THE RIVER OF NIGHT
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 d.a.m.ned 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 egal!" 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 simitar which could have no further use, "this may be the final chapter. Our Legion 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 rea.s.semble 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 Pere qui etes 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 sh.o.r.e!"
Then he, too, jumped into the black.