"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 ma.s.sive planking. That silence became ominous.
Still the Legionaries could take no thought of anything but the Caliph el Walid"s h.o.a.rd. 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 h.o.a.rd 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 paG.o.da, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim starlight! Of pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.sification. With true Oriental _laissez-faire_, they were all mingled quite at random; these gems, any chance handfuls of which must have meant an incalculable fortune.
CHAPTER XLVI
BOHANNAN BECOMES A MILLIONAIRE
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 h.o.a.rd.
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?"
"Princ.i.p.ally 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 I _will_, now!"
"Sir--"
"I don"t give a d.a.m.n! 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 pa.s.sionate 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 d.a.m.ned, 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 d.a.m.n 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, d.a.m.n you, shoot!"
The Master laughed oddly, and let his hand fall from the pistol-b.u.t.t.
"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"ve _lived_, anyhow. We"ve all lived. We"ve all had a h.e.l.l 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 ma.s.s 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 of _sauve 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. "A _multi_-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."