k the
door with them.'

I jumped at the idea; and having despatched one of the remaining
maidens down the great stair to see if she could obtain assistance
from the docks below, where her father, who was a great merchant
employing many men, had his dwelling-place, and set another to
watch through the doorway, we made our way back across the courtyard
to where the hewn marble lay; and here we met Kara returning
from despatching the first two messengers. There were the marble
blocks, sure enough, broad, massive lumps, some six inches thick,
and weighing about eighty pounds each, and there, too, were a
couple of implements like small stretchers, that the workmen
used to carry them on. Without delay we got some of the blocks
on to the stretchers, and four of the girls carried them to the
doorway.

'Listen, Macumazahn,' said Umslopogaas, 'if those low fellows
come, it is I who will hold the stair against them till the door
is built up. Nay, nay, it will be a man's death: gainsay me
not, old friend. It has been a good day, let it now be good
night. See, I throw myself down to rest on the marble there;
when their footsteps are nigh, wake thou me, not before, for
I need my strength,' and without a word he went outside and flung
himself down on the marble, and was instantly asleep.

At this time, I too was overcome, and was forced to sit down
by the doorway, and content myself with directing operations.
The girls brought the block, while Kara and Nyleptha built them
up across the six-foot-wide doorway, a triple row of them, for
less would be useless. But the marble had to be brought forty
yards and then there were forty yards to run back, and though
the girls laboured gloriously, even staggering along alone, each
with a block in her arms, it was slow work, dreadfully slow.

The light was growing now, and presently, in the silence, we
heard a commotion at the far-bottom of the stair, and the faint
clinking of armed men. As yet the wall was only two feet high,
and we had been eight minutes at the building of it. So they
had come. Alphonse had heard aright.

The clanking sound came nearer, and in the ghostly grey of the
dawning we could make out long files of men, some fifty or so
in all, slowly creeping up the stair. They were now at the half-way
standing place that rested on the great flying arch; and here,
perceiving that something was going on above, they, to our great
gain, halted for three or four minutes a