The
Master, violent hands on "Captain Alden," swung her back, away; thrust
her behind him. Her eyes gleamed through the mask as she still fired.
The Master heard her laugh.
From dimness of gloom, within the doorway, two vague figures rained
dagger-blows. Janina, mortally stabbed, practically blew the head off
one of these door-keepers.
Cracowicz got the other with a blow from the butt of his empty
pistol--a blow that crushed in the right temporal bone. Then he, too,
and three others, fell and died.
Outside, in the passage, the Maghrabis were wringing the necks of the
wounded white men. The dull sound of crushed and broken bones blent
with the turmoil.
"_The door--shut the door!_"
The Master's voice penetrated even this Hell-tumult. The Master flung
himself against the door, and others with him.
The very frenzy of the attack defeated the Arab's object, for it drove
the survivors back into the treasure-crypt. And in the narrow doorway
the white men could for a moment hold back the howling tides of fury.
With cold lead, butts, naked fists, the remaining Legionaries smashed
a little clearance-room, corpse-heaped. They stumbled, fought, fell
into the crypt.
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