The Master, now all alone, stood waiting yet a moment. His face was
bloodless. His lower lip was mangled, where his teeth had nearly met,
through it.
Already, a confused murmur of sound was developing, from the black
opening of the passage that had led the Legionaries down to this crypt
of the wine-sacks and the pit.
He smiled, oddly.
"Many a corpse has been flung down this _oubliette_," said he. "I hate
to go, without emptying my pistol into a few more of the Moslem swine,
and dropping them down here to join my people. But--I must!"
He bent, gathered together the silver lamps left by his men, and threw
them all into the abyss. Blackness, absolute, blotted the reeking
chamber from his sight.
The faintest possible aura of light began to loom from the mouth
of the passage. More distinctly, now, the murmur of Arab voices was
becoming audible.
The Master leaped.
Far below, at the bottom of the pit, as the Arabs burst into the
wine-vault, sounded a final impact of some heavy body striking swift
water that swept it instantly away.
Then silence filled the black, rock-hewn chamber in the labyrinthine
depths of Jannati Shahr.
CHAPTER XLIX
THE DESERT
The Desert.
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