Part 32 (1/2)
He proved to be right, for they cah it The light shone on swift black water, and a wind rushed through the gap that nearly blew the torch out It accounted altogether for the dryness of the rock and the fresh air in the tunnel The river's weight seeh for a million men to breathe
After that there was no ainst the wall to htly, for the wind fanned it until the fla hurry and never paused once to rest
”Coed fiercely ”This leads to the 'Heart of the Hills'!” And after that King had to do his best to keep the Afridi's back in sight
They began after a tilare made by other torches Then Ismail set the pace yet faster, and they became the last two of a procession of turbaned reaton the rock floor swelled and died and swelled again as the tunnel led froreat cave they came to every man beat out his torch and tossed it on a heap The heap was h, and three parts covered the floor of the cave After that there was a ledge above the height of a e little oil-burning lamps were spaced at h to have been there when the h all the brass ones suggested Indian and Hindu origin, there were others a them of earthenware that looked like plunder from ancient Greece
It was like a transposition of epochs King felt already as if the twentieth century had never existed, just as he seeood and all when the mosque door had closed on hi the tunnel opened into another, yet greater cave, and there everyto trouble how they lay; they littered the floor unarranged and uncared for, looking like the cast-off wing-cases of gigantic beetles
After that cave there were two sharp turns in the tunnel, and then at last a sea of noise and a veritable blaze of light
Part of the noisefeel homesick, for out of the mountain's very womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made use of before the days of electricity and stea worked by inexpert hands, for the ti jerky; but it was robbed of its tinny eness of a cavern's roof, as well as by the crashi+ng, swinging march it played-onderful-invented for lawless hours and a kingless people
”Marchons!-Citoyens!-”
The procession began to tramp in tiht into a space so vast that the eye at first refused to try to measure it It was the hollow core of awith huge stalactites that danced and shi+fted and flung back a thousand colors at the flickering light below
There was an undertone to the clangor of the music-box and the human hum, for across the cavern's farther end for a space of two hundred yards the great river rushed, penned here into a deep trough of less than a tenth its nor out of vien another one, licking s sound Its depth where it crossed the cavern's end could only be guessed by re the half-mile breadth of the waterfall
There were little laes aolden glow, olden shi+mmers on the cold, black river bed There was scarcely any smoke, for the wind that went like a storm down the tunnel seemed to have its birth here; the air was fresh and cool and never still No doubt fresh air was pouring in continually through some shaft in the rock, but the shaft was invisible
In the reat arena had been left bare, and thousands of turbaned s At the end where the river fors were flattened, and at that point they were cut into by the rae with the arena The bridge was almost the most wonderful of all
So delicately foruttered candle, it spanned the river in one splendid sweep, twenty feet above water, like a suspension bridge Then, so light and graceful that it scarcely seeular arches doard to the arena and ceased abruptly as if shorn off by a giant ax, at a point less than half-way to it
Its end formed a nearly square platform, about fourteen feet above the floor, and the broad track thence to the arena, as well as all the arena's boundary, had been reasy s the stalactites
”Greek la whispered to hi to explain how Greek laot there There was too much else to watch and wonder at
No steps led down froe end to the floor; toward the arena it was blind But fro water stairs had been hewn out of the rock wall and led up to a hole of twice a ht, more than fifty feet above water level
On either side of the bridge end a passage had been left clear to the river edge, and nobody seeh it was not e was about fifty feet wide and quite straight But the space between the bridge end and the arena, and the arena itself, had to be kept free fro ruffians armed to the teeth
Every man of the thousands there had a knife in evidence, but the arena guards had azine rifles well as Khyber tulwars nobody else wore fireare round shi+elds of prehistoric pattern of a size and sort he had never seen before, even in ht of a kind that he had seen before anywhere!
The guards lolled insolently, conscious of brute strength and special favor When anyof lauard would slap his rifle-butt until the swivels rattled and the offender would scurry into bounds a and elboith set purpose, Ish the already seated crowd, and drew King down into the crah to the arena to be able to catch the guards' low laughter But he was restless He wished to get nearer yet, only there seemed no roo could see it nowhere FiveThe huuard threw his shi+eld doith a clang and deliberately fired his rifle at the roof The ricocheting bullet brought down a shower of splintered stone and stalactite, and he grinned as he watched the crowd dodge to avoid it Before they had done dodging and while he yet grinned, a chant began-ghastly-tuneless-so out of tieneralthat nobody could hear it and not understand