Bohannan laughed madly. The fighting-blood was leaping in his veins.
"Oh, the grand fight!" he shouted. "G.o.d, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 gigantic _mudirs_, 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), e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed still another. "But _kill--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 the _arme 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.
"_Voila_!" 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 G.o.d, 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!"
CHAPTER XLV
THE JEWEL h.o.a.rD
Men do strange things, at times, when confronted by experiences entirely outside even the limits of imagination. At sight of the perfectly overwhelming ma.s.ses 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 h.o.a.rd 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 m.u.f.fled tumult outside the door, their senses dulled to every other thing in this world save the incredible h.o.a.rd there in the golden pits before them.
Pain, exhaustion, defeat ceased to be, for the Legionaries. Ruin and the shadow of Azrael"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 man _in extremis_ could have turned away his gaze from the unbelievable ma.s.ses 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," a.s.sented the woman. Then she added: "Spartan simplicity, is it not? No elaborate coffers. Not even leather sacks. Just bins, like so much wheat."