CHAPTER XVI
HARMAC COMES TO MUR
Slowly and in very bad spirits I retraced my steps to the old temple,following the line of the telephone wire which Higgs and Quick hadunreeled as they went. In the Sergeant's prognostications of evil Ihad no particular belief, as they seemed to me to be born of thecircumstances which surrounded us, and in different ways affected allour minds, even that of the buoyant Higgs.
To take my own case, for instance. Here I was about to assist in an actwhich for aught I knew might involve the destruction of my only son. Itwas true we believed that this was the night of his marriage at the townof Harmac, some miles away, and that the tale of our spies supportedthis information. But how could we be sure that the date, or the placeof the ceremony, had not been changed at the last moment? Supposing,for instance, that it was held, not in the town, as arranged, but in thecourts of the idol, and that the fearful activities of the fiery agentwhich we were about to wake to life should sweep the celebrants intonothingness.
The thought made me turn cold, and yet the deed must be done; Roderickmust take his chance. And if all were well, and he escaped that danger,were there not worse behind? Think of him, a Christian man, the husbandof a savage woman who worshipped a stone image with a lion's head, boundto her and her tribe, a state prisoner, trebly guarded, whom, so faras I could see, there would be no hope of rescuing. It was awful. Thenthere were other complications. If the plan succeeded and the idol wasdestroyed, my own belief was that the Fung must thereby be exasperated.Evidently they knew some road into this stronghold. It would be used.They would pour their thousands up it, a general massacre would follow,of which, justly, we should be the first victims.
I reached the chamber where Oliver sat brooding alone, for Japhet waspatrolling the line.
"I am not happy about Maqueda, Doctor," he said to me. "I am afraidthere is something in that story. She wanted to be with us; indeed, shebegged to be allowed to come almost with tears. But I wouldn't have it,since accidents may always happen; the vibration might shake in the roofor something; in fact, I don't think you should be here. Why don't yougo away and leave me?"
I answered that nothing would induce me to do so, for such a job shouldnot be left to one man.
"No, you're right," he said; "I might faint or lose my head or anything.I wish now that we had arranged to send the spark from the palace,which perhaps we might have done by joining the telephone wire on tothe others. But, to tell you the truth, I'm afraid of the batteries.The cells are new but very weak, for time and the climate have affectedthem, and I thought it possible the extra difference might make thedifference and that they would fail to work. That's why I fixed this asthe firing point. Hullo, there's the bell. What have they got to say?"
I snatched the receiver, and presently heard the cheerful voice ofHiggs announcing that they had arrived safely in the little anteroom toMaqueda's private apartments.
"The palace seems very empty," he added; "we only met one sentry, for Ithink that everybody else, except Maqueda and a few of her ladies,have cleared out, being afraid lest rocks should fall on them when theexplosion occurs."
"Did the man say so?" I asked of Higgs.
"Yes, something of that sort; also he wanted to forbid us to come here,saying that it was against the Prince Joshua's orders that we Gentilesshould approach the private apartments of the Child of Kings. Well, wesoon settled that, and he bolted. Where to? Oh! I don't know; to report,he said."
"How's Quick?" I asked.
"Much the same as usual. In fact, he is saying his prayers in thecorner, looking like a melancholy brigand with rifles, revolvers, andknives stuck all over him. I wish he wouldn't say his prayers," addedHiggs, and his voice reached me in an indignant squeak; "it makes mefeel uncomfortable, as though I ought to join him. But not having beenbrought up a Dissenter or a Moslem, I can't pray in public as he does.Hullo! Wait a minute, will you?"
Then followed a longish pause, and after it Higgs's voice again.
"It's all right," it said. "Only one of Maqueda's ladies who had heardus and come to see who we were. When she learns I expect she will joinus here, as the girl says she's nervous and can't sleep."
Higgs proved right in his anticipations, for in about ten minutes wewere rung up again, this time by Maqueda herself, whereon I handed thereceiver to Oliver and retired to the other end of the room.
Nor, to tell the truth, was I sorry for the interruption, since itcheered up Oliver and helped to pass the time.
The next thing worth telling that happened was that, an hour or morelater, Japhet arrived, looking very frightened. We asked him our usualquestion: if anything was wrong with the wires. With a groan he answered"No," the wires seemed all right, but he had met a ghost.
"What ghost, you donkey?" I said.
"The ghost of one of the dead kings, O Physician, yonder in the burialcave. It was he with the bent bones who sits in the farthest chair. Onlyhe had put some flesh on his bones, and I tell you he looked fearful, avery fierce man, or rather ghost."
"Indeed, and did he say anything to you, Japhet?"
"Oh! yes, plenty, O Physician, only I could not understand it all,because his language was somewhat different to mine, and he spat outhis words as a green log spits out sparks. I think that he asked me,however, how my miserable people dared to destroy his god, Harmac. Ianswered that I was only a servant and did not know, adding that heshould put his questions to you."
"And what did he say to that, Japhet?"
"I think he said that Harmac would come to Mur and settle his accountwith the Abati, and that the foreign men would be wise to fly fast andfar. That's all I understood; ask me no more, who would not return intothat cave to be made a prince."
"He's got hold of what Barung's envoys told us," said Oliver,indifferently, "and no wonder, this place is enough to make anybody seeghosts. I'll repeat it to Maqueda; it will amuse her."
"I wouldn't if I were you," I answered, "for it isn't exactly a cheerfulyarn, and perhaps she's afraid of ghosts too. Also," and I pointedto the watch that lay on the table beside the batteries, "it is fiveminutes to ten."
Oh! that last five minutes! It seemed as many centuries. Like stonestatues we sat, each of us lost in his own thoughts, though for my partthe power of clear thinking appeared to have left me. Visions of a sortflowed over my mind without sinking into it, as water flows over marble.All I could do was fix my eyes on the face of that watch, of which inthe flickering lamp-light the second-hand seemed to my excited fancy togrow enormous and jump from one side of the room to the other.
Orme began to count aloud. "One, two, three, four, five--_now_!" andalmost simultaneously he touched the knob first of one battery and nextof the other. Before his finger pressed the left-hand knob I felt thesolid rock beneath us surge--no other word conveys its movement. Thenthe great stone cross-piece, weighing several tons, that was set asa transom above the tall door of our room, dislodged itself, and fellquite gently into the doorway, which it completely blocked.
Other rocks fell also at a distance, making a great noise, and somehowI found myself on the ground, my stool had slid away from me. Nextfollowed a muffled, awful roar, and with it came a blast of wind blowingwhere wind never blew before since the beginning of the world, that witha terrible wailing howled itself to silence in the thousand recesses ofthe cave city. As it passed our lamps went out. Lastly, quite a minutelater I should think, there was a thud, as though something of enormousweight had fallen on the surface of the earth far above us.
Then all was as it had been; all was darkness and utter quietude.
"Well, that's over," said Oliver, in a strained voice which sounded verysmall and far away through that thick darkness; "all over for good orill. I needn't have been anxious; the first battery was strong enough,for I felt the mine spring as I touched the second. I wonder," he wenton, as though speaking to himself, "what amount of damage nearly a tonand a half of that awful azo-imide compound has done to the old sphinx.According to my calculati
ons it ought to have been enough to break thething up, if we could have spread the charge more. But, as it is, Iam by no means certain. It may only have driven a hole in its bulk,especially if there were hollows through which the gases could run.Well, with luck, we may know more about it later. Strike a match, Adams,and light those lamps. Why, what's that? Listen!"
As he spoke, from somewhere came a series of tiny noises, that,though they were so faint and small, suggested rifles fired at a greatdistance. Crack, crack, crack! went the infinitesimal noises.
I groped about, and finding the receiver of the field telephone, setit to my ear. In an instant all grew plain to me. Guns were being firednear the other end of the wire, and the transmitter was sending us thesound of them. Very faintly but with distinctness I could hear Higgs'shigh voice saying, "Look out, Sergeant, there's another rush coming!"and Quick answering, "Shoot low, Professor; for the Lord's sake shootlow. You are empty, sir. Load up, load up! Here's a clip of cartridges.Don't fire too fast. Ah! that devil got me, but I've got him; he'llnever throw another spear."
"They are being attacked!" I exclaimed. "Quick is wounded. Now Maquedais talking to you. She says, 'Oliver, come! Joshua's men assail me.Oliver, come!'"
Then followed a great sound of shouting answered by more shots, and justas Orme snatched the receiver from my hand the wire went dead. In vainhe called down it in an agonized voice. As well might he have addressedthe planet Saturn.
"The wire's cut," he exclaimed, dashing down the receiver and seizingthe lantern which Japhet had just succeeded in re-lighting; "comeon, there's murder being done," and he sprang to the doorway, only tostagger back again from the great stone with which it was blocked.
"Good God!" he screamed, "we're shut in. How can we get out? How canwe get out?" and he began to run round and round the room, and even tospring at the walls like a frightened cat. Thrice he sprang, striving toclimb to the coping, for the place had no roof, each time falling back,since it was too high for him to grasp. I caught him round the middle,and held him by main force, although he struck at me.
"Be quiet," I said; "do you want to kill yourself? You will be no gooddead or maimed. Let me think."
Meanwhile Japhet was acting on his own account, for he, too, had heardthe tiny, ominous sounds given out by the telephone and guessed theirpurport. First he ran to the massive transom that blocked the doorwayand pushed. It was useless; not even an elephant could have stirred it.Then he stepped back, examining it carefully.
"I think it can be climbed, Physician," he said. "Help me now," and hemotioned to me to take one end of the heavy table on which the batteriesstood. We dragged it to the doorway, and, seeing his purpose, Oliverjumped on to it with him. Then at Japhet's direction, while I supportedthe table to prevent its oversetting, Orme rested his foreheadagainst the stone, making what schoolboy's call "a back," up which themountaineer climbed actively until he stood upon his shoulders, andby stretching himself was able to grasp the end of the fallen transom.Next, while I held up the lamp to give him light, he gripped theroughnesses of the hewn stone with his toes, and in a few moments wasupon the coping of the wall, twenty feet or more above the floor line.
The rest was comparatively easy, for taking off his linen robe, Japhetknotted it once or twice, and let it down to us. By the help of thisimprovised rope, with Orme supporting me beneath, I, too, was draggedup to the coping of the wall. Then both of us pulled up Oliver, who,without a word, swung himself over the wall, hanging to Japhet's arms,and loosing his hold, dropped to the ground on the farther side. Nextcame my turn. It was a long fall, and had not Oliver caught me I thinkthat I should have hurt myself. As it was, the breath was shaken outof me. Lastly, Japhet swung himself down, landing lightly as a cat. Thelamps he had already dropped to us, and in another minute they were alllighted, and we were speeding down the great cavern.
"Be careful," I cried; "there may be fallen rocks about."
As it happened I was right, for at that moment Oliver struck his legsagainst one of them and fell, cutting himself a good deal. In a momenthe was up again, but after this our progress grew slow, for hundreds oftons of stone had been shaken from the roof and blocked the path. Also,whole buildings of the ancient and underground city had been throwndown, although these were mostly blown inward by the rush of air. Atlength we came to the end of the cave, and halted dismayed, for here,where the blast of the explosion had been brought to a full stop, theplace seemed to be crowded with rocks which it had rolled before it.
"My God! I believe we are shut in," exclaimed Oliver in despair.
But Japhet, lantern in hand, was already leaping from block to block,and presently, from the top of the debris, called to us to come to him.
"I think there is a road left, though a bad one, lords," he said, andpointed to a jagged, well-like hole blown out, as I believe, by therecoil of the blast. With difficulty and danger, for many of the piledup stones were loose, we climbed down this place, and at its bottomsqueezed ourselves through a narrow aperture on to the floor of thecave, praying that the huge door which led to the passage beyond mightnot be jammed, since if it were, as we knew well, our small strengthwould not avail to move it. Happily, this fear at least provedgroundless, since it opened outward, and the force of the compressed airhad torn it from its massive stone hinges and thrown it shattered to theground.
We scrambled over it, and advanced down the passage, our revolversin our hands. We reached the audience hall, which was empty and indarkness. We turned to the left, crossing various chambers, and in thelast of them, through which one of the gates of the palace could beapproached, met with the first signs of the tragedy, for there werebloodstains on the floor.
Orme pointed to them as he hurried on, and suddenly a man leapt out ofthe darkness as a buck leaps from a bush, and ran past us, holding hishands to his side, where evidently he had some grievous hurt. Now weentered the corridor leading to the private apartments of the Child ofKings, and found ourselves walking on the bodies of dead and dying men.One of the former I observed, as one does notice little things at sucha moment, held in his hand the broken wire of the field telephone. Ipresume that he had snatched and severed it in his death pang at themoment when communication ceased between us and the palace.
We rushed into the little antechamber, in which lights were burning, andthere saw a sight that I for one never shall forget.
In the foreground lay more dead men, all of them wearing the livery ofPrince Joshua. Beyond was Sergeant Quick, seated on a chair. He seemedto be literally hacked to pieces. An arrow that no one had attempted toremove was fast in his shoulder; his head, which Maqueda was spongingwith wet cloths--well, I will not describe his wounds.
Leaning against the wall near by stood Higgs, also bleeding, andapparently quite exhausted. Behind, besides Maqueda herself, were two orthree of her ladies, wringing their hands and weeping. In face of thisterrible spectacle we came to a sudden halt. No word was spoken of byany one, for the power of speech had left us.
The dying Quick opened his eyes, lifted his hand, upon which there wasa ghastly sword-cut, to his forehead, as though to shade them from thelight--ah! how well I recall that pathetic motion--and from beneath thisscreen stared at us a while. Then he rose from the chair, touched histhroat to show that he could not speak, as I suppose, saluted Orme,turned and pointed to Maqueda, and with a triumphant smile sank downand--died.
Such was the noble end of Sergeant Quick.
To describe what followed is not easy, for the scene was confused. Alsoshock and sorrow have blurred its recollection in my mind. I rememberMaqueda and Orme falling into each other's arms before everybody.I remember her drawing herself up in that imperial way of hers, andsaying, as she pointed to the body of Quick:
"There lies one who has shown us how to die. This countryman of yourswas a hero, O Oliver, and you should hold his memory in honour, since hesaved me from worse than death."
"What's the story?" asked Orme of Higgs.
"A simple one enough," he answered.
"We got here all right, as we toldyou over the wire. Then Maqueda talked to you for a long while untilyou rang off, saying you wanted to speak to Japhet. After that, at teno'clock precisely, we heard the thud of the explosion. Next, as we werepreparing to go out to see what had happened, Joshua arrived alone,announced that the idol Harmac had been destroyed, and demanded thatthe Child of Kings, 'for State reasons,' should accompany him to his owncastle. She declined and, as he insisted, I took it upon myself to kickhim out of the place. He retired, and we saw no more of him, but a fewminutes later there came a shower of arrows down the passage, and afterthem a rush of men, who called, 'Death to the Gentiles. Rescue theRose.'
"So we began to shoot and knocked over a lot of them, but Quick gotthat arrow through his shoulder. Three times they came on like that, andthree times we drove them back. At last our cartridges ran low, and weonly had our revolvers left, which we emptied into them. They hung amoment, but moved forward again, and all seemed up.
"Then Quick went mad. He snatched the sword of a dead Abati and ran atthem roaring like a bull. They hacked and cut at him, but the end ofit was that he drove them right out of the passage, while I followed,firing past him.
"Well, those who were left of the blackguards bolted, and when they hadgone the Sergeant tumbled down. The women and I carried him back here,but he never said another word, and at last you turned up. Now he'sgone, God rest him, for if ever there was a hero in this world he waschristened Samuel Quick!" and, turning aside, the Professor pushed upthe blue spectacles he always wore on to his forehead, and wiped hiseyes with the back of his hand.
With grief more bitter than I can describe we lifted up the body of thegallant Quick and, bearing it into Maqueda's private apartment, placedit on her own bed, for she insisted that the man who had died to protecther should be laid nowhere else. It was strange to see the grim oldsoldier, whose face, now that I had washed his wounds, looked calm andeven beautiful, laid out to sleep his last sleep upon the couch of theChild of Kings. That bed, I remember, was a rich and splendid thing,made of some black wood inlaid with scrolls of gold, and having hungabout it curtains of white net embroidered with golden stars, such asMaqueda wore upon her official veil.
There upon the scented pillows and silken coverlet we set our burdendown, the work-worn hands clasped upon the breast in an attitude ofprayer, and one by one bid our farewell to this faithful and uprightman, whose face, as it chanced, we were never to see again, except inthe glass of memory. Well, he had died as he had lived and would havewished to die--doing his duty and in war. And so we left him. Peace beto his honoured spirit!
In the blood-stained ante-room, while I dressed and stitched up theProfessor's wounds, a sword-cut on the head, an arrow-graze along theface, and a spear-prick in the thigh, none of them happily at all deepor dangerous, we held a brief council.
"Friends," said Maqueda, who was leaning on her lover's arm, "it isnot safe that we should stop here. My uncle's plot has failed for themoment, but it was only a small and secret thing. I think that soon hewill return again with a thousand at his back, and then----"
"What is in your mind?" asked Oliver. "To fly from Mur?"
"How can we fly," she answered, "when the pass is guarded by Joshua'smen, and the Fung wait for us without? The Abati hate you, my friends,and now that you have done your work I think that they will kill you ifthey can, whom they bore with only till it was done. Alas! alas! that Ishould have brought you to this false and ungrateful country," and shebegan to weep, while we stared at each other, helpless.
Then Japhet, who all this while had been crouched on the floor, rockinghimself too and fro and mourning in his Eastern fashion for Quick,whom he had loved, rose, and, coming to the Child of Kings, prostratedhimself before her.
"O Walda Nagasta," he said, "hear the words of your servant. Only threemiles away, near to the mouth of the pass, are encamped five hundredmen of my own people, the Mountaineers, who hate Prince Joshua and hisfollowing. Fly to them, O Walda Nagasta, for they will cleave to you andlisten to me whom you have made a chief among them. Afterwards you canact as may seem wisest."
Maqueda looked at Oliver questioningly.
"I think that is good advice," he said. "At any rate, we can't be worseoff among the Mountaineers than we are in this undefended place. Tellyour women to bring cloaks that we can throw over our heads, and let usgo."
Five minutes later, a forlorn group filled with fears, we had stolenover the dead and dying in the passage, and made our way to the sidegate of the palace that we found open, and over the bridge that spannedthe moat beyond, which was down. Doubtless Joshua's ruffians had usedit in their approach and retreat. Disguised in the long cloaks withmonk-like hoods that the Abati wore at night or when the weather wascold and wet, we hurried across the great square. Here, since we couldnot escape them, we mingled with the crowd that was gathered at itsfarther end, all of them--men, women and children--chattering likemonkeys in the tree-tops, and pointing to the cliff at the back of thepalace, beneath which, it will be remembered, lay the underground city.
A band of soldiers rode by, thrusting their way through the people, andin order to avoid them we thought it wise to take refuge in the shadowof a walk of green-leaved trees which grew close at hand, for we fearedlest they might recognize Oliver by his height. Here we turned andlooked up at the cliff, to discover what it was at which every one wasstaring. At that moment the full moon, which had been obscured by acloud, broke out, and we saw a spectacle that under the circumstanceswas nothing less than terrifying.
The cliff behind the palace rose to a height of about a hundred andfifty feet, and, as it chanced, just there a portion of it jutted outin an oblong shape, which the Abati called the Lion Rock, althoughpersonally, heretofore, I had never been able to see in it any greatresemblance to a lion. Now, however, it was different, for on the veryextremity of this rock, staring down at Mur, sat the head and neck ofthe huge lion-faced idol of the Fung. Indeed, in that light, with thepromontory stretching away behind it, it looked as though it werethe idol itself, moved from the valley upon the farther side of theprecipice to the top of the cliff above.
"Oh! oh! oh!" groaned Japhet, "the prophecy is fulfilled--the head ofHarmac has come to sleep at Mur."
"You mean that we have sent him there," whispered Higgs. "Don't befrightened, man; can't you understand that the power of our medicine hasblown the head off the sphinx high into the air, and landed it where itsits now?"
"Yes," I put in, "and what we felt in the cave was the shock of itsfall."
"I don't care what brought him," replied Japhet, who seemed quiteunstrung by all that he had gone through. "All I know is that theprophecy is fulfilled, and Harmac has come to Mur, and where Harmac goesthe Fung follow."
"So much the better," said the irreverent Higgs. "I may be able tosketch and measure him now."
But I saw that Maqueda was trembling, for she, too, thought thisoccurrence a very bad omen, and even Oliver remained silent, perhapsbecause he feared its effect upon the Abati.
Nor was this wonderful since, from the talk around us, clearly thateffect was great. Evidently the people were terrified, like Japhet. Wecould hear them foreboding ill, and cursing us Gentiles as wizards,who had not destroyed the idol of the Fung as we promised, but had onlycaused him to fly to Mur.
Here I may mention that as a matter of fact they were right. As wediscovered afterwards, the whole force of the explosion, instead ofshattering the vast bulk of the stone image, had rushed up through thehollow chambers in its interior until it struck against the solid head.Lifting this as though it were a toy, the expanding gas had hurled thatmighty mass an unknown distance into the air, to light upon the crest ofthe cliffs of Mur, where probably it will remain forever.
"Well," I said, when we had stared a little while at this extraordinaryphenomenon, "thank God it did not travel farther, and fall upon thepalace."
"Oh! had it done so," whispered Maqueda in a tearful voice, "I think youmight have thanked God indeed,
for then at least I should be freefrom all my troubles. Come, friends, let us be going before we arediscovered."
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