster, not a fraction of a second before the Master's leaped into his hand. The torchlight flickered on Leclair's service-revolver, and was reflected on the guns of every Legionary.
"If that's the explosive," Bohannan cried, "faith, we're in for it!Isit the explosive that's blown Hell out o' the Black Stone?"
A wild cry echoed down the passage. The Olema, his face suddenly distorted with a passion of hate, snatched a pistol from beneath his burnous.
"The dogs of Feringistan have spat on all Islam!" he screamed, in a shrill, horrible voice. "The Black Stone is no more! Vengeance on the unbelieving dogs!Allah il Allah!Kill, kill, and let no dog escape!
"Sons of the Prophet! Slay me these dogs! Kill!"
Horrible, unreal as a fever-born nightmare in its sudden frenzy, the Arab's attack drove in at them. The golden passageway flung from wall to wall screams, curses in shrill barbaric voices, clangor of steel whirled from scabbards, echoes of shots loud-roaring in that narrow space.
Bara Miyan's pistol, struck up by the woman's hand, spat fire over the Master's head just as the Olema himself went down with blood spurting from a jugular severed by the major's bullet. The Olema's gaudy burnous crimsoned swiftly.
"Gothim!" shouted Bohannan, firing again, again, into the tangle of sub-chiefs and Maghrabi men. Adams pitched forward, cleft to the chin by a simitar.
The firing leaped to point-blank uproar, on both sides. The men of Jannati Shahr numbered more pistols, but the Legionaries had quicker firers. Arabs, Legionaries, Maghrabis alike falling in a tumult of raw passions, disappeared under trampling feet.
Deafening grew the uproar of howls, curses, shots. The smell of dust and blood mingled with the aromatic perfume of the cressets.
The Master was shouting something, as he emptied his automatic into the pack of white-robed bodies, snarling brown faces, waving arms. But what he was commanding, who could tell?
Like a storm-wave flinging froth ashore, the rush of the Moslems drove the Legionaries—fewer now—back into the treasure-chamber. The Master, violent hands on "Captain Alden," swung her back, away; thrust her behind him. Her eyes gleamed through the mask as she still fired. The Master heard her laugh.
From dimness of gloom, within the doorway, two vague figures rained dagger-blows. Janina, mortally stabbed, practically blew the head off one of these door-keepers.
Cracowicz got the other with a blow from the butt of his empty pistol—a blow that crushed in the right temporal bone. Then he, too, and three others, fell and died.
Outside, in the passage, the Maghrabis were wringing the necks of the wounded white men. The dull sound of crushed and broken bones blent with the turmoil.
"The door—shut the door!"
The Master's voice penetrated even this Hell-tumult. The Master flung himself against the door, and others with him.
The very frenzy of the attack defeated the Arab's object, for it drove the survivors back into the treasure-crypt. And in the narrow doorway the white men could for a moment hold back the howling tides of fury.
With cold lead, butts, naked fists, the remaining Legionaries smashed a little clearance-room, corpse-heaped. They stumbled, fought, fell into the crypt.
The heavy door, swung by panting, sweating men—while others fired through the narrowing aperture—groaned shut on massive hinges.
As the space narrowed, frenzy broke loose. Arabs and Maghrabis crawled and struggled over bodies, flung themselves to sure immolation in the doorway. As fast as they fell, the Legionaries dragged them inside. The place became an infernal shambles, slippery, crimson, unreal with horror.
For one fate-heavy moment, the tides of war hung even. Furiously the remaining Legionaries toiled with straining muscles, swelling veins, panting lungs, to force the door shut, against the shrieking, frenzied drive of Moslem fanatics lashed into fury by thethar, the feud of blood.
"Captain Alden" turned the tide. She snatched down one of the copper lamps that hung by chains from the dim ceiling of the treasure-crypt. Over the heads of the Legionaries she flung blazing sandal-oil out upon the white-robed jam of madmen.
The flaming oil flared up along those thin, white robes. It dripped on wounded and on dead. Wild howls of anguish pierced the tumult. In the minute of confusion, the door boomed shut. Bohannan dropped a heavy teakwood bar into staples of bronze.
"God!" he panted, his right eye misted with blood from a jagged cut on the brow. Shrieks of rage, from without, were answered by jeers and shouts of exultation from the Legionaries.
"Nom de Dieu!" gasped Leclair. His neck was blackened with a powder burn, and the tunic was ripped clean off him. Not one of the Legionaries had uniforms completely whole. Hardly half of them still kept their slippers.
Torn, barefooted, burned, bleeding, decimated, they still laughed. Wild gibes penetrated the door of the treasure-crypt, against which the mad attack was already beginning to clash and thunder.
"Faith, but this is a grand fight!" the major exulted. "It's Donnybrook with trimmings!" He waved his big fists enthusiastically on high, and blinked his one good eye. "If a man can die this way, sure, what's the use o' living?"
"Steady men! Steady!" the Master cautioned, reloading his gun. "No time, now, for shouting. Load up! This fight's only begun!"
Already, as they recharged their weapons, the door was groaning under the frantic attack of the Arabs and Maghrabis. Wild curses, howls to Allah and to the Prophet, came in dull confusion through the massive plates. A hail of blows besieged them. The bronze staples began to bend.
"Come, men!" commanded the Master. "No chance to defend this position. They'll be in, directly. There are thousands of them in reserve! Away from here!"
"Where the devilto?" demanded the major, defiantly. "Hang to it—give 'em blue Hell as they come through!"
The Master seized and flung him back.
"If you're so keen on dying," he cried, "you can die right now, for insubordination! Back, away from here, you idiot!"
The major obeyed. The others followed. Already the door was creaking, giving, as the Legionaries—now hardly more than a dozen in number—began the first steps of their retreat, that should rank in history with that of Xenophon's historic Ten Thousand.
The Greeks had all of God's outdoors for their maneuvers. These Legionaries had nothing but dark pits and runways, unexplored, in the bowels of a huge, fanatic city. Thus, their retreat was harder. But with courage unshaken, they turned their backs on the yielding door, and set their faces toward darkness and the unknown.
Two of their number lay dead inside this chamber where the Legionaries now were. Nothing could be done for them; the bodies simply had to be abandoned where they lay. Eight were dead in the passage outside the chamber, their corpses mingled with those of Arabs and Maghrabis.
In the chamber, as the Master glanced back, he could see a heap of bodies round the door. These bodies of attackers who had been pulled inside and butchered, made a glad sight to the Master. He laughed grimly.
"We're more than even with them, so far," he exulted. "We've beaten them, so far! The rest will get us, all right enough, but Jannati Shahr will remember the coming of the white men!"
The survivors—the Master, Bohannan, "Captain Alden," and Leclair and nine others—were in evil case, as they trailed down the low-roofed chamber lighted with copper lamps. More than half bore wounds. Some showed bleeding faces, others limp arms; still others hobbled painfully, leaving bloody trails on the floor of dull gold. Curses on the Arabs echoed in various tongues. This first encounter had taken frightful toll of the Legion.
But every heart that still lived was bold and high. Not one of the little party entertained the slightest hope of surviving or of ever beholding the light of day. Still, not one uttered any word of despair or suggestion of surrender.
Everything but a fight to the finish was forgotten. Only one man even thought ofNissrand of what probably had happened out there on the plain. This man was Leclair.
"Dieu!" he grunted. "An accident, eh? Something must have gone wrong—or did the brown devils attack? I hope our men outside made good slaughter of these Moslem pigs, before they died. Eh, my Captain?"
"Well?"
"Is it not possible thatNissrand our men still live? That they will presently bombard the city? That they may rescue us?"
The Master shook his head.
"They may live," he answered, "but as for rescuing us—" His gesture completed the idea. Suddenly he pointed.
"See!" he cried. "Another door!"
It was time some exit should be discovered. The tumult had notably increased, at the barred entrance. The staples could not hold, much longer.
The Legionaries pressed forward. At the far end of the chamber, another door was indeed visible; smaller than the first, low, almost square, and let into a deep recess in the elaborately carved wall of gold.
Barefooted, in their socks, or some still in slippers, they reached this door. A little silence fell on them, as they inspected it. One man coughed, spitting blood. Another wheezed, with painful respiration. The smell of sweat and blood sickened the air.
"That's some door, all right!" judged Bohannan, peering at its dark wood, heavily banded with iron. "Faith, but they've got a padlock on that, big enough to hold the Pearly Gates!"
"It is only a question, now, of the key," put in Leclair, with French precision.
"Faith,here'sa trap!" the Irishman continued. "A trap, for you!And thirteen rats in it! Lucky, eh?"
"In Jananti Shahr," the memory of a sentence flashed to the Master, "we do not anoint rats' heads with jasmine oil!" But all he said was: "Light, here! Bring lamps!"
Three Legionaries obeyed. The flare of the crude wicks, up along the door, showed its tremendous solidity.
"A little of our explosive would do this business," the Master declared. "But it's obvious nothing short of that would have much effect. I think, men, we'll make our stand right here.
"If we put out all lights, we'll have the attackers at a disadvantage.We can account for fifty or more, before they close in. And—'CaptainAlden,' sir! Where are you going? Back, here!"
The woman gave no heed. She was half-way to the entrance door, round the edges of which already torch-light had begun to glimmer as the attackers strained it from its hinges.
Amazed, the Legionaries stared. The Master started after her. Now she was on her knees beside one of the dead Maghrabis—the one killed by Janina. She found nothing; turned to the other; uttered a cry of exultation and held up a clumsy key.
Back over the floor of gold she ran. Her fingers held a crimson cord, from which the key dangled.
"Those two—they were guardians of this vault, of course!" she cried."Here is the key!"
A cheer burst from the Legionaries. The Master clutched the key, pressed forward to the inner door. A terrible intensity of emotion seized all the survivors, as he fitted the key to the ponderous lock.
"God!" the Irishman grunted, as the wards slid back. The padlock clattered to the floor. The hasp fell. In swung the door.
Through it pressed the Legionaries, with lamps swinging, pistols in hand. As the last of them entered, the outer door collapsed with a bursting clangor. Lights gleamed; a white-robed tumult of raging men burst through. Shots crackled; yells echoed; and the sound of many sandaled feet, furiously running, filled the outer chamber with sounds of ominous import.
"Ah, sacrés cochons!" shouted Leclair, emptying his pistol at the pursuers. The Master thrust him back. The door clanged shut; down dropped another bar.
Bohannan laughed madly. The fighting-blood was leaping in his veins.
"Oh, the grand fight!" he shouted. "God, the grand old fight!"
Confused voices, crying out in Arabic, wheeled the Master from the door.
This inner chamber, very much smaller than the outer, was well lighted by still more lamps, though here all were of chased silver.
At the far end, four dim figures were visible. Black faces peered in wonder. The Legionaries caught sight of giant simitars, of fluttering white robes as the figures advanced.
"By Allah!" a hoarse shout echoed. "Look, Mustapha! The Feringi!"
In the shadows at the other end, the amazed Maghrabi swordsmen hesitated one precious moment. White-rimmed eyes stared, teeth gleamed through distorted lips.
These giganticmudirs, or Keepers of the Treasure, had expected the opening of the door to show them the Feringi, indeed, but preceded by Bara Miyan and surrounded by men of Jannati Shahr.
Now they beheld the dogs of unbelievers all alone, there, with guns in hands, with every sign of battle. They had heard sounds of war, from without. Their dull minds, slowly reacting, could not grasp the significance of all this.
"The Feringi, Yusuf," cried another voice. "And they are alone! What meaneth this?"
"M'adri" (I know not), ejaculated still another. "Butkill—kill!"
Their attack was hopeless, but its bravery ranked perfect. Their shouting charge down the chamber, sabers high, ended in grunting sprawls of white. Not half-naked like the low-caste Maghrabi outside, but clad in Arab fashion, they lay there, with Legionaries' bullets in breast and brain.
The Master smiled, grimly, as he walked to one of the bodies and stirred it with his naked foot. He swung above it a silver lamp he had pulled down from the wonderfully arabesqued wall.
"Four scimitars added to our equipment will be useful, at close quarters," he opined very coolly, unmindful of the dull uproar now battering at the inner door. "Pick up the cutlery, men, and don't forget the admirable qualities of thearme blanche!"
Himself, he took one of the long, curved blades. The major, Leclair, and Ferrara—an expert swordsman he had been, in the Italian army—possessed themselves of the others.
Bohannan whistled his scimitar through the air.
"Very fine I call it!" he exclaimed, with a joyful laugh. "Some little game of tag, what? And our Moslem friends are still 'it!' We're still ahead!"
"And likely to be, till our friends bring powder, mine that door, and blow it in!" The Master added: "We've still a few minutes—maybe more. Now, then—"
A shrill cry in French, from Lebon, drew all eyes away to the left of the small chamber.
"Voilà!" the lieutenant's orderly was vociferating. They saw his distorted, torture-broken hand wildly gesticulating toward the floor. "My Lieutenant, behold!"
"In the name of God, what now?" Leclair demanded, scimitar in hand. The silver lamps struck high-lights from that gleaming blade, as he turned toward his orderly. Never had he seen the man seized and shaken by excitement as at this moment. "What hast thou found, Lebon? What?"
"But behold—behold!" choked the orderly. Articulation failed him. He stammered into unintelligible cries. The Legionaries crowded toward him. And in the dumb stupefaction that overcame them, the roaring tumult at the door was all forgotten. The sentence of death hanging above them, faded to nothing.
Even the Master's cold blood leaped and thrilled, at realization of what he was now beholding as the silver lamps swung from out-stretched hands. Bohannan, for once, was too dazed for exuberance.
Only the Master could find words.
"Well, men," said he, in even tones. "Here it is, at last. We're seeing something no Feringi ever saw before—the hidden treasure of Jannati Shahr!"
Men do strange things, at times, when confronted by experiences entirely outside even the limits of imagination. At sight of the perfectly overwhelming masses of wealth that lay there in square pits chiseled out of the solid gold, most of the Legionaries reacted like men drunk or mad.
The hoard before them was enough to unbalance reason.
Leclair began to curse with amazing fluency in French and Arabic, while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol—stolid Englishman though he was—had to make a strong effort to keep his teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on the jaw, burst out laughing, waving their arms extravagantly. Simonds shouted jubilation and began to jump about in the most extraordinary fashion. Wallace sat down heavily on the floor, held his lamp out over one of the pits and stared with blank incomprehension.
As for the major, he dropped to his knees, threw down his weapons and plunged his arms up to the elbows in the sliding sparkle of the gems. To have heard him babble, one would have given him free entrance into any lunatic asylum.
The only two who had remained appreciably calm were "Captain Alden" and the Master. But even they, as fully as all the rest, forgot the impending menace of attack. For a moment, even their ears were deaf to the muffled tumult outside the door, their senses dulled to every other thing in this world save the incredible hoard there in the golden pits before them.
Pain, exhaustion, defeat ceased to be, for the Legionaries. Ruin and the shadow of Azraël's wing departed from their minds. For, bring what the future might, the present was offering them a spectacle such as never before in this world's history had the eyes of white men rested on.
Not even a manin extremiscould have turned away his gaze from the unbelievable masses of shimmering wealth in those square pits of gold.
Fairy tales and legends, "Arabian Nights," and all the mystic lore of the East never conjured forth more brain-numbing plenitudes of fortune, nor painted more stupefying beauty, than now gleamed up from those eight excavations hewn in the dull, soft metal.
"Nom de Dieu!" Leclair kept monotonously repeating. "Mais, nom de Dieu!Ah, the pigs—ah, the sacred pigs!"
Disjointed words from the others—cries, oaths, jubilations—filled the low-arched chamber, mingling in the stuffy air with lamp-smoke and the dull scent of blood and dust and sweat.
Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded. And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the gems, dredged up fistfuls and let them rain down crepitantly, again.
The sight was one very hard to grasp with any concrete understanding, harder still to render in cold words. At first, it gave only a confused impression of colors, like those in some vivid Oriental rug. The details escaped observation; and these changed, too, as the swaying of the lamps, in excited hands, shifted position.
A shimmer of unearthly light played over the pits, like the thin, colored flames at the edge of a driftwood fire. Soft, opalescent gleams were blent with prismatic blues, greens, crimsons. Melting violets were stabbed through by hard yellows and penetrant purples. And here an orange flash vied with a delicate old rose; there a rich carnation sparkled beside a misty gray, like fading clouds along the dim horizons of fairyland.
The Master murmured: "It's true, then—partly true. Rrisa knew part of it!"
"Not all?" asked the woman.
"I hardly think the Caliph el Walid's gold was ever brought to Jannati Shahr," he answered. "Coals to Newcastle, you know. And these jewels are not all uncut. Some are finely faceted, some uncut. But in the main Rrisa spoke the truth. He told what he believed."
"Yes," assented the woman. Then she added: "Spartan simplicity, is it not? No elaborate coffers. Not even leather sacks. Just bins, like so much wheat."
"The shining wheat of Araby!"
"Of the whole Orient!"
They fell silent, peering with fixed attention. And gradually some calm returned to the others. At the door, too, the turmoil had ceased. No doubt the Jannati Shahr men, baffled, had sent for much gunpowder to blow in the massive planking. That silence became ominous.
Still the Legionaries could take no thought of anything but the Caliph el Walid's hoard. As they stood, squatted, or knelt around the pits—pits about two and a half feet square and deeper than the deepest thrust of any arm—it seemed to them that bottomless lakes and seas of light were opening down, down below them into unfathomed depths of beauty.
Such beauty caused the soul to drink nepenthes of forgetfulness. Hardships, wounds, blood, pain, menace of death faded under that spell. That the Legionaries were trapped at the bottom of a vast rabbit-warren, with swarms of Moslem ferrets soon to rush upon them, now seemed to have no significance.
Tranced, "indifferent to Fate," the adventurers peered on greater wealth of jewels than ever elsewhere in this world's history had been garnered in one place. The liquid light of the hoard flashed strange radiances on their tanned, deep-lined faces, now smeared with sweat and dust, with powder-grime and blood. Their eyes were beholding unutterable rainbows, flashings and burning glows like those of the Moslem's own Jebel Radhwa, or Mountain of Paradise.
Each of these jewels—several million gems, at the least computation—what a story it might have told! What a tale of remotest antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim starlight! Of passion and of pain!
On what proud hand of Sultan, emir, cadi, prince, had this huge ruby burned? On what beloved breast or brow of princess, nautch-girl, concubine—yes, maybe of slave exalted to the purple—had that fire-gleaming diamond blazed?
From Roman times, from Greek, from ancient Jerusalem, from the fire-breathing shrines of Baal at long-dead Carthage, perhaps, this topaz might have come. This sapphire might have graced the anklet of some beauty of old Nile, ages before King Solomon wielded the scepter, ages even before the great god Osiris reigned.
That amethyst might have been loot of the swift black galleys of Tyre, in joyous days when men's strong arms took what they could, of women or of gems, and when Power was Law!
Imagination ran riot there, gazing down upon those jewel-pits. In them lay every kind of precious stone for which, from remotest antiquity, men had cheated, schemed, lied, fought, murdered. The jewels showed no attempt at sorting or classification. With true Orientallaissez-faire, they were all mingled quite at random; these gems, any chance handfuls of which must have meant an incalculable fortune.
Like men in a dream, after the first wild emotions had died, the Legionaries peered down into this sea of light. Smoke from the lamps rose toward the dim, low-arched roof. Blood from the Maghrabi's wounds slowly spread and clotted on the golden floor.
Without, a confused murmur told of resuming preparations to smash in the door. And through it all, the dry clicking of the gems made itself audible, as the major sifted them with shaking fingers.
"Well, men," the Master laughed dryly, "here they are! Here are the jewels of Jannati Shahr. Old Bara Miyan would probably have given us a peck or two of them, for Myzab and the Great Pearl Star and the Black Stone, if those hadn't been destroyed—"
"How do you know they've been destroyed?" the major cried. "How do you know but what we'll be rescued, here?"
"If the bombardment had been going to begin, I think we'd have heard something of it, by now. My judgment tells me there'll be no explosive dropped on Jannati Shahr.
"We've got to fight this thing through, unaided. And at any rate, we don't have to limit ourselves to a peck or two of jewels. We've got them all, now—or they've got us!"
The irony of his tone made no impression on Bohannan. His mercurial temperament seemed to have gone quite to pieces, in view of the hoard. He cried:
"Come on, then, boys! Fill up!"
And with a wild laugh he began scooping the gems, hap-hazard, into the pockets of his torn, battle-stained uniform. Jewels of fabulous price escaped his fingers, like so many pebbles in a sand-pit, and fell clicking to the golden floor. With shaking hands the major dredged into the pit before him, mad with a very frenzy of greed.
"Stop!" cried the Master, sternly. "No nonsense, now!"
"What?" retorted Bohannan, angrily. His bruised, cut face reddened ominously.
"Drop those jewels, sir!"
"Why?"
"Principally because I order you to!" The Master's voice was cold, incisive. "They're worthless, now. No make-weights! We can't have make-weights at a time like this. To think of jewels at such an hour! Throw them back!"
A flash of rage distorted the major's face. His blue eyes burned with strange fire.
"Never!" he shouted, crouching there at the brink of the jewel-pit. "Call it insubordination, mutiny, anything you like, but I'm going to have my fill of these! Faith, but Iwill, now!"
"Sir—"
"I don't give a damn! Jewels for mine!" His voice rose gusty, raw, wild. "I've been a soldier of fortune all my life, and that's how I'm going to die. Poor, most of the time. Well, I'm going to die rich!"
His philippic against poverty and discipline tumbled out in a torrent of wild words, strongly tinged with the Irish accent that marked his passionate excitement. He sprang to his feet, and—raging—faced his superior officer. He shouted:
"Sure, and I've knocked up and down this rotten old world all my life, a rolling stone with never enough to bless myself with. And I've gone, at the end, on this wild-goose chase of yours, that's led you and me and all of us to a black death here in the bottom of a damned, fantastic, Arabian city of gold!
"That's all right, dying. That was in the bargain, if it had to be done. Two-thirds of us are dead, already, a damn sight better men than I am! We've been dying right along, from the beginning of this crack-brained Don Quixote crusade. That's all right. But, faith! now that it's my turn to die, by the holy saints I'm going to be well paid for it!"
Bohannan, eyes wild, struck his heaving breast with a huge fist and laughed like a maniac.
"That's all right, you reaching for your gun!" he defied the Master. "Go ahead, shoot! I'm rich already. My pockets are half full. Shoot, damn you, shoot!"
The Master laughed oddly, and let his hand fall from the pistol-butt.
"This," said he quite calmly, "is insanity."
"Ha! Insanity, it is? Well then, let me be insane, can't you? It's a good way to die. And I'velived, anyhow. We've all lived. We've all had a Hell of a run for our money, and it's time to quit.
"Shoot, if you want to—a few minutes more or less don't matter. But, faith, I'll die a millionaire, and that's something I never expected to be. Fine, fine! Give me a minute more, and I'll die a multi-millionaire! Sure, imagine that, will you? Major Aloysius Bohannan, gentleman-adventurer, a multi-millionaire! That's what I'll be, and the man don't live that can stop me now!"
With the laugh of a madman, the major fell to his knees again beside the pit, plunged his hands once more into the gleaming, sliding mass of wealth, and recommenced cramming his pockets.
The Master laughed again.
"It's quite immaterial, after all," said he. "I led you into this. And now it's very nearly a case ofsauve qui peut. The sooner your pockets are full, to the extreme limit, the sooner something like reason will return to you. Jewels being of interest to a man at death's door—it's quite characteristic of you, Bohannan. Help yourself!"
"Thanks, I will!" Bohannan flung up at him, blood-drabbled face pale and drawn by the flaring lamplight. "Amulti-millionaire! Death? I should worry! Help myself? Faith, I just will, that!"
"Anyone else, here, feel so disposed?" the Master inquired. "If so, get it over and done with. We've got fighting ahead, and we'd better quench whatever thirst there is for wealth, first."
No one made any move. Only Bohannan's mind had been unsettled by the hoard, to the extent of wanting to possess it. Now that death loomed, empty pockets were as good, to all the rest, as any other sort.
"You're all a pack of damned fools!" Bohannan sneered. "You could die richer than Rockefeller, every man-jack of you, and you—you don't want to! Sure, it'syouthat's mad, not me!"
No one answered. They all stood peering down at him, their faces tense, wounded, dirty; their eyes gleaming strangely; the shadow of Azraël's wing already enfolding them. Then, a few detached themselves from the little group and wandered off into the gloom, away from the pits. Leclair muttered:
"I prefer loading my automatic, to loading my pockets! Odd, the major is, eh? Ah well,à chacun sa chimère!"
"Everybody's weapons fully loaded?" the Master demanded. "Be sure they are! And don't forget the mercy-bullets, men. These Arabs are rather ingenious in their tortures. They make a specialty of crucifying unbelievers—upside down. That sort of thing won't do, for us not for fighting-men of the Legion!"
Bohannan, laughing, stood up. Every pocket was a-bulge with incalculable wealth.
"Now I'm satisfied," he remarked in more rational tones. "I reckon I must be worth more money, as I stand here, than any human being that ever lived. You're looking at the richest man in the world, gentlemen! And I'm going to die, the richest. If that's not some distinction, what is? For a man that was bone-poor, fifteen minutes ago! Now, sir—"
A sudden cry interrupted him. That cry came from "Captain Alden."
"Here! Look here!"
"What is it?" demanded the Master. He started toward her, while outside the door sounded dull commands, as if the Arabs-now organized to effective work-were already preparing to blow open the last barrier between them and their victims.
"What now?" the Master repeated, striding toward her.
"See! See here!"
The woman stood pointing into a black recess at the far end of the crypt. All that the Master could discern there, at first, was a darkness even greater than that which shrouded the corners of the vault.
"Light, here!" he commanded. Ferrara swung a lamp, by its chain, into the recess. They saw a low, square opening in the wall of dull, gleaming metal.
"A passage, eh?" the Master ejaculated.
"Maybe acul-de-sac," she answered. "But—there's no telling—it may lead somewhere."
"By Allah! Men! Here—all of you!"
The Master's voice rang imperatively. They all came trooping with naked or slippered feet that slid in the wet redness of the floor. Broken exclamations sounded.
Seizing the lamp, the Master thrust it into the opening, which measured no more than four feet high by three wide. The light smokily illuminated about three yards of this narrow passage. Then a sharp turn to the right concealed all else.
Whither this runway might lead, to what peril or what trap it might conduct them, none could tell. Very strongly it reminded the Master of the gallery in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, which he had seen twelve years before—the gallery which in ancient days had served as a death-trap for treasure-seekers.
That gallery, he remembered, had contained a cleverly hidden stone in its floor which once on a time had precipitated pilferers down a vertical shaft more than a hundred feet, to death, in the bowels of that huge, terrifying mausoleum.
Was this passage of similar purpose and design? In all probability, yes. Oriental ways run parallel in all the lands of the East.
Nevertheless, the passage offered a means of escaping from the crypt. And there, with the dead Maghrabi mudirs, the Legionaries could not stay. In a few minutes now, at most, the men of Jannati Shahr would be upon them.
"Faith, what the devil now?" exclaimed Bohannan, now seeming quite rational, as he peered into the cramped corridor. "Where to Hell does this lead?"
"Just where you've said, to Hell, it's far more than likely," theMaster retorted. "Come, men, into it! Follow me!"
He stooped, lamp in one hand, simitar in the other, and in a most cramped posture entered the passage. After him came Leclair, the woman, Bohannan, and the others.
The air hung close and heavy. The oppression of that stooping position, the lamp-smoke, the unusual strain on the muscles, the realization of a whole world of gold above and all about them, seemed to strangle and enervate them. But steadily they kept on and on.
The turning of the passage revealed a long, descending incline, that sloped down at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees. A marked rise in temperature grew noticeable. What might that mean? None could imagine, but not one even thought of turning back.
The walls and floor in this straight, descending passage were now no longer smooth, arabesqued, polished. To the contrary, they showed a rough surface, on which the marks of the chisel could be plainly seen as it had shorn away the yielding metal in great gouges. Moreover, streaks of black granite now began to appear; and these, as the Legionaries advanced, became ever wider until at last the stone predominated.
The Master understood they were now coming to the bottom of part of the golden dyke. Undeviated by the hard rock, the tunnel continued to descend, with here and there a turn. Narrowly the Master scrutinized the floor, tapping it with the simitar as he crept onward, seeking indications of any possible trap that might hurl him into bottomless, black depths.
Quite at once, a right-angled turning opened into a small chamber not above eight feet high by fifteen square. In this, silent, listening, the sweating fugitives gathered.
The temperature was here oppressive, and the lamps burned blue with some kind of gas that stifled the lungs. Gas and smoke together, made breathing hard. A dull, roaring sound had begun to make itself vaguely audible, the past few minutes; and as the Legionaries stood listening, this was now rather plain to their ears.
"This is a devil of a place for a multi-millionaire, I must say!" Bohannan exploded. Simonds laughed, with tense nerves. One or two others swore, bitterly cursing the men of El Barr.
The Master, "Captain Alden," and Leclair, however, gave no heed. Already they were peering around, at the black walls where now only an occasional thread of gold was to be seen.
Five openings led out of this singular chamber, all equally dark, narrow, formidable.
"This seems to be a regular labyrinth, my Captain," said Leclair, inFrench. "Surely a trap of some kind. They are clever, these Arabs.They let the mouse run and hope, then—voilà—he is caught!"
"It looks that way. But we're not caught yet. These infernal passageways are all alike, to me. We must choose one. Well—this is as good as any." He gestured toward an aperture at the left. "Men, follow me!"
The passage they now entered was all of rock, with no traces whatever of gold. For a few hundred feet its course was horizontal; then it plunged downward like the first.
And almost immediately the temperature began to mount, once more.
"Faith, but I think we'd better be getting back!" exclaimed the major. "I don't care much for this heat, or that roaring noise that's getting louder all the time!"
"You'll follow me, or I'll shoot you down!" the Master flung at him, crouching around. "I've had enough insubordination fromyou, sir! Not another word!"
The stooping little procession of trapped Legionaries once more went onward, downward. The muffled roar, ahead of them, rose in volume as they made a final turning and came into a much more spacious vault where moisture goutted from the black walls. A thin, steamy vapor was rising from the floor, warm to the bare feet.
A moment the Legionaries stood there, blinking in the vague lamplight, glad of the respite that permitted them to straighten up and ease cramped muscles.
"No way out ofhere!" Bohannan grumbled. "Sure, we're at the end o' nowhere. Now if we'd only taken another passage—"
Nobody paid him any heed. The major's exhibition of irrational greed had lost caste for him. Even Lebon, the orderly, curled a lip of scorn at him.
All eyes were eagerly searching for some exit from this ultimate pit. Panting, reeking with sweat, fouled with blood and dirt, the doomed men shuffled round the vault, blinking with bloodshot eyes.
No outlet was visible. The vault seemed empty. But all at once,Bristol uttered a cry.
"Wine-sacks, by the living jingo!" he exclaimed.
"Wine-sacks—in a Moslem city?" demanded the Master. "Impossible!"
"What else are these, sir?" the Englishman asked, pointing.
The Master strode to the corner where he stood, and flared his lamp over a score of distended goat-hides.
"Well, by Allah!" he ejaculated.
"Sacrificial wine," put in Leclair, at his elbow. "See the red seals, with the imprint of the star and crescent, here and here?" He touched a seal with his finger. "Rare old wine, I'll wager!"
"Wine!" gulped the major, whose excitable nerves had been frayed to madness. "Wine, by God! Faith, but it's the royal thirst I have on me! Who's got a knife?"
The Master thrust him back with such violence that he slipped on the wet floor and nearly fell.
"You'll get no knife, sir, and you'll drink no sacrificial wine!" he cried, with more of anger in his voice than any of the Legion had yet heard. "The jewels—yes, I gave you your fool's way, on those. But no wine!
"We of the Flying Legion are going to die, sober men! There'll be no debauchery—no tradition handed down among those Moslem swine that they butchered us, drunk. If any of you men want to die right now, broach one of those wine-sacks!"
His simitar balanced itself for action. The glint in his eye, by the wavering lamp-shine, meant stern business. Not a hand was extended toward the tautly distended sacks.
Bohannan's whispered curse was lost in a startled cry from Wallace.
"Here's something!" he exclaimed. "Look at this ring, will you?"
They turned to him, away from the wine-bags. Wallace had fallen to his knees and was scraping slime from the wet floor—the slime of ages of dust mingled with viscid moisture from the steam that, thinly blurring the dark air, had condensed on the walls and run down.
Emilio thrust down the lamp he held. There on the stone floor, they saw a huge, rust-red iron ring that lay in a circular groove cut in the black granite.
This ring was engaged in a metal staple let into the stone. And now, as they looked more closely, and as some Legionaries scraped the floor with eager hands, a crack became visible in the floor of the vault.
"Look out, men!" the Master cautioned. "This may be a trap that will swing open and drop us into God knows what! Stand back, all—take your time, now! Go slow there!"
They heeded, and stood back. The Master himself, assuming all risks, got down on hands and knees and explored the crack in the floor. It was square, with a dimension of about five feet on the edge.
"It's a trap-door, all right," he announced. "And we—are going to open it!"
"One would need a rope or a long lever to do that, my Captain," put in Leclair. "It is obvious that a man, or men, standing on the trap, could not raise it. And it is too large to straddle."
The Master arose, stripped off his tunic and passed it through the ring. He twisted the tunic and gave one end to the lieutenant. Himself, he took the other.
"Get hold, everybody!" he commanded. "And be sure you're not standing on the trap!"
All laid hold on the ends of the coat. With a "One, two, three!" from the Master, the Legionaries threw all their muscle into the lift. "Now, men! Heave her once more!"
The stone gave. The Legionaries doubled their efforts, with panting breath, feet that slipped on the dank floor, grunts of labor.
"Heave her!"
Up swung the stone, aside. It slid over the wet rock. There, in its place, gaped a black hole that penetrated unknown depths.
Steam billowed up—or rather, vapor distinctly warm to the touch. And from very far below, much louder boomed the roar of rushing waters. The Legionaries knew, now, what had caused the dull, roaring sound. Unmistakably a furious cascade was boiling, swirling away, down there at undetermined distances of blackness.
The boldest men among the little group of fugitives felt the crawl and fingering of a very great dread at their hearts. Behind them lay the labyrinth, with what pitfalls none could tell and with the Jannati Shahr men perhaps already penetrating into the crypt. Around them loomed the black, wet walls of this lowest stone dungeon with but one other exit—the pit at their feet.
The Master threw himself prone on the slippery floor, took one of the lamps and lowered it, by the chain, to its capacity. Smoke and vapor arose about his head as he peered down.
"Well, what is it?" demanded Bohannan, also squinting down, as he bent over the hole. "What do you see?"
"Nothing," the Master answered. "Nothing definite."
He could, in fact, be sure of nothing. But it seemed to him that, very far below, he could make out something like a swift, liquid blackness, streaked with dim-speeding lines of white that dissolved with phantasmagoric rapidity; a racing flood that roared and set the solid rock a-quiver in its mad tumult.
"Faith, an underground river of hot water!" ejaculated the Irishman with an oath. "Some river!"
"Warm water, at any rate," the Master judged, getting up again. A strange smile was in his eyes, by the smoky lamplight. "Well, men, this is our way out. The Arabs are not going to have any slaughter of victims, here. And what is more, they'll capture no dead bodies of white men, inthistrap! There'll be at least ten skulls missing from that interesting golden Pyramid of Ayeshah!"
"For God's sake!" the major stammered. "What—what are you going to—do, now? Jump down that shaft?"
"Exactly. Your perspicacity does you credit, Major."
"Sure, you'll never catchmejumping!"
"Gentlemen," the Master said, in a low, quiet voice, "I regret to state that we have one coward among us."
The major's clenched fist was caught as it drove, by a scientific guard from the Master's right. The Master dropped his lamp, and with a straight left-hander sprawled Bohannan on the slimy pave. Impersonally he stood over the crazed Celt.
"Will you jump, voluntarily," demanded he, "or shall we be under the painful necessity of having to throw you down that pit?"
Enough rationality remained in the major to spur his pride. He crawled to his feet, chastened.
"You win, sir," he answered. "Who goes first?"
A dull reverberation shuddered the rock, the air.
"Vive Nissr!" exulted Leclair. "Ah, now our men, they attack the city!"
"I'm sorry to disillusion you," the Master answered, "but my explosive produces an entirely different type of concussion. What we have just heard is the blowing-in of the treasure-crypt door. There's no time to lose, now. Who jumps, first?"
"Wait a minute!" cried "Captain Alden." Her eyes were gleaming through the mask, with keen excitement. "Why neglect any chance of possibly surviving?"
"What do you mean?" the Master demanded.
"Those wine-sacks!"
"Well?"
"Emptied, inflated, and tied up again, they'll float us! It's the oldest kind of device used in the Orient!"
"By Allah, inspiration! Quick, men, the wine-skins!"
Himself, he set the example. Knife in hand, while Emilio held the lamp for him, he crumbled the seals on one of the goat-skins, then cut the leather thong that secured the neck, and quickly unwound it. He dragged the sack to the black pit and tipped it up.
With a gulp and a gurgle, the precious old wine, clear ruby under the dim light, gushed away down the steaming shaft that plunged to the River of Night.
"Oh, faith now, but that's a damned shame, sir!" Bohannan protested, rubbing an ugly welt on his brow. His voice was thick, dull, unnatural. Madness glimmered in his blinking eyes. "With the blessed tongue of me parched to a cinder! And wine like that! Here, sir—take a handful of diamonds, or whatever, and give me just one little drink!"
'"'Bristol! Restrain that man!" the Master ordered. "If you can't handle him, get help!"
As a couple of Legionaries laid hands on the major, another voice spoke up. It was that of Ferrara, the Italian ace:
"The major is right, sir, in spite of all! Good wine in our throats would make death less bitter. 'We who are about to die, salute thee'—and ask wine!"
The Master peered sharply from beneath black brows. Discipline seemed crumbling. Now at what might be, perhaps, the last minute of his command, was the Master's word to be made light of? Were his orders to be gainsaid?
"No wine!" he flung at all of them, his voice tense as wire. "Who says we are about to die? Why, there may be a fighting chance, even yet! This underground river may come to light, somewhere. And if it does, it may bear us back to day, again.
"But the confusion of wine may just turn the scale against our getting through. No wine! We started on that basis. That's the basis we're going through on. No wine, I say—no wine!"
Murmurs answered him, but no man dared rebel. Discipline still gripped the Legionaries. The Master drove them to labor. "Come, quick now! Prepare a sack, apiece! I'll show you how!"
He set lips to the emptied skin, and with many lungfuls of strong breath inflated it. The leather thong tightly wrapped the neck. He doubled that neck over, and took more turns with the thong, then tied it in a tight square knot.
"Get to work, men!" he ordered. "To work!"
They obeyed. Even the major, brain-shaken as he was, fell in with the orders. The floor, all round the black pit, ran red with precious wine, a single cupful of which would have delighted the heart of the world's most Lucullian gourmet.
Up from that floor and from the jetty, steaming walls of the pit drifted ambrosial perfume that evoked visions of ancient vineyards where, under the Eastern sun, bloomy clusters of grape—mayhap even the very grape sung by the Tent-maker—hung ripening.
Still, none stooped to the mouths of the wine-skins, to taste. None drank from cupped palm. Dry-mouthed, hot, panting, the Legionaries still obeyed. And thus the rare wine of Araby ran guttering to the unseen blackness of the mystery river far below.
The Master, hands on hips, watched this labor; and as he watched he laughed.
"Whatever comes to us, men," judged he, "we are here and now doing great evil to the men of El Barr. My only regret is that we haven't time to return up through the labyrinth, to the jewel-crypt, fill the skins with jewels and dump them all down this shaft like the wine. These Moslem swine would then remember us, many a long day. Ah, well, some day we may come back—who knows?"
He fell silent, while the last of the skins were being filled and lashed. The last, that is to say, needed by the Legionaries. Ten in all, were now blown up and securely tied. But a good many more still remained full of the rare wine.
With his simitar, the Master slashed these quickly, one by one.
"They took our blood," he cried. "We have taken theirs—and their wine, too. And have destroyed Myzab and the Black Stone, no doubt. Well, it's a bargain!"
"C'est égal!" exclaimed Leclair. "More than that, eh, my Captain?"
The Master returned to the shaft, his bare feet red through the run and welter of the wine on the stone floor.
"Now men," said he, crisply, as he flung down the pit his simitarwhich could have no further use, "this may be the final chapter. OurLegion was organized for adventure. We've had it. No one can complain.If it's good-bye, now—so be it.
"There may be a chance, however, of winning through. Hold fast to your goat-skins; and if the hidden river isn't too hot, and if there's head-room, some of us may get through to daylight. Let us try to reassemble where we find the first practicable stopping-place. If the Jannati Shahr men are waiting for us, there, don't be taken alive. Remember!
"Now, give me your hand, each one, and—down the shaft with you!"
Simonds went first, boldly, without a quiver of fear. Silently and with set jaw, he shook hands with the Master, clutched a distended wine-bag in both arms, and quickly leaped.
His body vanished, instantly, from sight. Steam and darkness swallowed it. Far below, a dull splash told of his disappearance.
Lebon followed, after having given his torture-twisted hand to his beloved lieutenant, as well as to the Master.
"Notre Père qui êtes aux cieux!" he stammered, as the pit received him.
Then went Wallace, Ferrara, and Emilio. Of these three, only the last showed anything resembling the white feather. Emilio's face was waxen, with staring eyes reflecting unspeakable horror, as he took the leap into the River of Night. But he went mutely, with no outcry.
Bristol, sheathed in imperturbable British aplomb, remarked:
"Well, so long, boys! This is jolly beastly, eh? But we'll meet on that beautiful shore!"
Then he, too, jumped into the black.
Leclair, inappropriately enough, leaped with a shout of: "Vive laFrance!"
Now only Bohannan, "Captain Alden," and the Master were left.
"You're next, Major!" the Master ordered, pointing at the inexorable black mouth of the pit, whence rose the thin, wraith-spirals of vapor.
"I'm ready!" exclaimed the major. "Sure, what's better than a hot bath after the heavy exercise we've been having?" His voice rose buoyantly over the drumming roar of the mysterious, underground torrent. "Ready, sir! But if you'll only give me one wee sup of good liquor, sir, I'll die like an Irishman and a gentleman—of fortune!"
"No, liquor, Major," the Master answered, shaking his head. "Can't you see for yourself all the wine-sacks are cut?"
"Cut, is it? Well, well, so they are!" The major blinked redly. Obviously his confused mind had not grasped the situation. "Well, sure, that's a pity, now." And he fell to gnawing that tawny mustache of his.
"Come Major, you're next!" the Master bade him. "Take your wine-skin and jump!"
Clarity of mind for a moment returned to Bohannan. Gallantly he shook hands with the Master, saluted "Captain Alden," and picked up his wine-sack.
"It's a fine whirl we've had," he affirmed, with one of his old-time smiles, his teeth gleaming by the light of the silver lamp in the Master's hand. "No man could ask a better."
I'd rather have seen what I've seen, and done what I've done, and now jump to Hell and gone, than be safe and sound this minute on Broadway.
"Please overlook any little irregularities of conduct, sir My brain, you know, and—well, good-bye!"
Calmly he picked up his sack and without more ado jumped into the void.
"Now," said the Master, when "Captain Alden" and he remained alone."Now—you and I!"
"Yes," the woman answered. "You and I, at last!"
The Master set down his lamp on the floor all wet with condensed vapor and wine. He loosened the buckles of her mask, took the mask off and tossed it into the pit.
"Finis, forthat!" said he, and smiled strangely. "You aren't going to be handicapped by any mask, in whatever struggle lies ahead of us. If you get through to the world, and to life again, you get through as a woman.
"If not, you die as one. But the disguise is done with, and gone. You understand me!"
"Yes. I understand," she answered, and stood peering up at him. Not even the white welts and ridges cut in her flesh by the long wearing of the mask could make her face anything but very beautiful. Her wonderful eyes mirrored far more, as they looked into this strange man's, than would be easy to write down in words.
"I understand," she repeated. "If this is death, I couldn't have dreamed or hoped for a better one. In that, at least, we can be eternally together—you and I!"
Silence fell, save for the shuddering roar of the black river, that rose with vapors from the dark pit. Man and woman, they searched out each other's souls with their gaze.
Then all at once the Master took her hand, and brought it to his heart and held it there. The lamp-shine, obliquely striking upward from the floor, cast deep shadows over their faces; and these shadows seemed symbolic of the shadows of death closing about them at this hour of self-revelation.
"Listen," said the Master, in a wholly other voice from any that had ever come from his lips. "I am going to tell you something. At a moment like this, a man speaks only the exact truth. This is the exact truth.
"In all the years of my life and in all my wanderings up and down this world, I have never seen a woman—till now—whom I felt that I could love. I have lived like an anchorite, celled in absolute isolation from womankind. Incredible as it may seem to you, I have never even kissed a woman, with a kiss of love. But—I am going to kiss you, now."
He took her face in both his hands, drew it up for a moment, gazed at it with a fixity of passion that seemed to burn. The woman's eyes drooped shut. Her lips yearned to his. Then his stern arms in-drew her to his breast, and for a moment she remained there, silently.
All at once he put her from him.
"Now, go!" he commanded. "I shall follow, close. And wait for me—if there is any waiting!"
He picked up one of the two remaining wine-sacks, and put it into her hands.
"Cling to this, through everything!" he commanded. "Cling, as you love life. Cling, as you share my hope for what may be, if life is granted us! And—the mercy-bullet, if it comes to that!
"Now—good-bye!"
She smiled silently and was gone.
The Master, now all alone, stood waiting yet a moment. His face was bloodless. His lower lip was mangled, where his teeth had nearly met, through it.
Already, a confused murmur of sound was developing, from the black opening of the passage that had led the Legionaries down to this crypt of the wine-sacks and the pit.
He smiled, oddly.
"Many a corpse has been flung down thisoubliette," said he. "I hate to go, without emptying my pistol into a few more of the Moslem swine, and dropping them down here to join my people. But—I must!"
He bent, gathered together the silver lamps left by his men, and threw them all into the abyss. Blackness, absolute, blotted the reeking chamber from his sight.
The faintest possible aura of light began to loom from the mouth of the passage. More distinctly, now, the murmur of Arab voices was becoming audible.
The Master leaped.
Far below, at the bottom of the pit, as the Arabs burst into the wine-vault, sounded a final impact of some heavy body striking swift water that swept it instantly away.
Then silence filled the black, rock-hewn chamber in the labyrinthine depths of Jannati Shahr.