WAR IN THE DEPTHS
Horrible, unreal as a fever-born nightmare in its sudden frenzy, the
Arab's attack drove in at them. The golden passageway flung from wall
to wall screams, curses in shrill barbaric voices, clangor of steel
whirled from scabbards, echoes of shots loud-roaring in that narrow
space.
Bara Miyan's pistol, struck up by the woman's hand, spat fire over the
Master's head just as the Olema himself went down with blood spurting
from a jugular severed by the major's bullet. The Olema's gaudy
burnous crimsoned swiftly.
"Got _him_!" shouted Bohannan, firing again, again, into the tangle of
sub-chiefs and Maghrabi men. Adams pitched forward, cleft to the chin
by a simitar.
The firing leaped to point-blank uproar, on both sides. The men of
Jannati Shahr numbered more pistols, but the Legionaries had quicker
firers. Arabs, Legionaries, Maghrabis alike falling in a tumult of raw
passions, disappeared under trampling feet.
Deafening grew the uproar of howls, curses, shots. The smell of dust
and blood mingled with the aromatic perfume of the cressets.
The Master was shouting something, as he emptied his automatic into
the pack of white-robed bodies, snarling brown faces, waving arms. But
what he was commanding, who could tell?
Like a storm-wave flinging froth ashore, the rush of the Moslems
drove the Legionaries--fewer now--back into the treasure-chamber. The
Master, violent hands on "Captain Alden," swung her back, away; thrust
her behind him. Her eyes gleamed through the mask as she still fired.
The Master heard her laugh.
From dimness of gloom, within the doorway, two vague figures rained
dagger-blows. Janina, mortally stabbed, practically blew the head off
one of these door-keepers.
Cracowicz got the other with a blow from the butt of his empty
pistol--a blow that crushed in the right temporal bone. Then he, too,
and three others, fell and died.
Outside, in the passage, the Maghrabis were wringing the necks of the
wounded white men. The dull sound of crushed and broken bones blent
with the turmoil.
"_The door--shut the door!_"
The Master's voice penetrated even this Hell-tumult. The Master flung
himself against the door, and others with him.
The very frenzy of the attack defeated the Arab's object, for it drove
the survivors back into the treasure-crypt. And in the narrow doorway
the white men could for a moment hold back the howling tides of fury.
With cold lead, butts, naked fists, the remaining Legionaries smashed
a little clearance-room, corpse-heaped. They stumbled, fought, fell
into the crypt.
The heavy door, swung by panting, sweating men--while others fired
through the narrowing aperture--groaned shut on massive hinges.
As the space narrowed, frenzy broke loose. Arabs and Maghrabis crawled
and struggled over bodies, flung themselves to sure immolation in the
doorway. As fast as they fell, the Legionaries dragged them inside.
The place became an infernal shambles, slippery, crimson, unreal with
horror.
For one fate-heavy moment, the tides of war hung even. Furiously the
remaining Legionaries toiled with straining muscles, swelling veins,
panting lungs, to force the door shut, against the shrieking, frenzied
drive of Moslem fanatics lashed into fury by the _thar_, the feud of
blood.
"Captain Alden" turned the tide. She snatched down one of the copper
lamps that hung by chains from the dim ceiling of the treasure-crypt.
Over the heads of the Legionaries she flung blazing sandal-oil out
upon the white-robed jam of madmen.
The flaming oil flared up along those thin, white robes. It dripped on
wounded and on dead. Wild howls of anguish pierced the tumult. In the
minute of confusion, the door boomed shut. Bohannan dropped a heavy
teakwood bar into staples of bronze.
"God!" he panted, his right eye misted with blood from a jagged cut
on the brow. Shrieks of rage, from without, were answered by jeers and
shouts of exultation from the Legionaries.
"_Nom de Dieu!_" gasped Leclair. His neck was blackened with a
powder burn, and the tunic was ripped clean off him. Not one of the
Legionaries had uniforms completely whole. Hardly half of them still
kept their slippers.
Torn, barefooted, burned, bleeding, decimated, they still laughed.
Wild gibes penetrated the door of the treasure-crypt, against which
the mad attack was already beginning to clash and thunder.
"Faith, but this is a grand fight!" the major exulted. "It's
Donnybrook with trimmings!" He waved his big fists enthusiastically on
high, and blinked his one good eye. "If a man can die this way, sure,
what's the use o' living?"
"Steady men! Steady!" the Master cautioned, reloading his gun. "No
time, now, for shouting. Load up! This fight's only begun!"
Already, as they recharged their weapons, the door was groaning under
the frantic attack of the Arabs and Maghrabis. Wild curses, howls to
Allah and to the Prophet, came in dull confusion through the massive
plates. A hail of blows besieged them. The bronze staples began to
bend.
"Come, men!" commanded the Master. "No chance to defend this position.
They'll be in, directly. There are thousands of them in reserve! Away
from here!"
"Where the devil _to_?" demanded the major, defiantly. "Hang to
it--give 'em blue Hell as they come through!"
The Master seized and flung him back.
"If you're so keen on dying," he cried, "you can die right now, for
insubordination! Back, away from here, you idiot!"
The major obeyed. The others followed. Already the door was
creaking, giving, as the Legionaries--now hardly more than a dozen in
number--began the first steps of their retreat, that should rank in
history with that of Xenophon's historic Ten Thousand.
The Greeks had all of God's outdoors for their maneuvers. These
Legionaries had nothing but dark pits and runways, unexplored, in the
bowels of a huge, fanatic city. Thus, their retreat was harder. But
with courage unshaken, they turned their backs on the yielding door,
and set their faces toward darkness and the unknown.
Two of their number lay dead inside this chamber where the Legionaries
now were. Nothing could be done for them; the bodies simply had to be
abandoned where they lay. Eight were dead in the passage outside the
chamber, their corpses mingled with those of Arabs and Maghrabis.
In the chamber, as the Master glanced back, he could see a heap of
bodies round the door. These bodies of attackers who had been pulled
inside and butchered, made a glad sight to the Master. He laughed
grimly.
"We're more than even with them, so far," he exulted. "We've beaten
them, so far! The rest will get us, all right enough, but Jannati
Shahr will remember the coming of the white men!"
The survivors--the Master, Bohannan, "Captain Alden," and Leclair and
nine others--were in evil case, as they trailed down the low-roofed
chamber lighted with copper lamps. More than half bore wounds.
Some showed bleeding faces, others limp arms; still others hobbled
painfully, leaving bloody trails on the floor of dull gold. Curses on
the Arabs echoed in various tongues. This first encounter had taken
frightful toll of the Legion.
But every heart that still lived was bold and high. Not one of the
little party entertained the slightest hope of surviving or of ever
beholding the light of day. Still, not one uttered any word of despair
or suggestion of surrender.
Everything but a fight to the finish was forgotten. Only one man even
thought of _Nissr_ and of what probably had happened out there on the
plain. This man was Leclair.
"_Dieu_!" he grunted. "An accident, eh? Something must have gone
wrong--or did the brown devils attack? I hope our men outside
made good slaughter of these Moslem pigs, before they died. Eh, my
Captain?"
"Well?"
"Is it not possible that _Nissr_ and our men still live? That they
will presently bombard the city? That they may rescue us?"
The Master shook his head.
"They may live," he answered, "but as for rescuing us--" His gesture
completed the idea. Suddenly he pointed.
"See!" he cried. "Another door!"