Queen Sheba's Ring Part 29

In the foreground lay more dead men, all of them wearing the livery of Prince Joshua. Beyond was Sergeant Quick, seated on a chair. He seemed to be literally hacked to pieces. An arrow that no one had attempted to remove was fast in his shoulder; his head, which Maqueda was sponging with wet cloths--well, I will not describe his wounds.

Leaning against the wall near by stood Higgs, also bleeding, and apparently quite exhausted. Behind, besides Maqueda herself, were two or three of her ladies, wringing their hands and weeping. In face of this terrible spectacle we came to a sudden halt. No word was spoken of by any one, for the power of speech had left us.

The dying Quick opened his eyes, lifted his hand, upon which there was a ghastly sword-cut, to his forehead, as though to shade them from the light--ah! how well I recall that pathetic motion--and from beneath this screen stared at us a while. Then he rose from the chair, touched his throat to show that he could not speak, as I suppose, saluted Orme, turned and pointed to Maqueda, and with a triumphant smile sank down and--died.

Such was the n.o.ble end of Sergeant Quick.

To describe what followed is not easy, for the scene was confused. Also shock and sorrow have blurred its recollection in my mind. I remember Maqueda and Orme falling into each other's arms before everybody.

I remember her drawing herself up in that imperial way of hers, and saying, as she pointed to the body of Quick:

"There lies one who has shown us how to die. This countryman of yours was a hero, O Oliver, and you should hold his memory in honour, since he saved me from worse than death."

"What's the story?" asked Orme of Higgs.

"A simple one enough," he answered. "We got here all right, as we told you over the wire. Then Maqueda talked to you for a long while until you rang off, saying you wanted to speak to j.a.phet. After that, at ten o'clock precisely, we heard the thud of the explosion. Next, as we were preparing to go out to see what had happened, Joshua arrived alone, announced that the idol Harmac had been destroyed, and demanded that the Child of Kings, 'for State reasons,' should accompany him to his own castle. She declined and, as he insisted, I took it upon myself to kick him out of the place. He retired, and we saw no more of him, but a few minutes later there came a shower of arrows down the pa.s.sage, and after them a rush of men, who called, 'Death to the Gentiles. Rescue the Rose.'

"So we began to shoot and knocked over a lot of them, but Quick got that arrow through his shoulder. Three times they came on like that, and three times we drove them back. At last our cartridges ran low, and we only had our revolvers left, which we emptied into them. They hung a moment, but moved forward again, and all seemed up.

"Then Quick went mad. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the sword of a dead Abati and ran at them roaring like a bull. They hacked and cut at him, but the end of it was that he drove them right out of the pa.s.sage, while I followed, firing past him.

"Well, those who were left of the blackguards bolted, and when they had gone the Sergeant tumbled down. The women and I carried him back here, but he never said another word, and at last you turned up. Now he's gone, G.o.d rest him, for if ever there was a hero in this world he was christened Samuel Quick!" and, turning aside, the Professor pushed up the blue spectacles he always wore on to his forehead, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

With grief more bitter than I can describe we lifted up the body of the gallant Quick and, bearing it into Maqueda's private apartment, placed it on her own bed, for she insisted that the man who had died to protect her should be laid nowhere else. It was strange to see the grim old soldier, whose face, now that I had washed his wounds, looked calm and even beautiful, laid out to sleep his last sleep upon the couch of the Child of Kings. That bed, I remember, was a rich and splendid thing, made of some black wood inlaid with scrolls of gold, and having hung about it curtains of white net embroidered with golden stars, such as Maqueda wore upon her official veil.

There upon the scented pillows and silken coverlet we set our burden down, the work-worn hands clasped upon the breast in an att.i.tude of prayer, and one by one bid our farewell to this faithful and upright man, whose face, as it chanced, we were never to see again, except in the gla.s.s of memory. Well, he had died as he had lived and would have wished to die--doing his duty and in war. And so we left him. Peace be to his honoured spirit!

In the blood-stained ante-room, while I dressed and st.i.tched up the Professor's wounds, a sword-cut on the head, an arrow-graze along the face, and a spear-p.r.i.c.k in the thigh, none of them happily at all deep or dangerous, we held a brief council.

"Friends," said Maqueda, who was leaning on her lover's arm, "it is not safe that we should stop here. My uncle's plot has failed for the moment, but it was only a small and secret thing. I think that soon he will return again with a thousand at his back, and then----"

"What is in your mind?" asked Oliver. "To fly from Mur?"

"How can we fly," she answered, "when the pa.s.s is guarded by Joshua's men, and the Fung wait for us without? The Abati hate you, my friends, and now that you have done your work I think that they will kill you if they can, whom they bore with only till it was done. Alas! alas! that I should have brought you to this false and ungrateful country," and she began to weep, while we stared at each other, helpless.

Then j.a.phet, who all this while had been crouched on the floor, rocking himself too and fro and mourning in his Eastern fashion for Quick, whom he had loved, rose, and, coming to the Child of Kings, prostrated himself before her.

"O Walda Nagasta," he said, "hear the words of your servant. Only three miles away, near to the mouth of the pa.s.s, are encamped five hundred men of my own people, the Mountaineers, who hate Prince Joshua and his following. Fly to them, O Walda Nagasta, for they will cleave to you and listen to me whom you have made a chief among them. Afterwards you can act as may seem wisest."

Maqueda looked at Oliver questioningly.

"I think that is good advice," he said. "At any rate, we can't be worse off among the Mountaineers than we are in this undefended place. Tell your women to bring cloaks that we can throw over our heads, and let us go."

Five minutes later, a forlorn group filled with fears, we had stolen over the dead and dying in the pa.s.sage, and made our way to the side gate of the palace that we found open, and over the bridge that spanned the moat beyond, which was down. Doubtless Joshua's ruffians had used it in their approach and retreat. Disguised in the long cloaks with monk-like hoods that the Abati wore at night or when the weather was cold and wet, we hurried across the great square. Here, since we could not escape them, we mingled with the crowd that was gathered at its farther end, all of them--men, women and children--chattering like monkeys in the tree-tops, and pointing to the cliff at the back of the palace, beneath which, it will be remembered, lay the underground city.

A band of soldiers rode by, thrusting their way through the people, and in order to avoid them we thought it wise to take refuge in the shadow of a walk of green-leaved trees which grew close at hand, for we feared lest they might recognize Oliver by his height. Here we turned and looked up at the cliff, to discover what it was at which every one was staring. At that moment the full moon, which had been obscured by a cloud, broke out, and we saw a spectacle that under the circ.u.mstances was nothing less than terrifying.

The cliff behind the palace rose to a height of about a hundred and fifty feet, and, as it chanced, just there a portion of it jutted out in an oblong shape, which the Abati called the Lion Rock, although personally, heretofore, I had never been able to see in it any great resemblance to a lion. Now, however, it was different, for on the very extremity of this rock, staring down at Mur, sat the head and neck of the huge lion-faced idol of the Fung. Indeed, in that light, with the promontory stretching away behind it, it looked as though it were the idol itself, moved from the valley upon the farther side of the precipice to the top of the cliff above.

"Oh! oh! oh!" groaned j.a.phet, "the prophecy is fulfilled--the head of Harmac has come to sleep at Mur."

"You mean that we have sent him there," whispered Higgs. "Don't be frightened, man; can't you understand that the power of our medicine has blown the head off the sphinx high into the air, and landed it where it sits now?"

"Yes," I put in, "and what we felt in the cave was the shock of its fall."

"I don't care what brought him," replied j.a.phet, who seemed quite unstrung by all that he had gone through. "All I know is that the prophecy is fulfilled, and Harmac has come to Mur, and where Harmac goes the Fung follow."

"So much the better," said the irreverent Higgs. "I may be able to sketch and measure him now."

But I saw that Maqueda was trembling, for she, too, thought this occurrence a very bad omen, and even Oliver remained silent, perhaps because he feared its effect upon the Abati.

Nor was this wonderful since, from the talk around us, clearly that effect was great. Evidently the people were terrified, like j.a.phet. We could hear them foreboding ill, and cursing us Gentiles as wizards, who had not destroyed the idol of the Fung as we promised, but had only caused him to fly to Mur.

Here I may mention that as a matter of fact they were right. As we discovered afterwards, the whole force of the explosion, instead of shattering the vast bulk of the stone image, had rushed up through the hollow chambers in its interior until it struck against the solid head.

Lifting this as though it were a toy, the expanding gas had hurled that mighty ma.s.s an unknown distance into the air, to light upon the crest of the cliffs of Mur, where probably it will remain forever.

"Well," I said, when we had stared a little while at this extraordinary phenomenon, "thank G.o.d it did not travel farther, and fall upon the palace."

"Oh! had it done so," whispered Maqueda in a tearful voice, "I think you might have thanked G.o.d indeed, for then at least I should be free from all my troubles. Come, friends, let us be going before we are discovered."

CHAPTER XVII

I FIND MY SON

Our road toward the pa.s.s ran through the camping ground of the newly created Abati army, and what we saw on our journey thither told us more vividly than any words or reports could do, how utter was the demoralization of that people. Where should have been sentries were no sentries; where should have been soldiers were groups of officers talking with women; where should have been officers were camp followers drinking.

Through this confusion and excitement we made our way un.o.bserved, or, at any rate, unquestioned, till at length we came to the regiment of the Mountaineers, who, for the most part, were goatherds, poor people who lived upon the slopes of the precipices that enclosed the land of Mur.

These folk, having little to do with their more prosperous brethren of the plain, were hardy and primitive of nature, and therefore retained some of the primeval virtues of mankind, such as courage and loyalty.

It was for the first of these reasons, and, indeed, for the second also, that they had been posted by Joshua at the mouth of the pa.s.s, which he knew well they alone could be trusted to defend in the event of serious attack. Moreover, it was desirable, from his point of view, to keep them out of the way while he developed his plans against the person of the Child of Kings, for whom these simple-minded men had a hereditary and almost a superst.i.tious reverence.

As soon as we were within the lines of these Mountaineers we found the difference between them and the rest of the Abati. The other regiments we had pa.s.sed unchallenged, but here we were instantly stopped by a picket. j.a.phet whispered something into the ear of its officer that caused him to stare hard at us. Then this officer saluted the veiled figure of the Child of Kings and led us to where the commander of the band and his subordinates were seated near a fire sitting together. At some sign or word that did not reach us the commander, an old fellow with a long grey beard, rose and said:

"Your pardon, but be pleased to show your faces."

Maqueda threw back her hood and turned so that the light of the moon fell full upon her, whereon the old man dropped to his knee, saying:

"Your commands, O Walda Nagasta."

"Summon your regiment and I will give them," she answered, and seated herself on a bench by the fire, we three and j.a.phet standing behind her.

The commander issued orders to his captains, and presently the Mountaineers formed up on three sides of a square above us, to the number of a little over five hundred men. When all were gathered Maqueda mounted the bench upon which she had been sitting, threw back her hood so that every one could see her face in the light of the fire, and addressed them:

"Men of the mountain-side, this night just after the idol of the Fung had been destroyed, the Prince Joshua, my uncle, came to me demanding my surrender to him, whether to kill me or to imprison me in his castle beyond the end of the lake, for reasons of State as he said, or for other vile purposes, I do not know."

At these words a murmur rose from the audience.