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 of _here_!" Bohannan grumbled. "Sure, we're at the end o'

nowhere. Now if we'd only taken another pa.s.sage--"

n.o.body 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"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 G.o.d! 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 G.o.d knows what! Stand back, all--take your time, now! Go slow there!"

They heeded, and stood back. The Master himself, a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.ne 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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, in _this_ trap! There'll be at least ten skulls missing from that interesting golden Pyramid of Ayeshah!"

"For G.o.d'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 catch _me_ jumping!"

"Gentlemen," the Master said, in a low, quiet voice, "I regret to state that we have one coward among us."

CHAPTER XLVIII