The Land of the Changing Sun Part 18

"Not unlikely," returned Branasko. "There, we are going ahead again. One thing in our favor is that we can more easily escape capture in darkness than if the sun were shining."

"Does the sun stop before entering the tunnel?"

"I do not know," replied Branasko; "perhaps somebody will be there to see what is wrong with the light. We must have our wits about us when we land."

Johnston was looking over the edge of the platform. "If the king's display is taking place down there I can see no sign of it."

"How stupid of us!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Branasko. "Of course, clouds sufficiently dense to hide the sun from Alpha would also prevent us from seeing the display below. I ought to----"

He was interrupted by a grand outburst of harmony. The whole earth seemed to vibrate with sublime melody. "Our blunder has not been discovered yet," finished Branasko, after a pause, "else the fete down below would have been over. I am cold; shall we go inside?"

Johnston's answer was taken out of his mouth by a loud rattling beneath the floor, near the wheel he had just turned; the sun shook spasmodically for an instant, and its entire surface was faintly illuminated, but the light failed signally.

"It must have been an extra current of electricity sent to relight the lamps," remarked Johnston; and, as he concluded, the sun trembled again, and another flash and failure occurred. "Look," cried the American, "the clouds are thinning; see the lights below! They have discovered the accident!"

They both leaned over the railing and looked below. As far as the eye could reach, within the arc of their vision, they could see fitful lights flashing up, here and there, and going out again. And then they heard faint sounds of crashing masonry and the condensed roar of human voices, which seemed to come from above rather than from below. The Alphian turned. "I cannot stand the cold," he said.

Johnston followed him. The rapid motion of the swinging sphere made him dizzy, and he caught Branasko's arm to keep from falling.

"How can we tell when we go over the wall?" he asked anxiously.

"We shall have to guess at it," was the answer. "At any rate we must be near the lower door so as to get out quickly if it is necessary to do so to escape detection."

In the darkness they slowly made their way down the stairs to the great room.

"There ought to be some way of making a light," said the Alphian, and his voice sounded loud and hollow in the empty chamber. After several failures to find the stairs they descended to the door they had entered.

Branasko opened it a little, and a breeze came in. They sat down on the stone, and after a while, in sheer fatigue, they fell asleep. Hours pa.s.sed. Branasko rose with a start, and shook Johnston.

"Our speed is lessening," he exclaimed. "We must be going down. Be ready to jump out the instant we stop. There, let me open the door wider."

Chapter XIV.

When Tradmos spoke the words of warning, Thornd.y.k.e put his arm round the princess and drew her after Tradmos, who was hastening away in the gloom.

"Wait," she said, drawing back. "Let us not get excited. We are really as safe here as there; for in their madness they will kill one another and trample them under foot." She led him to a parapet overlooking the great court below. "Hear them," she said, in pity, "listen to their blows and cries. That was a woman's voice, and some man must have struck her."

"Tell me what is best to do," said the Englishman. "I want to protect you, but I am helpless; I don't know which way to turn."

"Wait," she said simply, and the Englishman thought she drew closer to him, as if touched by his words.

There was a crash of timbers--a ma.s.sive door had fallen--a scrambling of feet on the stone pavement, and they could see the dark human ma.s.s surging into the court through the corridors leading from the streets.

"What are they doing?" asked Thorn d.y.k.e.

She shrank from the parapet as if she had been struck.

"Tearing the pillars down," she replied aghast; "this part of the palace will fall. Oh, what can be done!"

There was a grinding of stone upon stone, a mad yell from an hundred throats, the crash of gla.s.s, and, with a thunderous sound, a colossal pillar fell to the earth. The roof beneath the feet of the princess and Thornd.y.k.e trembled and sagged, and the tiling split and showered about them.

Raising Bernardino in his arms, as if she were an infant, Thornd.y.k.e sprang toward the stairway leading to his chambers, but the roof had sunken till it was steep and slippery. One instant he was toppling over backward, the next, by a mighty effort, he had recovered his equilibrium, and finally managed to reach a safer place. As he hurried on another pillar went down. The roof sagged lower, and an avalanche of mortar and tiling slid into the court below. Yells, groans, and cries of fury rent the air.

Bernardino had fainted. Thornd.y.k.e tried to restore her to consciousness, but dared not put her from him for an instant. On he ran, and presently reached a flight of stairs which he thought led to his chambers. He descended them, and was hastening along a narrow corridor on the floor beneath when Bernardino opened her eyes. She asked to be released from his arms. He put her down, but supported her along the corridor.

"We have lost our way," he said, as he discovered that the corridor, instead of leading to his chambers, turned off obliquely in another direction.

"Let's go on anyway," she suggested; "it may lead us out. I have never been here before. I--" A great crash drowned her words. The floor quivered and swayed, but it did not fall. On they ran through the darkness, till Thornd.y.k.e felt a heavy curtain before. He paused abruptly, not knowing what to do. Bernardino felt of its texture, perplexed for an instant.

"Draw it aside, it seems to hang across the corridor," she said. He obeyed her, and only a few yards further on they saw another curtain with bars of light above and below it. They drew this aside, and found themselves on the threshold of a most beautiful apartment.

In the mosaic floor were pictures cut in colored stones, and the ceiling was a silken canopy as filmy and as delicately blue as the sky on a summer's night. The floor was strewn with richly embroidered pillows, couches, rugs and ottomans; and here and there were palm trees and beds of flowers and grottoes. A solitary light, representing the moon, showed through the silken canopy in whose folds little lights sparkled like far-off stars.

Thornd.y.k.e looked at the princess inquiringly. She was bewildered.

"I have no idea where we are," she murmured. "I am sure I have never been here before; but there is another apartment beyond. Listen! I hear cries."

"Some one in distress," he answered, and he drew her across the room and through a door into another room more beautiful than the one they had just left. Here, huddled together at a window overlooking the court, were six or eight beautiful young women. They were staring out into the darkness, and moaning and muttering low cries of despair.

"It is my father's ladies," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the princess aghast. "He would be angry if he knew we had come here. No one but himself enters these apartments."

Just then one of the women turned a lovely and despairing face toward them, and came forward and knelt at the feet of Bernardino.

"Oh, save us, Princess," she cried.

"Be calm," said the princess, touching the white brow of the woman. "The danger may soon pa.s.s; this portion of the palace is too strongly built for them to injure it." Then she turned to Thornd.y.k.e: "We must hasten on and find our way down; it would never do for us to be seen here." Then she turned to the kneeling woman and said gently: "I hope you will say nothing to the king of this; we lost our way in trying to get down from the roof."

"I will not," gladly promised the woman, and seeing that Bernardino knew not which way to turn, she guided them to a door opening into a dimly-lighted corridor. "It will take you out to the balconies and down to the audience-chamber," she said. The princess thanked her, and she and the Englishman descended several flights of stairs. Reaching one of the balconies they met the denser darkness of the outside and the deafening clang and clamor of the mult.i.tude. There was no light of any kind, and Thornd.y.k.e and his charge had to press close against the bal.u.s.trade of the balcony to keep from being crushed by the mad torrent of humanity.

Now and then a strident voice would rise above the din:--

"Down with the palace! Death to the king!"

The trumpet in the tower sounded again and again.

"It is my father trying to attract their attention," explained the princess. "Something very serious has happened for once. In speaking of the time the sun went out before, he told me that he had made an invention which, in such a crisis, would instantly restore confidence to the people. I cannot understand why he does not use it. Oh, I am afraid they will kill him!"

Thornd.y.k.e tried to console her, for he saw that she was weeping, but just then there was a strange lull in the general tumult. What could have happened?

"The dawn! the ideal dawn!" cried Bernardino, pointing to the eastern sky. Thornd.y.k.e looked in wonder. A purple light had spread along the horizon, and as it gradually softened into gray and slowly turned to pink, the noise of the populace died down. No sound could now be heard save the low groans of wounded men and women. What a sight met the view as the rose-light shimmered over the city! The dead and dying lay under the feet of the crowd. Almost every creature bore some mark of violence.

Eyes were blood-shot, clothing torn, limbs were bleeding, and mingled fury and sudden hope struggled in each ashen face. The young trees and shrubbery had been trampled under foot, and walls, arcades and triumphal arches had been thrown down. The fragments of statues lay here and there, and the bodies of human beings filled the basins of broken fountains.

"It is not the sun," explained Bernardino; "but the invention my father spoke of. He is doing it to calm them."

Thornd.y.k.e made no answer. He stood as if transfixed, gazing at the horizon. The rose-light had spread over a third of the sky when gradually there appeared in its centre a bright circle of yellow light.

The yellow light faded, leaving a perfect picture of the throne of the king; and as the now silent ma.s.ses looked at the picture, a curtain behind the throne parted and the king himself appeared. He advanced and sat on the throne, and turned a calm face towards his subjects.

"Wonderful!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bernardino, and her face was full of hope. "See what he will do!"