The golden passageway flung from wall
to wall screams, curses in shrill barbaric voices, clangor of steel
whirled from scabbards, echoes of shots loud-roaring in that narrow
space.
Bara Miyan's pistol, struck up by the woman's hand, spat fire over the
Master's head just as the Olema himself went down with blood spurting
from a jugular severed by the major's bullet. The Olema's gaudy
burnous crimsoned swiftly.
"Got _him_!" shouted Bohannan, firing again, again, into the tangle of
sub-chiefs and Maghrabi men. Adams pitched forward, cleft to the chin
by a simitar.
The firing leaped to point-blank uproar, on both sides. The men of
Jannati Shahr numbered more pistols, but the Legionaries had quicker
firers. Arabs, Legionaries, Maghrabis alike falling in a tumult of raw
passions, disappeared under trampling feet.
Deafening grew the uproar of howls, curses, shots. The smell of dust
and blood mingled with the aromatic perfume of the cressets.
The Master was shouting something, as he emptied his automatic into
the pack of white-robed bodies, snarling brown faces, waving arms. But
what he was commanding, who could tell?
Like a storm-wave flinging froth ashore, the rush of the Moslems
drove the Legionaries--fewer now--back into the treasure-chamber.
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