It was hard for Chick to remember all the details of that great day.
Throughout all the morning and afternoon he remained in his apartments.
Breakfast over, the Rhamdas told him his part in certain ceremonies,
such as need not be detailed here. They were very solicitous as to
his food and comfort, and as to his feelings and anticipations. His
nonchalance pleased them greatly. Afterward he had a bath and rub-down.
A combat to the death, was it to be? Suits me, thought Watson. He was
never in finer form.
The Jan Lucar was particularly interested. He pinched and stroked
Chick's muscles with the caressing pride of a connoisseur. Watson
stepped out of the fountain bath in all the vigour of health. He
playfully reached out for the Lucar and tripped him up. He sought to
learn just what the Thomahlians knew in the art of self-defence.
The brief struggle that ensued taught him that he need expect no easy
conquest. The Jan was quick, active and the possessor of a science
peculiarly effective. The Thomahlians did not box in the manner of the
Anglo-Saxons; their mode was peculiar. Chick foresaw that he would
be compelled to combine the methods of three kinds of combat: boxing,
ju-jitsu, and the good old catch-as-catch-can wrestling. If the Senestro
were superior to the Jan, he would have a time indeed. Though Watson
conquered, he could not but concede that the Jan was not only clever but
scientific to an oily, bewildering degree. The Lucar paused.
“Enough, my lord! You are a man indeed. Do not overdo; save yourself for
the Senestro.”
Clothes were brought, and Chick taken back to his apartment. The time
passed with Rhamdas constantly at his side.
The Geos was not present, nor the little queen. Chick sought permission
to sit by the window--permission that was granted after the guards had
placed screens that would withhold any view from outside, yet permit
Chick to look out.
As far as he could see, the avenues were packed with people. Only, this
time the centres of the streets were clear; on the curbs he could see
the opposing lines of the blue and crimson, holding back the waiting
thousands. In the distance he could hear chimes, faint but distinct,
like silver bells tinkling over water.
At intervals rose strange choruses of weird, holy music. The full sweep
of the city's domes and minarets was spread out before him. From eaves
to basements the rolling luxuriance of orchidian beauty; banners, music,
parade; a day of pageant, pomp, and fulfilment.
He could catch the excitement in the air, the strange, laden
undercurrent of spiritual salvation-something esoteric, undefinable, the
ecstasy of a million souls pulsing to the throb of a supreme moment. He
drew back, someone had touched him.
“What is it?”
It was one of the Rhamdas. He had in his hand a small metal clover, of
the design of the Jarados.
“What do I do?” asked Watson.
“This,” said the Rhamda, “was sent to you by one of the Bars.”
“By a Bar! What does it mean?”
The other shook his head. “It was sent to you by one who wished it to be
known by us that he is your friend, even though a Bar.”
Just then Watson noted something sticking out of the edge of one of the
clover leaves. He pulled it out. It was a piece of paper. On it were
scrawled words IN ENGLISH.
The writing was pencil script, done in a poor hand and ill-spelled, but
still English. Chick read:
“Be of good cheer; there ain't a one in this world that can top a lad
from Frisco. And it's Pat MacPherson that says it. Yer the finest laddie
that ever got beyond the old Witch of Endor. You and me, if we hold on,
is just about goin' to play hell with the haythen. Hold on and fight
like the divil! Remember that Pat is with ye!
“We're both spooks.
“PAT MACPHERSON”
Said Watson: “Who gave you this? Did you see the man?”
“It was sent up my lord. The man was a high Bar in the Senestro's
guard.”
Watson could not understand this. Was it possible that there were others
in this mysterious region besides himself? At any rate, he wasn't wholly
alone. He felt that he could count upon the Irishman--or was this
fellow Scotch? Anyhow, such a man would find the quick means of wit at a
crucial moment.
Suddenly Watson noted a queer feeling of emptiness. He looked out of the
window. The music had ceased, and the incessant hum of the throngs had
deadened to silence. It was suspended, awesome, threatening. At the same
time, the Jan Lucar came to attention, at the opposite door stood the
Rhamda Geos, black clad, surrounded by a group of his fellows.
“Come, my lord,” he said.
The crimson guard fell in behind Watson, the black-gowned took their
places ahead, and the Jan Lucar and the Geos walked on either side. They
stepped out into the corridor. By the indicator of a vertical clock,
Chick noted that it was nine. He did not know the day of the year other
than from the Thomahlian calendar; but he knew that it was close to
sunset. He did not ask where they were going; there was no need. The
very solemnity of his companions told him more than their answers would
have. In a moment they were in the streets.
Watson had thought that they would be taken by aircraft, or that
they would pass through the building. He did not know that it was a
concession to the Bar Senestro; that the Senestro was but playing a bit
of psychology that is often practised by lesser champions. If Watson's
nerve was not broken it was simply because of the iron indifference of
confident health. Chick had never been defeated. He had no fear. He was
far more curious as to the scenes and events about him than he was of
the outcome. He was hoping for some incident that would link itself up
into explanation.
At the door a curious car of graceful lines was waiting, an odd affair
that might be classed as a cross between a bird and a gondola, streaming
with colours and of magnificent workmanship and design. On the deck of
this the three men took their places; on the one side the Rhamda Geos,
tall, sombre, immaculate; on the other, the magnificent Jan Lucar in the
gorgeous crimson uniform, gold-braided and studded with jewels; on his
head he wore the shako of purple down, and by his side a peculiar black
weapon which he wore much in the manner of a sword.
In the centre, Watson--bareheaded, his torso bare and his arms naked.
He had been given a pair of soft sandals, and a short suit, whose one
redeeming feature in his eyes was a pocket into which he had thrust the
automatic that he valued so much. It was more like a picture of Rome
than anything else. Whatever the civilisation of the Thomahlians, their
ritual in Watson's eyes smacked still of barbarism.
But he was intensely interested in all about him. The avenues were
large. On either side the guards were drawn up eight deep, holding back
the multitude that pressed and jostled with the insistence of curiosity.
He looked into the myriad faces; about him, splendid features, of
intelligent man and women.
Not one face suggested the hideous; the women were especially beautiful,
and, from what he could see, finely formed and graceful. Many of them
smiled; he could hear the curious buzz of conjecturing whispers. Some
were indifferent, while others, from the expression of their faces, were
openly hostile.
Chick was in the middle of a procession, the Rhamdas marching before and
the crimson guard bringing up the rear. A special guard: the inner one,
Rhamdas, the outer one of crimson surrounding them all.
The car started. There was no trace of friction; it was noiseless,
automatic. Chick could only conjecture as to its mechanism. The black
column of Rhamdas moved ahead rhythmically, with the swing of solemn
grandeur. For some minutes they marched through the streets of the
Mahovisal. There was no cheering; it was a holy, awesome occasion. Chick
could sense the undercurrent of the staring thousands, the reverence
and the piety. It was the Day of the Prophet. They were staring at a
miracle.
The column turned a corner. For the first time Watson was staggered by
sheer immensity; for the first time he felt what it might be to see with
the eyes of an insect. Had he been an ant looking up at the columns
of Karnak, he would still have been out of proportion. It was immense,
colossal, beyond man. It was of the omnipotent--the pillared portal of
the Temple of the Bell.
Such a building a genius might dream of, in a moment of unhampered,
inspired imagination. It was stupendous. The pillars were hexagonal
in shape, and in diameter each of about the size of an ordinary house.
Dropping from an immense height, it seemed as if they had originally
poured out in the form of molten metal from immense bell-like flares
that fell from the vaulted architrave. Such was the design.
Chick got the impression that the top of the structure, somehow, was
not supported by the foundation, but rather the reverse--the floor was
suspended from the ceiling. It was the work of the Titans--so high
and stupendous that at the first instant Watson felt numb with
insignificance. What chance had he against men of such colossal
conception.
How large the building was he could not see. The Gargantuan facade
itself was enough to smother comprehension. It was laid out in the
form of a triangle, one end of which was open towards the city; the
two sections of the facade met under a huge, arched opening--the door
itself. Watson recognised the structure as the one he had seen from
the June Bug on the outskirts of the Mahovisal. The enormous plaza was
packed with people, leaving only a narrow lane for the procession; and
as far back as Chick could see crowds in the streets converged towards
this vast space. Their numbers were incalculable.
The car stopped. The guards, both crimson and blue, formed a twenty-fold
cordon. Watson could feel the suspended breath of the waiting multitude.
The three men stepped out--the Geos first, then the Jan Lucar, and
Watson last. Chick caught the Lucar's eye; it was confident; the man was
springing with vigour, jovial in spite of the moment.
They passed between two of the huge pillars, and under the giant arch.
For a few minutes they walked through what seemed, to Chick, a perfect
maze of those titanic columns. And every foot was marked by the lines of
crimson and blue, flanking either side.
An immense sea of people rose high into the forest of pillars as far as
his eye could reach. He had never been in such a concourse of humanity.
They passed through an inner arch, a smaller and lower one, into what
Chick guessed was the temple proper. And if Chick had thought the
anteroom stupendous, he saw that a new word, one which went beyond all
previous experience, was needed to describe what he now saw.
It was almost too immense to be grasped in its entirety. Gone was the
maze of columns; instead, far, far away to the right and to the left,
stood single rows of herculean pillars. There were but seven on a side,
separated by great distances; and between them stretched a space so
immense, so incredibly vast, that a small city could have been housed
within it. And over it all was not the open sky, but a ceiling of such
terrific grandeur that Chick almost halted the procession while he
gazed.
For that ceiling was the under side of a cloud, a grey-black, forbidding
thundercloud. And the fourteen pillars, seven on either side, were
prodigious waterspouts, monster spirals of the hue of storm, with
flaring sweeps at top and bottom that welded roof and floor into one
terrific whole. Sheer from side to side stretched that portentous level
cloud; it was a span of an epoch; and on either side it was rooted in
those awful columns, seemingly alive, as though ready at any instant to
suck up the earth into the infinite.
By downright will-power Watson tore his attention away and directed it
upon the other features of that unprecedented interior. It was lighted,
apparently, by great windows behind the fourteen pillars; windows
too far to be distinguishable. And the light revealed, directly ahead
something that Chick at first thought to be a cascade of black water.
It leaped out of the rear wall of the temple, and at its crest it
was bordered with walls of solid silver, cut across and designed with
scrolls of gold and gem work; walls that swooped down and ended with two
huge green columns at the base of that fantastic fall.
As they approached a swarm of tiny bronze objects, silver winged,
fluttered out through the temple--tiny birds, smaller than swallows,
beautiful and swift-winged, elusive. They were without number; in a
moment the air of the temple was alive with flitting, darting spots of
glinting colour.
Then Chick saw that there were two people sitting high on the crest
of that cascade. Wondering, Chick and the rest marched on through the
silent crowd; all standing with bared heads and bated breaths. The
worshipping Thomahlians filled every inch of that enormous place. Only
a narrow lane permitted the procession to pass towards that puzzling,
silent, black waterfall.
They were almost at its base when Chick saw the vanguard of the Rhamdas
unhesitatingly stride straight against the torrent, and then mount upon
it. Up they marched; and Chick knew that the black water was black jade,
and that the two people at its crest were seated upon a landing at the
top of the grandest stairway he had ever seen.
Up went the Rhamdas deploying to right and left against the silver
walls. The crimson and blue uniformed guards remained behind, lining
the lane through the throng. At the foot of the steps Chick stopped and
looked around, and again he felt numb at the sheer vastness of it all.
For he was looking back now at the portal through which the procession
had marched; a portal now closed; and above it, covering a great expanse
of that wall and extending up almost into the brooding cloud above, was
spread a mighty replica of the tri-coloured Sign of the Jarados.
For the first time Chick felt the full significance of symbolism.
Whereas before it had been but an incident of adventure, now it was the
symbol of mystic revelation. It was not only the motif for all other
decoration upon the walls and minor elements of the temple; it was the
emblem of the trinity, deep, holy, significant of the mystery of
the universe and the hereafter. There was something deeper than mere
fatalism; behind all was the fact-rooted faith of a civilisation.
But at that moment, as Chick paused with one foot on the bottom step of
the flight, something happened that sent quivers of joy and confidence
all through him. Someone was talking--talking in English!
Chick looked. The speaker was a man in the blue garb of the Senestro's
guard. He was standing at the end of the line nearest the stair, and
slightly in front of his fellows. Like the rest, he was holding his
weapon, a black, needled-pointed sword, at the salute. Chick gave him
only a glance, then had the presence of mind to look elsewhere as a man
said, in a low, guarded voice:
“Y' air right, me lad; don't look at me. I know what ye're thinkin'. But
she ain't as bad as she looks! Keep yer heart clear; never fear. You an'
me can lick all Thomahlia! Go straight up them stairs, an' stand that
blackguard Senestro on his 'ead, just like y'd do in Frisco!”
“Who are you?” asked Watson, intent upon the great three-leafed clover.
He used the same low, cautious tone the other had employed. “Who are
you, friend?”
“Pat MacPherson, of course,” was the answer. “An' Oi've said a plenty.
Now, go aboot your business.”
Watson did not quibble. There was no time to learn more. He did not wish
it to be noticed; yet he could not hide it from the Jan Lucar and the
Rhamda Geos, who were still at his side. They had heard that tongue
before. The looks they exchanged told, however, that they were gratified
rather than displeased by the interruption. Certainly all feelings of
depression left Chick, and he ascended the stairs with a glad heart and
a resilient stride that could not but be noticed.
He was ready for the Senestro.