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 ejaculated.
"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 God! 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.
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