I will show thee all these things--and
others!
"_Come_!"
In silence the Legionaries followed old Bara Miyan through the
curtained doorway; and after them came the sub-chiefs. The Maghrabi
stranglers, noiseless and bare-footed, fell in behind; a long ominous
line of black human brutes, seeming hardly above the intellectual
level of so many gorillas.
Stout-hearted as the Legionaries were, a kind of numbing oppression
was closing in upon them. City battlements and double walls of inner
citadel, then massive gates and now again more doors that closed
behind them, intervened between them and even the perilous liberty of
the plain of El Barr. And, in addition to all this, some hundreds of
thousands of Arabs, waiting without, effectually surrounded them, and
the Maghrabi men cast their black shadow, threatening and ominous,
over the already somber enough canvas.
A web, they all felt, was closing about them that only chance and
boldness could unravel. Everything now hung on the word of an aged
fanatic, who for any fancied breach of the Oath of Salt might deliver
them to slavery, torture, death.
"Remember, men," the Master warned his men as they penetrated the
dim, golden-walled passage also lighted with sandal-oil
_mash'als_--"remember the mercy-bullets.
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