mult outside the door, their senses dulled to every
other thing in this world save the incredible hoard there in the
golden pits before them.

Pain, exhaustion, defeat ceased to be, for the Legionaries. Ruin and
the shadow of Azrael's wing departed from their minds. For, bring what
the future might, the present was offering them a spectacle such as
never before in this world's history had the eyes of white men rested
on.

Not even a man _in extremis_ could have turned away his gaze from the
unbelievable masses of shimmering wealth in those square pits of gold.

Fairy tales and legends, "Arabian Nights," and all the mystic lore
of the East never conjured forth more brain-numbing plenitudes of
fortune, nor painted more stupefying beauty, than now gleamed up from
those eight excavations hewn in the dull, soft metal.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" Leclair kept monotonously repeating. "_Mais, nom de
Dieu!_ Ah, the pigs--ah, the sacred pigs!"

Disjointed words from the others--cries, oaths, jubilations--filled
the low-arched chamber, mingling in the stuffy air with lamp-smoke and
the dull scent of blood and dust and sweat.

Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded.
And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a
dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the
gems, dredged up fistfuls and let them rain down crepitantly, again.

The sight was one very hard to grasp with any concrete understanding,
harder still to render in cold words. At first, it gave only a
confused impression of colors, like those in some vivid Oriental
rug. The details escaped observation; and these changed, too, as the
swaying of the lamps, in excited hands, shifted position.

A shimmer of unearthly light played over the pits, like the thin,
colored flames at the edge of a driftwood fire. Soft, opalescent
gleams were blent with prismatic blues, greens, crimsons. Melting
violets were stabbed through by hard yellows and penetrant purples.
And here an orange flash vied with a delicate old rose; there a rich
carnation sparkled beside a misty gray, like fading clouds along the
dim horizons of fairyland.

The Master murmured: "It's true, then--partly true. Rrisa knew part of
it!"

"Not all?" asked the woman.

"I hardly think the Caliph el Walid's gold was ever brought to Jannati
Shahr," he answered. "Coals to Newcastle, you know. And these jewels
are not all uncut. Some are finely faceted, some