uncut. But in the
main Rrisa spoke the truth. He told what he believed."

"Yes," assented the woman. Then she added: "Spartan simplicity, is it
not? No elaborate coffers. Not even leather sacks. Just bins, like so
much wheat."

"The shining wheat of Araby!"

"Of the whole Orient!"

They fell silent, peering with fixed attention. And gradually some
calm returned to the others. At the door, too, the turmoil had ceased.
No doubt the Jannati Shahr men, baffled, had sent for much gunpowder
to blow in the massive planking. That silence became ominous.

Still the Legionaries could take no thought of anything but the
Caliph el Walid's hoard. As they stood, squatted, or knelt around
the pits--pits about two and a half feet square and deeper than the
deepest thrust of any arm--it seemed to them that bottomless lakes
and seas of light were opening down, down below them into unfathomed
depths of beauty.

Such beauty caused the soul to drink nepenthes of forgetfulness.
Hardships, wounds, blood, pain, menace of death faded under that
spell. That the Legionaries were trapped at the bottom of a vast
rabbit-warren, with swarms of Moslem ferrets soon to rush upon them,
now seemed to have no significance.

Tranced, "indifferent to Fate," the adventurers peered on greater
wealth of jewels than ever elsewhere in this world's history had been
garnered in one place. The liquid light of the hoard flashed strange
radiances on their tanned, deep-lined faces, now smeared with sweat
and dust, with powder-grime and blood. Their eyes were beholding
unutterable rainbows, flashings and burning glows like those of the
Moslem's own Jebel Radhwa, or Mountain of Paradise.

Each of these jewels--several million gems, at the least
computation--what a story it might have told! What a tale of remotest
antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What
a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of
Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese
pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim
starlight! Of passion and of pain!

On what proud hand of Sultan, emir, cadi, prince, had this huge ruby
burned? On what beloved breast or brow of princess, nautch-girl,
concubine--yes, maybe of slave exalted to the purple--had that
fire-gleaming diamond blazed?

From Roman times, from Greek, from ancient Jerusalem, from the
fire-breathing shrines of Baal at long-dead Carthag