AT LOW EBB.
Now began a period of waiting, during which the boys saw little of
Jepthah. A guard of ten revolutionists was sent back to Korakum to
supplement their own force under command of a cheery young man named
Horeb who, like Jepthah, had served in the British Sudanese army, and
had a good command of English. Thus the two parties had a common medium
of expression. From Horeb, who each day sent a messenger to the main
body, they received fragmentary accounts of the progress of events in
the field.
Things were going well with the revolutionists, they learned. The
Janissaries, numbering 5,000, so far had failed to take the field
against them, for what reason was not known. In the meantime, Captain
Amanassar was rallying the sturdy peasants of the valleys and plateaus
and the herders of the mountains to his standard. He had advanced twenty
miles into the mountains in three days and already a force of fifteen
hundred men had assembled. He lay at the village of Sharpath, on a high
plateau, well guarded against surprise, and intended to maintain this
position for a week or more while the countrymen continued to come in.
Sharpath, the boys were told, stood in the center of a broad plateau
comprising one of the richest agricultural districts of the mountain
country and the road approaching it from Athensi, along which the
Janissaries would have to move to attack, passed through a deep gorge
which already was in possession of the revolutionists.
“All right for them,” muttered Frank. “But the longer they stay there,
the nearer draws the day of the Sacrificial Games. I’m worried about
Bob, Jack, and I want to do something. Can’t you put your mind on it.
I’ve been thinking of ways and means until I feel as if I were growing
insane.”
Frank was seated at the table on which the radio sending apparatus had
been set up in the little grove off the Great Road where originally they
had taken shelter. When surprised by the revolutionists he and Jack had
left their work of putting the radio into shape uncompleted. Since their
return they had been wandering over the ruins of Korakum for two days
without again thinking of the radio, lost in admiration of this ancient
city—the oldest, undoubtedly, in the world.
Only a few of the buildings had survived the ravages of thousands of
years, here a temple, there a palace. They jutted up among the vegetable
gardens of the exiles, and, when the boys expressed to Horeb their
surprise at not finding even a trace of other ruins, he shrugged and
smiled.
“The houses of the common people were not builded of enduring
materials,” he said. “It is so in Athensi today. The common people live
in mud huts with wattled walls and thatched roofs, little better than
those of African savages. But the temples and palaces of Athensi, ah!”
He made a gesture indicative of his despair at attempting to
characterize them.
“Some day soon, I hope, you shall see for yourselves,” he added. “And it
was so in Korakum. These temples and palaces, as you can see, were built
of granite hewn from the mountains, and are of immense solidity. Even
they have fallen into ruins now, as you see, for this city was founded a
full thousand years before the first of our people entered Egypt.
“We came from the great island continent of Atlantis, lying west of the
Pillars of Hercules, west of the Strait of Gibraltar, and our city was
the first Atlantean colony. Our people pushed south along the African
coast, into the Gulf of Guinea, up the Niger river, and thence eastward.
Here was their first permanent settlement, and Korakum was a flourishing
capital before we dreamed of entering Egypt. History?” said he. “Wait
until the world receives the translations of the stories in the Library
of Athensi. It is the history of the world before the Flood submerged
Atlantis, giving rise to all the legendary stories of the Flood which
persist in the literature of all people. It is the history of a mightier
civilization, extending farther back into the years, than your wildest
dreamers ever conjured out of their imaginations.”
Through echoing stone halls of vast breadth and height, up stone
stairways, under gaping roofs, for two days, the boys had wandered at
will, staring at the shell of that ancient civilization of which Horeb
spoke, marvelling at the tremendous labor involved in these buildings,
involuntarily dropping their voices to a whisper in the presence of the
ghosts of uncounted centuries.
But now, on the third day, having seen all there was to see and not
being scientists who could pore forever over the meaning of faded and
worn inscriptions found here and there upon a fallen block of stone,
they were back in the grove, and Frank was seated at the radio and
voicing his desire for action, immediate action, looking to the rescue
of his chum.
This apparatus, devised by the boys working in conjunction in their home
laboratories at the Temple and Hampton country homes, adjoining each
other, on Long Island, was a duplex sending and receiving station. In it
they had departed from the accepted methods of duplex operation, of
which the best known is that of Marconi, regulated by a receiver coupled
to the coils of a transmitting antenna and a balancing antenna, by means
of which one signal may be cut out completely while another is retained
undiminished, thus insuring reception and transmission simultaneously.
Instead, they had worked out a system whereby the voice exercised full
control. When speech was not being used, the set was receptive to
messages from other points. But the moment one began to speak, a
sluggish contact device consisting of mercury in capillary tube was
closed by the vocal vibrations and the set at once thrown into
transmission. This controlling device was located in the microphone
transmitter, and that it had escaped destruction in the vandalism
practised on the set by Professor Souchard’s murderers was little short
of a miracle.
After voicing his request that Jack put his mind to work to evolve some
plan for rescuing Bob, Frank picked up the headphones and idly clasped
them to his ears, and sat silent, gloomily regarding the instruments on
the table, although in reality not seeing them. By some chain of
thought, he was once more back on Long Island, standing on the lawn of
the Temple home, and watching for Della to emerge from the doorway. It
seemed to him, so powerful was the impression, that he had arrived to
tell her Bob had been slain in the Sacrificial Games in Athensi, and——
“Jack,” he cried suddenly, in so startled and excited a voice that his
chum, sprawled on the grass, leaped to his feet. “My—my—”
Words failed him, his face grew white as a sheet, and his eyes seemed
actually to bulge out of their sockets.
“What is it?” demanded Jack, anxiously. “Are you sick? Speak. Tell me
what’s the matter.”
Frank could only wave his hands feebly and shake his head.
Then he seemed to change into new life under Jack’s gaze. Color returned
to his cheeks, his eyes grew bright and joyful, and, leaning forward, he
drew the telephone transmitter toward him and began to speak. In Jack’s
mind, stupefaction succeeded bewilderment as he listened.