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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
The Blue Book Magazine, July 1932,
with the 1st part of "The Moon Gods"
"Hail, great Gods of the Moon. Rhodopis, Queen of Megara,
welcomes you to her city and invites you to her palace."
An amazing and highly diverting adventure via
airplane to a lost land and a lost civilization.
"WHO is Carthage?" said Billy Elsom, looking up from the radiogram. Captain Nicholas Dering looked at him without surprise and said: "Carthage was an ancient African city—nearly smashed the Romans. But who is Benjamin J. Budge?"
"You don't know who Benjamin J. Budge is?" cried Billy in incredulous accents. "Why, he's Baby-carriage Budge, the baby-carriage king. Sells a baby-carriage every twenty-seven seconds, day and night. You see his ads in all the big newspapers—always a whole page. Why, the sun never sets on Budge's baby-carriages! The ads say so."
"Damned cheek, his cabling me orders as if I were a taxi-driver," said Captain Dering, frowning.
"Why, what's the matter with the cable?" said Billy in great surprise; and smoothing out the radiogram, he read aloud:
MEET CARMANIA FLY ME TO LOST CARTHAGE CITY MOUNTAINS SAHARA YOUR OWN TERMS BENJ J BUDGE
"Damned cheek," said Captain Dering again.
"Oh, come: don't go getting up-stage with a baby-carriage king," said Billy in a tone of reproachful protest. "There's money in Benjy—lashin's of it! And what's the good of having beaten the Atlantic record by three hours and fourteen minutes if you don't make a bit—several good, large bits—out of it? Here's one of them, dashing at you. Why, you ought to make enough out of Benjy and this stunt, to build yourself the bus of a lifetime—a bus of your own—and knock all the world's records endways."
Dering looked at him thoughtfully. "Oh, well, if you think there's a bus like that in it, I may as well go and talk to him," he said more amicably. "What about terms? What'll I ask?"
The famous Anglo-American aviator knew that Billy, besides being able to do anything and everything that could be done with an airplane engine, had the makings of a manager in him—that it was his dream to run Dering as the world's champion flyer.
"It's hard to say without knowing something about the stunt. How big is the Sahara?" said Billy.
"Plenty big," averred Dering; then he went on: "I tell you what—how would you like to take the business side on and make all the arrangements, not forgetting your own work and risk and overtime?"
"Fine business!" said Billy. "I'll do my damnedest. When does the Carmania arrive?"
He wiped his hands on a piece of waste, for they were going over the engine of the machine in which Dering had flown from the United States to England—breaking the trans-Atlantic record—three days before, pulled a newspaper from an inside pocket, and ran his finger down the shipping list.
"Holy Moses!" he cried. "It's past nine—and we've got to be at Southampton at ten-thirty! That's when the Carmania arrives. Forty-two miles away and across country, at that. There's no time to change. Come on!"
THEY reached Southampton docks in Dering's car at
twenty-two minutes past ten. Nicholas jumped out, for they
had thought it best that he should have a preliminary
talk with Benjamin Budge and learn exactly what the stunt
was and how long it was likely to take; then, when Dering
was fully informed, he'd pass on the distances, time, and
other details of the expedition to Billy and refer the
millionaire to him for terms.
Billy drove off to the garage of the Southwestern Hotel, while Nicholas made his way to the wharf to which the Carmania would be moored. Here he learned that the mooring would not be done in much less than half an hour. He sat down on a seat in one of those dingy sheds, which in every large port give the newcomer to England such an unfortunate and depressing first impression of the majesty and grandeur of that country and suggest to him that he is making his entry into it through something in the nature of a coal-hole.
It was a cold morning; the forty-mile drive through a country swathed in folds of chilly mist had not been warming; there was no coat under Nicholas' overalls, and he sat with his tall slim figure huddled together, the end of the admirably chiseled nose which he had inherited from his Virginia mother, an aristocratic blue. Miss Sadie Zoupoulos, a New York debutante of the previous spring, who had come to meet her mother, was standing twenty yards away with the three friends who had come with her. This picture touched her warm heart: a dock laborer out of a job, she thought.
She kept looking away from the Carmania, now edging gingerly toward the wharf, to Nicholas' fine face and somber eyes fixed unwinkingly on the approaching ship. Should she? Work, not alms, was what that young man wanted—she was sure of it; yet—Then as the Carmania settled against the wharf with a last shiver and the gangways clanked, compassion swept hesitation aside. Sadie fumbled in her bag, took out a coin, and slipping unobtrusively over, pressed it into Nicholas' hand.
Sadie fumbled in her bag, took out a
coin, and pressed it into Nicholas' hand.
He looked up with a start, caught a glimpse of dark, compassionate eyes in a charming face of delicate olive tint and saw the Russian-sable coat of the girl disappear in the crowd that surged forward to the steamer.
Blankly he looked down at the coin in his hand. It was silver and of the size of a florin; on its face was stamped an elephant. He turned it over: on the obverse was a lotus flower. Sadie collected elephants—elephants of jade and ivory and crystal, elephants of gold and silver and bronze, elephants of teak and boxwood and ebony, elephants of every material in which elephants are carved. This was one of her favorite elephants, the most easily carried, and a mascot. She had pressed into Nicholas' hand a Carthaginian shekel of the days of Hamilcar, the Suffete of the Sea!
"An omen, by thunder!" said Nicholas. "I take the stunt on!" And he slipped the coin into his waistcoat pocket. "But I shall have to give it back to her," was his second thought as his quick eye ran over the crowd for the man he was to meet.
One of the steamer stewards was standing a few feet from the foot of the gangway.
"I want Mr. Benjamin J. Budge," Nicholas said to him. "He cabled me to meet the ship."
"Yes sir. What name, sir?" said the steward.
"Captain Dering."
"Not Captain Nicholas Dering?" said the steward.
"Yes," said Nicholas, who wished to get to Benjamin J. Budge without delay.
The name ran in a mutter through the groups of passengers and the friends welcoming them; it came to the ears of Sadie Zoupoulos, who had just finished kissing her mother. She turned to see the object of her charity, much taller than she had thought, now that he was on his feet, following the proud steward.
"Nicholas Dering! Good heavens—and I've just given him a two-shilling piece!" she said in a strangled voice.
"Whatever for?" said her mother.
"I thought he was a dock laborer out of work!" said Sadie. Then a thought came to her; she added: "But wait!"
She brought a handful of coins from her bag; her gaze ran hastily over them.
"No—no! I've—I've given him the Carthaginian elephant!" she gasped.
"Well, that's better," said her mother.
"It isn't! It isn't! He'll think that I recognized him—that it's a gage d'amour!"
THE proud steward led Nicholas down the wharf and stopped in front of a tall, big-headed, round-faced man of perhaps forty-five, who was giving final instructions to a man of forty and to two young women, his secretaries.
The big man turned to Nicholas, held out a hand, and said genially with a rich Midwestern accent; "Very pleased to meet you, Captain Dering."
"How do you do?" said Nicholas. "Just got your cable."
With ke'en, quick glances the two men looked each other over—and liked one another.
"Come along to the hotel. I've cleared everything up so we can confer at once," said Benjamin J. Budge, waving his secretaries toward the London train.
Nicholas fell into step beside the millionaire—who, though Nicholas stood five feet ten in his socks, topped him by a head—and they walked along the wharf. They presented a contrast indeed—the millionaire admirably dressed and valeted, Nicholas in his overalls, their faces in even greater contrast than their clothes.
"Afraid you mightn't make the steamer. Gave you short notice," said Budge. "You only broke the record three days ago, and I only made up my mind at eight-thirty this morning, that you were the man to help me. Of course I had your address. Cabled my London agent for it yesterday."
"There was plenty of time to get here. I was only forty miles away when I got your cable," said Nicholas.
They said no more till they came into the dining-room of a handsome suite at the hotel, where Summerthwaite, Budge's competent valet, was seeing to it that the breakfast for which he had cabled was entirely satisfactory.
"I always save my appetite for an English breakfast when I land," said Budge. "You'll join me? A meal quickens a deal."
The breakfast at the airdrome had been early and simple; Nicholas was hungry; so he said: "Thanks—if I may join you as I am. I hadn't time to get into a coat."
Budge nodded. "A coat for Captain Dering," he said to Summerthwaite, who looked at Dering's shoulders, and brought a coat of his master's. It hung on Nicholas rather loosely; but thanks to his broad shoulders, it hung well.
They sat down at the table; Budge started on his porridge and his proposition. As he talked, his heavy face became alive with enthusiasm; his eyes glowed; he seemed to fill the room with a vigorous, abounding vitality, a dominating personality.
"See here, Captain Dering, I'll begin at the beginning.
"It's my way," began Budge in the rich, flexible voice which was his chief, perhaps his only obvious charm. "Though I live in Chicago now, I come from Carthage, in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. I was an orphan before I was seven years old, and so busy rustling around for food and clothes and education that I didn't know there was any other Carthage till I was past twenty and working my way through Winnipeg University. But Carthage being my home town, when I learned about that old African Carthage, it kind of stuck in my mind; and at college and after I read everything I could lay my hands on about it, and about Tyre and Sidon and the Phoenicians. I guess you can say it was my hobby. Maybe you've a hobby of your own?"
"Japanese sword-guards," Nicholas admitted.
"Then you know how it is with a hobby; it kind of drives you sometimes," said the millionaire. "When I made good, and came to Europe for the first time, I took the first holiday I'd had since I was old enough to do chores—and I spent a fortnight rooting about the site of Carthage and studying it. I know that site, Captain Dering; believe me. What a site for a business city, as the world was then!" He paused to picture with his mind's eye the layout of the ancient world and its trade routes.
Then he went on: "Now here's where our stunt comes in. There was one thing that had always puzzled me about Carthage. When those dodgasted Romans sacked the city and massacred the Carthaginians or made slaves of them, what became of the Zaimph?" He leaned forward and repeated with impressive emphasis: "Captain Dering, what became of the Zaimph?"
"The Zaimph?" said Dering, at a loss.
"The Zaimph—the world-famous veil of the Goddess Tanit—the mascot of Carthage, which gave the city its luck! The Romans didn't get it, or we should have heard about it. Where did it go to?" Dering could not tell him.
"Well, sir, the thought I've given to that problem! But at last I got it; the Grand Council of Carthage must have contained the brainiest men of the time, or it wouldn't have been the city of big business it was—the biggest business city of the ancient world. Do you think there were any flies on the Grand Council of Carthage? No Sir I It knew the Romans had them in a cleft stick, and it was odds on their not winning out—and before the city was entirely surrounded, they sent the Zaimph away!"
He leaned back with an air of triumph; then he went on: "They'd send it away secretly, of course; but they'd send it away properly, with priests and priestesses and temple slaves, and money and maybe a heap of the temple jewels, and a guard that could fight off any tribes of the nomads—four or five thousand men perhaps, aided by a couple of cohorts of the Sacred Legion—getting them out of the city in driblets at night. That's how they'd do it: I could see that. It was just horse sense. But where was the record?"
He paused to bedew his sole with anchovy sauce, then went on: "Now that I knew how it happened, the record didn't take so much rinding. Professor Zimmern found in a manuscript of the time of Cleopatra's father—in the Cairo museum it is—how seven thousand Carthaginians, with elephants, marched off westward before the Romans invested the city."
Again he paused triumphant, while Summerthwaite set grilled chops before them; then he went on: "When you know where to look, you're not long looking. I sent out three travelers who know the country, and learned that all about the hinterland of northwest Africa, the tribes believe that there's a secret city rive hundred or maybe seven hundred miles southeast of the Atlas Mountains, in another mountain range;—Zeb Ageru, it's called. But nobody has ever seen it, for it's inaccessible. I want to get at it and see it; I want to see all the splendor and glory of a real ancient city, and the kind of life folks lived in it, and I want to know the lines on which big business has developed there. There's no saying but what I might get hold of a new stunt or two. Besides, where that city is, there is the Zaimph—and I've always had a hankering for the Zaimph."
"What for?" said Nicholas.
"Well, I guess it's up to me to do something for the home town—and if I get the Zaimph from Carthage, Africa, it goes to Carthage, Saskatchewan! It would just boost that town sky-high. There's always a lot of people in North America hankering after a new religion."
"But would they worship the Moon?" said Nicholas doubtfully.
"I'd build a temple like the one in Carthage, Africa, and put it up to them. But it wouldn't be the moon exactly they'd worship; it would be Tanit—the Female Principle. There's an opening for a really refined new religion if it's properly organized." He stopped short, and his eyes which had grown dreamy, grew bright and glowed again; he went on: "But that's dreaming. What I want is the lost Carthage, and I want it now. Will you fly me there?"
"Rather!" said Nicholas, and his eyes were also shining. "It sounds like a bully stunt."
"Good!" said Budge with a sigh of satisfaction. "Give me the map-case, Summerthwaite, and then order a special to London at twelve-fifteen."
SUMMERTHWAITE cleared a space on the table beside him,
and set the map-case on it. Nicholas moved to Budge's side.
The two men lighted cigars; then, having received Nicholas'
word of honor that he would not breathe a word of the
secret city or its site to another living soul, Budge took
a large-scale map of northwest Africa from the case and
spread it on the table.
"Here are the mountains," he said, laying his finger on a range well down in the Sahara. "At least they're here or hereabouts. This middle Sahara has never been explored well enough to be mapped properly. But I guess you won't miss them."
"No, I sha'n't miss them," said Nicholas. "How far do they stretch?"
"They seem of considerable extent; but there's no saying exactly."
"Well, it looks as if we shall have to make Gibraltar our headquarters, then make a fuel dump at the foot of these mountains, and explore them from it," said Nicholas.
"That's the idea," said Budge approvingly.
They discussed details: a twenty-passenger machine—the requisite fuel for its journey up and for the dump—Budge, Nicholas and his mechanic—Billy, of course. Also machine-guns, rifles, automatics and plenty of ammunition—food supplies—half a ton of freight, Budge's freight in cases. They settled those details roughly.
"Then there's the matter of language," said Budge, frowning thoughtfully. "I guess we'll have to take an interpreter, though I don't want to. Those Carthaginians will probably talk a Semitic language like Arabic, or Aramaic, or Hebrew. I've got more than a smattering of Arabic—I learned it on purpose—but it won't be enough."
"I can patter Arabic, all right," said Dering. "It was the first language I learned after English. We all did at home, for my father was an Arabic scholar—he had been an explorer, and it was his fad. Came in useful too, for when I was with Lawrence in Arabia the last year of the War, I put in some useful scouting and was liaison officer with Feisal's army. Billy can patter Arabic a bit too; he was there."
"That's fine!" said Budge in a tone of satisfaction. "We can cut out the interpreter—one less to know about the secret city." He paused and added: "And now what about terms?"
NICHOLAS said Budge must settle terms with his manager,
William Elsom, and sent for Billy, who came. Budge broached
the subject of terms; and Billy, having learned the
particulars of the expedition, asked how long it would
last. When he heard that Budge wanted Nicholas for at least
three weeks, and that he might want him for six, he said
at once that there was nothing doing—in three weeks
Nicholas would lose most of the interest he had aroused by
breaking the Atlantic record, and in six weeks he would be
forgotten.
"How much is it worth?" said Budge. "Four thousand pounds," said Billy boldly, though ready to make it less.
"Twenty thousand dollars," said Budge. "O.K.!" Billy, having expected a refusal and a wrangle, was taken aback—but he did not show it; at once he went on to the matter of risk, and grew eloquent: flying in the air above a mountain chain was the most dangerous of all flying feats, and if you crashed on a mountain, it was the last crash you crashed. Budge offered to insure Dering's life for fifty thousand dollars. But that did not please Billy: what was the good of risking your life and coming out safe and getting nothing for it? Nicholas should be paid for the extra risk of mountains! Also the extra strain on his nerves must be taken into account.
Budge grinned and said: "And what next, Mr. Elsom?" Billy came to the matter of the value of the services of so important a flyer and of the immensely greater chance they gave Budge himself of surviving the Ageru Mountains; the value of Budge's life must be considered, and the saving in nerve-strain to him of knowing he was in the hands of such an expert as Nicholas.
"Cut it out! Cut it out right here!" Budge laughed. "I reckoned it might cost me twenty-five thousand extra to get Captain Dering, but if you spill two or three more mouthfuls of your business-talk, it'll set me back five millions! Forty thousand dollars for Captain Dering and you to fly me to Carthage, Africa, and back, and that's my limit!"
"And ex'es," snapped Billy.
Benj. J. Budge banged the table and laughed again. "And ex'es—if Captain Dering makes out the account!" he said. "And see here, Mr. Elsom: when this stunt is over, I'll give you a job as a salesman in the baby-carriage business."
"I couldn't leave Nick," said Billy quickly but with decision.
"You think it over," said Budge, rising. "Well, gentlemen, forty thousand dollars it is, and out of the baby-carriage advertising account it comes. Believe me, this stunt is going to boost Benj. J. Budge's Baby-carriages some—and if I get away with the Zaimph, Carthage, Sask., is going to be proud!"
ELOUL the eunuch, High Priest of Tanit, Goddess of the Moon, was the first to see the dragon. From the flat roof of the temple of Tanit that rose high above the awakening city, he saw it coming through the rosy air over the dark shoulder of a mountain in the west, just under the orb of the setting moon, already pale in the light of the sun which was warming to gold the edges of the towering peaks of Zeb Agash, the guardian of the east.
A soldier on the tower on the city wall beneath him, leaning on his spear with the stillness of a statue, saw the dragon and awoke to sudden life. He banged down the butt of his spear on a flagstone and shouted, and Eloul saw the guards come swarming up onto the top of the tower and flock to the western parapet.
A shrill cry below brought Eloul's eyes down to the temple of Aphrodite that faced the temple of Tanit on the other side of the great square, and he saw a little figure dash into it. Some acolyte of the temple had seen the dragon.
Eloul looked at it again. It was nearer, coming swiftly, and it was roaring as it came.
The great gong on the tower below him boomed, and on tower after tower all along the walls, the sentinels sprang to the gongs and beat them till the air above the city was one deep reverberation. For ten seconds the hum of the waking city was hushed; then it rose higher and higher on an ever-shriller note. Not for over a hundred years had the gongs boomed the alarm, and the women were crying out.
Eloul looked round the city; the houses seemed to be erupting excited dwellers in them onto the flat roofs J the men of the Sacred Legion were streaming out of the long barracks on the right and left of the temple of Tanit; on the opposite side of the square the Greek hoplites were streaming out of similar barracks on either side of the temple of Aphrodite; along the walls the soldiers were pouring out of the towers and lining the ramparts; the Queen's guards were streaming out into the courtyard of the royal palace on his right; the eunuch priests of Tanit were thronging through every door onto the roof beside him; already the lighter-footed priestesses were crowding round Pyrrha the High Priestess, on the roof of the temple of Aphrodite.
Eloul's eyes had swept round the city quickly; they paused while, even at such a moment, he scowled at the High Priestess of the warm Goddess of the Earth—the rival, with a firmer hold on the hearts of men, of his colder Goddess of the Skies. Hatred of the Goddess of Love was a strong feeling in his jealous heart. "Curse her and her Greeks!" he muttered.
Then the dragon was on them, rushing over the city.
In a palpitating curiosity the crowds were dumb. What would the dragon do? Its throbbing roar filled earth and sky. It seemed to Eloul that it came straight at him; he shrank down as it rose, cleared the top of the temple by fifty feet, and passed beyond the city wall. A great gasp of relief, an undertone of the throbbing roar, burst from the bosoms of the tense crowds. It was going away.
But it did not go; it turned to the left and flew along the southern quarter; the roofs emptied as it approached.
Eloul looked down into the square. The Sacred Legion was forming a square before the temple of Tanit; the hoplites had already formed a square before the temple of Aphrodite. A group of men were coming along the left-hand side of the square. He saw that they were the white-robed archons of the Greeks, on their way to the Hall of the Grand Council. That was where he should be: those cursed Greeks would make capital out of this! And the dragon had come from the Moon; he had seen it come. But wait! It was the servant of Tanit! She had sent it to punish the backsliders who neglected her worship!
"The dragon comes from Tanit! Tell the people!" he shouted to his jabbering priests, and rushed to the staircase and down it.
The priests scuttled after him to do his bidding.
As he came out of the temple, he looked for the dragon. It was making a circuit over the city and now roaring over the western quarters. The roofs beneath it were empty; only the roof of the temple of Aphrodite was not empty. Pyrrha was standing in the middle of it, watching the dragon. Even at that distance he could see that she was fearless, that her attitude to the dreadful minister of Tanit, roaring toward her, was a quiet curiosity.
Curse the girl! Tens of thousands of eyes had seen him, the High Priest of Tanit, cower before the onset of the monster; tens of thousands of eyes had seen the High Priestess of Aphrodite wholly without fear! Would it swoop down to destroy her?
But the dragon passed over her head, circling north.
Iddibal, the bulky Suffete of the Sea,—a sea he had never seen,—came shuffling down the steps of his palace with his guard about him. He called to Eloul, who waited for him:
"This is dreadful!"
"Dreadful? Why?" said the eunuch scornfully, seizing the chance: he knew that if he could get an idea into Iddibal's thick head, it would be a while before another could enter it, and he would have him as a dogged supporter. "The dragon is the servant of Tanit."
"The servant of Tanit?" said Iddibal in a booming voice, knitting his brow perplexedly.
"Yes. I saw it fly from the Moon," said Eloul stoutly.
"From the moon!" boomed Iddibal.
BEHIND them the priests of Tanit were already running up
the streets that led to the great square, crying in shrill
voices up to the people on the roofs: "The dragon comes
from Tanit!"
The words were caught up, and ran from roof to roof over the whole city.
Eloul and Iddibal mounted the steps of the Hall of the Grand Council and joined the group of Greek archons and Canaanite councilors standing there, watching, with grave or terrified faces, the dragon which had completed the circuit of the city and was coming toward them, and muttering to one another in uneasy or fearful accents, ready to dash through the open door of the hall. Only Sophron, the chief archon, was neither grave nor fearful; his powerful and serene face was set in an expression of quiet interest as his keen blue eyes studied the monster. He was the first man Eloul looked at, for he was a man Eloul hated—the chief obstacle to the exaltation of Tanit and her High Priest; and he was also the father of the girl Pyrrha.
As Eloul joined the group he cried out in his shrill voice: "The dragon comes from Tanit! It is Tank's servant—her messenger. I saw it fly down from the Moon."
"Down from the Moon," boomed Iddibal; the idea had got into his head, and Iddibal's solidity had great weight with the rich—among them the idea would prevail.
There was a chorus of pleased acceptance of the statement from the Canaanite councilors; the archons looked doubtful and distrustful. Even in this hour of common peril the age-old rivalry with the Canaanites was in the forefront of their minds and they were on their guard.
Sophron said in a musing tone: "It is a dragon. It is the servant of Tanit. It flew down from the Moon."
He appeared to be addressing the main tower of the royal palace on the opposite side of the square, and there was no challenge in his tone.
But Eloul took the words as a challenge; he cried angrily: "If it isn't a dragon, what is it?"
"What is it?" said Iddibal.
"But here comes the Queen," said Sophron.
The gates of the palace were thrown back, and the golden litter of Queen Rhodo-pis came swinging out on the shoulders of sixteen big negroes. They came at a swift trot across the square, the guards—in gold helmets and breastplates, over orange tunics that fell to the tops of their gold greaves—running beside it, a hundred strong. The edge of the sun's orb came over the shoulder of Zeb Agash and set them gleaming; the towers of the royal palace, covered with plates of polished bronze, gleamed and shone; the whole city, with its tall houses and palaces of yellow marble, glowed golden.
The litter came to a stop on the left of the group; the hundred guards came to a stop in two columns, on the steps and at the bottom of them, and each man smote his shield of gilded bronze with the pommel of his sword. It made a splendid clash.
"What does this mean?" said Queen Rhodopis imperiously.
When anything unusual happened, Queen Rhodopis always said, "What does this mean?" imperiously—and this time, as always, she looked at Sophron.
Sophron was looking at the main tower of the royal palace with the amiable expression of a man to whom nothing was of any concern. But though the main tower appeared to hold his whole attention, he had observed that, though the dragon had been circling over them but a few minutes, Queen Rhodopis had found time to dress. Queen Rhodopis always found time to dress: she was wearing the royal insignia in which she came to the meetings of the grand council and every detail was exactly in its place.
Eloul broke in: "The dragon comes from Tanit. It is her servant. It flew down from the Moon."
"From the Moon," boomed Iddibal happily.
"The Moon is very high up," said Sophron calmly; he was the only person wholly cool in this hour of peril.
Queen Rhodopis looked from Eloul to Sophron, and her magnificent black eyes sparkled angrily.
"And what are you going to do about it?" she said in a tone that demanded an answer at once; and again she looked at Sophron.
Sophron's eyes turned and met those of the Queen steadily: "Eloul is the High Priest of Tanit, the Great Goddess of the Moon. Plainly it is his business. He will know what to do," he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Queen Rhodopis, the archons, and the Canaanites, looked at Eloul. Plainly, Eloul did not know what to do.
The dragon was high above their heads. They looked up at it; nearly every man told himself that it could not devour all of them. Most of them hoped that it would devour some particular person or persons; Eloul desired that it should devour Sophron and the Queen and the High Priestess of Aphrodite, as a start.
The dragon came to the end of its roaring circuit over the center of the city, turned, and from above the temple of Tanit came down in a spiral swoop into the great square, glided swiftly along it, and came to a stop facing the temple of Aphrodite, from the roof of which the High Priestess was watching it, her hands on the parapet, her lips wreathed with the pleased smile of an excited child.
The city stared at it in a dead silence, most impressive after the throbbing roar. Then a tall figure in white rose in the dragon's head; in his hand was a shining cylinder.
"The chariot of the gods," said Sophron softly.
The figure raised the cylinder to his lips and cried in Arabic, in a voice that rang far over the hushed city: "We come in peace!"
The hush broke. Far away among the house-tops a voice cried: "The Moon Gods!" The cry was taken up; it rose higher and higher till the whole city roared with its hundred thousand voices: "The Moon Gods! The Moon Gods!"
NICHOLAS lowered the megaphone and looked up at the roof of the temple of Aphrodite. The woman in the violet robe, who had not bolted down into the temple when the airplane was approaching, was still there, bending over the parapet, looking down at him. She was a long way off, but his eyes were uncommonly keen, and he saw that she was a girl. She turned and walked across the roof and disappeared.
"Darned plucky girl—and walks well," he said to himself as he moved the machine-gun on its swivel to bear on the right half of the square of hoplites; Billy was taking the left.
"At the moment they think we're gods from the moon, and let's hope they go on thinking it," he said. "The troops in front of me seem very good stuff."
"Anyhow, better keep them guessing," said Billy.
"If we can," Nicholas agreed.
Benj. J. Budge heaved the deep sigh of satisfaction of a man who finds the dream of years assume reality before his eyes.
Then he said slowly, in a tone of hushed ecstasy: "Say, boys, this lost Carthage is a crackerjack of a city! Heaps finer than I expected, and it's sure in a state of perfect preservation."
"It's larger, but it looks Syrian to me," said Nicholas distrustfully.
"I hope to goodness it doesn't smell Syrian!" said Billy.
They sat silent, looking about them curiously, absorbing the beauty and magnificence of the city and waiting for something to happen. Nothing seemed in a hurry to happen. The shouting on the housetops was dying down into a vast murmur of discussion and speculation concerning this strange event. The plane had come to a standstill twenty yards inside the agora of the Greeks, as the half of the square nearest the temple of Aphrodite was called; it was therefore a matter for the Greeks to handle. Had it stopped twenty yards farther back, it would have been in the Canaanite sphere, and for the Canaanites to handle. Therefore the strategi looked to the archons for instructions.
But the archons were busy in the discussion with Eloul, which had grown lively and promised to become acrimonious. Now the shouting from the roofs of, "The Moon Gods! The Moon Gods!" gave Eloul his clue, and with no less promptitude he claimed the Moon Gods.
"The Moon Gods are the children of Tanit, and they will come to the temple of Tanit," he said shrilly in a tone of authority.
"To the temple of Tanit," boomed Iddibal.
There came a murmur of eager assent from the Canaanite councilors, and three more of them, along with Adherbal, the Suffete of the Land, came bustling up the steps and completed their number.
"But the Moon Gods have come to the agora of the Greeks. Therefore they will lodge in the temple of Aphrodite," said the archon Cleisthenes firmly.
Queen Rhodopis listened to the dispute quietly. As long as the two sections of her subjects were at loggerheads she was content. To keep them at loggerheads had been the policy of the Barae, the family to which she and her royal ancestors belonged, for generation after generation: they had divided and ruled.
There came a lull in the dispute, and at once her clear voice rose above it, saying in imperious accents: "The Moon Gods will lodge at the palace."
The other nine archons looked at Sophron for a lead, but the Canaanites again burst into a clamor of protest.
"But the Moon Gods are the children of Tanit! And her temple is their proper lodging!" cried Eloul shrilly.
"Their proper lodging," boomed Iddibal.
"Enough!" said Queen Rhodopis imperiously. "They shall lodge in the palace! It is my will."
"It is the Queen's will," said Sophron, throwing the weight of the Greeks into the balance on her side.
She shot a glance of smiling gratitude at him and saw that he was looking at the chariot of the gods. Her eyes turned to it, and the smile froze on her face. They had been too busy disputing to observe that something was happening. Out of the gate of the temple of Aphrodite came the violet-robed Pyrrha, and behind her a column of the priestesses of the goddess—all young and beautiful and smiling, in robes of many soft shades of blue and red and green and orange. The column came down the steps; one of the strategi shouted an order; the square of hoplites opened and let it through; it marched directly to the plane. When Queen Rhodopis looked toward it, Pyrrha was only about ten yards away from it.
The queen's eyes opened wide; the flame of anger in them, kindled by Eloul's opposition, rose higher, and she said in a strangled voice: "There's that chit again!"
Eloul turned and looked, and a fresh spasm of fury twisted his face.
"To the Moon Gods!" the Queen snapped to her negroes, and they trotted down the steps and across the square, her guards round them....
"Girls—and girls—and girls! What a beauty chorus!" cried Billy in a tone of ecstasy as the column of priestesses of Aphrodite came through the hoplites and toward the plane. "Lord, what a stunner that one in the violet robe is!"
Nicholas, to his great astonishment, recognized her lovely face: it was the face of the girl who had given him the Carthaginian shekel on the wharf at Southampton!
But no—it was the face, still not the face. No powder had ever clouded the bloom of that clear and wonderful skin; the dark eyes were the laughing eyes of a child, not of a girl of the world; the lips were fuller and of a more enticing curve than the lips of the girl in the sable coat; a mass of dark and silken hair framed the lovely face—but the hair of the giver of the shekel had been cut short.
TWENTY feet from the plane Pyrrha halted and gazed with
awed eyes from one to another of the three white figures in
the strange chariot. Her gaze came to rest on the face of
Nicholas; it was to him that she said in a delightful voice
and in a language akin to Arabic, which he could easily
follow: "Hail, divine ones from the sky! The High Priestess
of Aphrodite bids you welcome to Megara and would know your
will."
Nicholas translated, for Budge's Arabic was but meager. Now that they had landed, it was up to Budge to take matters over.
"Tell her we have come from our thrones in the moon to size up our faithful believers in Megara, and see their great city, and meet their business-men," said Budge.
"I don't think I'll try to trick her," said Nicholas firmly; then to Pyrrha he said in Arabic: "We have come from the air to see your great city and confer with your chief citizens."
"And will you graciously accept the hospitality of the goddess and lodge in her temple, divine one?" said Pyrrha.
Nicholas translated, but before they could accept, the litter of Queen Rhodopis stopped abruptly twenty feet on the right of the plane, with the splendid clash of sword-pommels against the shields of her hundred guards, and she slipped out of it gracefully to the ground.
Making a deep obeisance, she rose upright, and addressing herself to Nicholas, said: "Hail, great Gods of the Moon, most holy ones! Rhodopis, Queen of Megara, welcomes you to her city and invites you to her palace."
She had caught Pyrrha's last words and perceived she had arrived in the very nick of time.
But before Nicholas could translate, Eloul thrust forward with Iddibal on his heels, and cried: "Hail, Gods of the Moon, kin of the most mighty Goddess Tanit! Eloul, her High Priest, welcomes you and invites you to your home, the temple of the Moon Goddess!"
There was a pause while Nicholas translated the invitations.
"Me for the Royal Palace!" said Budge.
"Me for the temple of Aphrodite!" said Billy.
"No; we must keep together," said Nicholas sharply. "And of course Budge chooses." He looked at Pyrrha with regretful eyes, then turned to the Queen and said: "We accept your hospitality, great Queen."
Queen Rhodopis smiled on him, and it flashed on him how great a contrast she presented to Pyrrha, with her pale oval face, her aquiline nose, her imperious lips, set in a curve a little cruel, and scarlet against her pallor.
"The Queen is honored and grateful," she said, and smiled alluringly at Nicholas.
Eloul stepped back, grinding his teeth, and looked wildly round him. The Canaanite crowd, restrained by no cordons, had poured into the farther half of the square and was lined up fifty deep along the other side of the paved way, the path of the Barcze, which ran from the gates of the royal palace to the steps of the Hall of the Grand Council, dividing the square into the agora of the Greeks and the agora of the Canaanites.
A brilliant idea flashed on the crafty eunuch: he might yet get his way. He yelled: "They are carrying the Moon Gods away! Wheel their chariot to the temple of Tanit! Rescue your gods!"
"Rescue your gods!" bellowed Iddibal.
The crowd surged forward, and fifty-four active and excited small boys arrived first.
"Here's trouble," said Sophron to Queen Rhodopis quietly. He picked her up, fairly pitched her into her litter, and ran for the hoplites.
Then came the roaring rush of the crowd. It swept back the litter, the negroes, the guards, the councilors, and the priestesses of Aphrodite. A hundred willing hands gripped the stout steel rail that ran round the plane, and it would have started on the instant for the temple of Tanit, had not the pressure of the crowd held it where it was.
An eddy of the crowd, surging round the plane, had caught Pyrrha and thrust her back; it was crushing her against it. Her eyes rose to Nicholas in frightened appeal.
He rose, caught up a heavy spanner, brought it down with successive blows on the heads of the butcher, the grocer, and the money-lender, who were crushing her against the side of the plane, and as their sagging bodies eased the pressure, he caught her arms, heaved her up and over the side of the cockpit and set her down beside him.
Then he stooped; a switch clicked; a happy idea of Budge's came into effect, and the steel rail round the plane became alive.
On the instant a horrible howling rose high above the shouting of the triumphant crowd, as fifty sturdy citizens strove to loosen the grip of a hundred hands on the live rail, and at least two hundred more in contact with them howled as loud. The howling was so appalling that it hushed the crowd.
The howling became articulate: "The chariot burns! The chariot burns!" they howled, and the crowd gave back all round the plane.
Nicholas switched off the current; the hands loosed their#grip on the rail that had been alive; two hundred and fifty eager citizens, still howling, dashed from the plane, shoving, kicking, butting, clawing, biting, bent madly on getting from the center of the crowd to its outer edge.
Nicholas picked up the megaphone and raised it and shouted: "Silence! Be still!"
He turned to Budge and said: "Now, then—the stogie stunt!"
Benj. J. Budge stood up on his seat, huge, majestic.
There came a shrill yell from the middle of the crowd. Iddibal, the Suffete of the Sea, had bitten a toe of a Canaanite who was standing on his head.
Unmoved, Benj. J. Budge drew out a cylindrical object which appeared to be tobacco; he bit the end off it and stuck it in his mouth with majestic slowness. The crowd stared at him with all its eyes; even the voices of the women were hushed. He raised his gold lighter and applied it to the end of the cylinder, puffed out half-a-dozen small puffs, then drew in long and deeply and breathed out through his lips and nostrils a grand cloud of brown smoke. An indescribably evil odor filled the air about the plane.
"Oo-er-r-r!" said the crowd, and instantly large sections of it fell on their knees.
FROM the top of the steps of the Temple of Aphrodite,
Sophron had been watching for the right moment. It had now
come. "Charge!" he shouted.
With a cheer the hoplites swung forward in a wedge-shaped phalanx at the heart of the crowd, pounding with their shields, striking with the flat of their swords, kicking with the iron toe-caps of their sandals, crying savagely:
"Out of the agora! Out of the agora!"
The crowd knew that the hoplites were not merely conscientious but enthusiastic in their methods of clearing their agora, and it left with a rush. But it did not go alone; it took the Sacred Legion with it.
Nicholas, sitting with his thumb on the switch of the rail that became alive, saw the hoplites get the crowd on the run; then he turned to Pyrrha and said in anxious accents: "I hope I didn't bruise your arms badly when I lifted you into the fuselage."
"I hope I didn't bruise your arms badly
when I lifted you into the fuselage."
"It is nothing," said Pyrrha, smiling at him. "I might have been hurt far worse if you had not lifted me out of the crowd. I am very grateful—but for you I should have been killed."
"Oh, no; it wouldn't have been as bad as that," Nicholas protested. "But you might have come out of it with a broken arm."
"I Should certainly have been killed," she said with profound conviction. "You saved my life."
Billy turned from enjoying the enthusiasm of the hoplites and seeing Nicholas engaged in conversation, rose quickly.
"Hang it! That's always the way!" said Billy in a bitterly aggrieved tone. "Everybody knows you're an insensible hog who doesn't give a tinker's curse for women—and if a pretty girl turns up, she spots you as the squire of dames at once and glues herself to you."
"That will be enough from you," said Nicholas coldly.
Then the anxious face of Sophron appeared above the side of the cockpit; at the sight of Pyrrha relief swept away the anxiety.
"You are safe!" he exclaimed in a grateful tone. "I could not find you or get word of you, and I feared those cursed Canaanites had trodden you under foot or kidnaped you."
"This—this divine one saved me. He lifted me out of the crowd that was crushing me against the chariot. His strength is more than mortal," said Pyrrha.
Sophron looked keenly at Nicholas and then at Billy and Budge. "I understand," he said. "Yes—the strength of a hero." He spoke in Greek, which Nicholas could not understand.
IN the agora, emptied of the crowd, the Queen's guard
had re-formed round her litter. Eloul, bumped, jostled,
stamped on, his white robe crumpled and dirty, half its
red fringe torn from the border and hanging loose, was no
longer capable of any display of fury, though his heart was
a caldron of seething rage. For all the twenty years he had
been the High Priest of Tanit no one had dared jostle him.
With his mind in a turmoil, he dragged himself on bruised
and aching feet toward the agora.
He had gone about fifty yards when a recumbent figure, a few yards ahead of him, groaning and cursing, sat up. Scowling, he swerved to avoid it, then recognized the piglike and now lopsided face of Iddibal, the stanch and true. He stopped and helped him to his feet. Eloul's bruises were few and trifling compared with those of his stout supporter: the crowd had run over Iddibal as it came, and it had run over him as it went. Together they staggered along toward the temple of Tanit.
The litter of Queen Rhodopis came swinging up to the plane; she saw Pyrrha sitting at her ease in it with the austere young Moon God whom she herself had thought so attractive.
It was with an effort that Queen Rhodopis smoothed her frowning brow as she said, addressing Nicholas: "My disgraceful subjects who interrupted us and disturbed your peace and tried to impose their will on you, divine ones, shall be punished severely."
"About seventy thousand shekels the fines to us will amount to," broke in Sophron cheerfully. "Seven thousand Canaanites in our agora, and not one of them showed his permit—called in by Eloul and that blockhead Iddibal. The rich will be furious when they have to pay."
"They shall pay as much and more for the insult to me and my divine guests. But that can wait," said Rhodopis grimly. She turned to Nicholas and added: "I will await you in the palace, divine ones!" Then she bent toward the chief of her litter-bearers and gave the order: "To the palace."
The litter swung off; Pyrrha rose.
"We shall doubtless meet at the palace," she said, smiling at Nicholas. He and Sophron helped her down from the machine, and she walked with Sophron to the temple of Aphrodite, where they parted at the gates.
As she entered, Pyrrha laughed softly and said under her breath: "Gods—gods?"
She gave a little skip,—hardly in keeping with the dignity of the High Priestess of a great goddess,—then walked sedately into the chief shrine.
WISPS of steam rose on air fragrant with unguents, twisted among the pillars and hung in a cloud under the high roof of the Bath of the Rich at the back of the temple of Tanit. In an alcove on the right, withdrawn from the throng of stout and noisy men taking their baths or discussing business and the great events of the morning, two slaves were massaging the bruised limbs of Iddibal, Suffete of the Sea; another was anointing his skinned ear with an soothing ointment; another was massaging the bruised feet of Eloul; and yet another was massaging Adherbal, Suffete of the Land. The three dignitaries were looking uncommonly sour, but Iddibal's face, thanks to the hot bath he had just taken, was rather less lopsided, and hot baths had lessened the aches of the other two.
Eloul drank a long draft from the tall gold cup of red wine in his skinny hand and said in bitter accents: "The Moon Gods were tricked. They had no time to learn where they ought to lodge. They must come to the temple of Tanit."
Iddibal merely nodded; his face was too stiff for conversation. He emptied his cup and held it out to be refilled by a slave who stood by with the flagon.
"It might have been worse," said Adherbal. "The Moon Gods might have gone to the temple of Aphrodite."
"That cursed girl nearly got them," said Eloul, frowning. "But the people have seen the Moon Gods; they have seen their chariot burn those who touched it; they saw the big one breathe from his nostrils fire and the smoke of a strange incense. They will turn to Tanit again and know that there is only one goddess. They have grown careless of her, and neglectful; thousands have left her worship for the easier worship of Aphrodite. Yes; the coming of the Moon Gods will turn them again to the worship of Tanit. The Canaanites will once more be a united people. For generations there has been no such chance of destroying those cursed Greeks and their goddess, and making Megara once more wholly Canaanite and the city of Tanit."
"The Greeks are strong," said Adherbal doubtfully. "Moreover, Rhodopis and the Barcae will support them."
"The Canaanites are three to one, and they will be fired by the most zealous enthusiasm; the temple and the rich can feed their enthusiasm with promises and money; for after all it's a matter of money; money makes men fight to the death," said Eloul, and his eyes flamed. "But before anything can be done, the Moon Gods must be in the temple. Only if they are in the temple and demanding, as her children, that Tanit be glorified, can we inflame our people."
"Rhodopis will never let them come, and Sophron and the archons will back her up," Adherbal demurred.
"It will be for the Moon Gods to decide. When they understand, they will come. Should they understand, yet not come, they must be brought," said Eloul firmly.
They fell to discussing details, with no fear that the slaves who were ministering to them would carry word of their plot to Queen Rhodopis or the archons, for in the Bath of the Rich the slaves were deaf and dumb. Then they went to their homes, where they found messengers from Queen Rhodopis bringing invitations to a banquet at the palace in honor of the Moon Gods....
When Queen Rhodopis and Pyrrha had left, Budge and Nicholas and Billy held a council. They had come safely to Megara, as the lost Carthage seemed to be called, but it was clear from the behavior of Eloul and the crowd that it was a city in which they would need to go carefully. Budge was eager to go at once to the palace and plunge into the life of the ancients, but Nicholas was concerned with the safety of the plane and with moving it to a spot from which he could take off promptly, should they have to fly in a hurry.
He spoke of this, and went on: "Now, that temple in front of us seems to me a friendly kind of place—"
"You mean the young lady who came out of it seemed friendly to you," said Billy in accents still aggrieved.
"And the nearer we are to it, the better," Nicholas went on without heeding him. "Also, if I have the length of the square to take off in, I can be sure of clearing the houses with plenty to spare. I wonder if I can get the troops to help me."
He slipped down from the plane and told the nearest stasiarch what he wanted. The stasiarch proved almost obsequious in his readiness to help these gods from the moon, and offered the services of his company of hoplites. They towed the plane to within thirty yards of the gates of the temple of Aphrodite, and there brought it round. Then Nicholas said he was ready to plunge into ancient life; but Billy suggested that it would be wise to have breakfast while they were near honest eggs and bacon.
"You boys seem to think that we're going to meal with some piking pasha or one-horse bey," said Budge scornfully. "These ancients don't live like Turks and Armenians, believe me! And say, boys, I've got a little present for you, since they may still eat with their fingers."
He took from a bulging jacket pocket two flat red morocco cases, which upon being opened were found each to contain a knife, a fork and a spoon. They thanked him, slipped the cases into outside pockets, and small automatics into their hip pockets, packed their suitcases, washed again and were ready. Outside the plane as well as inside there were switches to the live rail; Nicholas switched the current on and left the plane untouchable, though this was hardly necessary, for a company of hoplites was guarding it, keeping at a proper distance the curious Greeks who were admitted in parties through cordons at the ends of the streets to view the chariot of the gods.
The travelers handed their suitcases and Billy's banjo to the waiting slaves, and followed by a guard of hoplites, started for the palace.
"These folks puzzle me," said Budge, waving toward this guard the little attache-case he was carrying. "I know from their armor and weapons that they're Greek hoplites. But they're mostly fair—at least they're mixed fair and darkish; but the Greeks I know are all dark and undersized."
"The ancient Greeks were a tall, fair race who came down from the north; but in two thousand years the Mediterranean race has slowly swamped them," said Nicholas. "These are the pure old strain, and they have been living in a bracing climate. This plateau must be at least six thousand feet above sea-level."
The gates of the palace were opened wide at their approach; and they walked into the courtyard between two lines of rather confused guards, some of whom saluted by striking their shields with the pommels of their swords, while the remainder made deep obeisances.
The palace, two hundred feet long, four stories high, with two square towers rising on either side of a larger and taller tower above the central doorway, was built of the yellow marble of which the houses of the city were built, which gave it in the blazing sunshine its appearance of a golden city.
They paused to look up at the facade, and Budge said rather sadly: "No glass in the windows. I thought they might have got that far in two thousand years!"
"It doesn't look Syrian, and it doesn't smell Syrian," Billy rejoiced.
The major-domo of the palace, wearing a pink robe and attended by four slaves in gray, led them up the great marble staircase to large and lofty rooms on the first floor, in which were broad couches piled with silk cushions, stuffed with down, and silk coverlets. Frescoes of gay hunting scenes covered the walls. Beyond their rooms was a bathroom paved with marble, with two large baths four feet deep let into the floor. In this room slaves with ewers of hot water, scrapers, and phials of fragrant oils, were waiting to bathe and anoint them.
They were ready enough for hot baths, but the thought of being bathed—and scraped and oiled—awoke in Budge the liveliest abhorrence.
He turned to the slaves and waved them away with both hands, while saying loudly—to be the better understood: "Begone and draw the curtains! We wash ourselves! Begone!"
The slaves went hurriedly, and Nicholas said: "It's just as well—if we're to go on being Moon Gods. I've got a couple of scars from Turkish bayonets that wouldn't look well—for I suppose Moon Gods would be expected to be invulnerable."
They bathed, put on the silk bathrobes laid ready for them, and went into the room Nicholas had chosen for himself. The slaves returned, one with a flagon of red wine, hot and sweetened with honey, and another with a basket of sweet cakes.
The slave with the cakes offered the basket to them and said: "The feast is at noonday, divine ones."
IT was only a few minutes past ten, and since they had
been up for hours, having left the fuel dump at four in the
morning, that they might have the whole day before them to
seek the secret city, Budge now suggested that an hour's
sleep would make them more fit to cope with any trouble
that might crop up. So they slept till half-past eleven.
Then Nicholas said: "I've no liking for glad rags in the morning, but since the natives are in full dress, I think we ought to make an effort to make a good impression. Besides, we've decided to be Moon Gods as long as we can, and something in the way of more striking togs than this drill will be more in keeping with the part. What about evening dress?"
"If you say so, son," said Budge with no enthusiasm. "Soup and fish it is."
Accordingly they put on their tropical evening dress—white piqué jackets, white silk shirts, wing collars and white ties, red cummerbunds, black trousers and dancing pumps—thrusting their knife-and-fork cases into their cummerbunds and their small automatics into their hip pockets.
Budge surveyed the effect with approving eyes. "It sure does make us more imposing," he said in a tone of grave satisfaction.
The major-domo and his attendant slaves came and conducted them, with Budge still carrying his little attache-case, downstairs to the door of the great hall, and waved them to go in. As they crossed the threshold, a blare of trumpets hailed their entry. There was a brilliant gathering at the lower end of the hall—Queen Rhodopis in royal scarlet, her ladies and the priestesses of Tanit and Aphrodite in robes of many colors, the Queen's councilors in purple, the two Suffetes and the Canaanite members of the Grand Council in orange, Sophron and the other archons in white Dorian tunics with broad gold hems, gold girdles, and gold sandals, and a score of the Queen's guards in golden armor in the background. All bowed low and cried: "Hail to the Moon Gods! Hail to the Moon Gods!"
Budge and Nicholas and Billy bowed; the Queen stepped forward to welcome them; the marshals of the feast led them to the upper end of the hall, where seats were ranged about a low T-shaped table. The Queen took her place at the middle of the cross of the T; the marshals of the feast respectfully waved the three Moon Gods to her right, allowing them to settle their order of precedence. Nicholas pushed Budge to the seat beside the Queen, and Billy to the next. He was rewarded for his modesty; the violet-robed Pyrrha sank down beside him. Eloul was beyond Budge, to the left of the Queen; next to him was Sophron, then Iddibal, then Adherbal. On the left of the stem of the T were councilors of the Queen and the other nine archons; on the right more of her councilors and the other eight Canaanite members of the Grand Council. All the leading men of Megara were present, since they were also the chief men of the Council of the Rich. Beside them were the ladies of the Queen—all members, like her councilors, of the great House of the Barcae, the priestesses of Aphrodite, and the priestesses of Tanit.
Queen Rhodopis looked round the table and saw that Nicholas was placed next to Pyrrha. She frowned—a foolish oversight! But she had not time to give the matter thought, for Budge began to talk to her in his rich and flexible voice. Budge had many questions to ask. He meant to have answers to them, and when Benj. J. Budge wanted an answer to a question he had it.
The feast began with nectarines, chilled in snow from Mount Agash. Olives, stuffed with spices or horseradish or forcemeat followed, then a delicious, red vegetable soup, then savory omelets made with truffles and strange piquant herbs, then cock's-combs and the tongues of flamingoes stewed in wine, then peacocks, capons, ducks, small antelopes,—roasted whole and tender and succulent,—suckling pigs stewed with other strange herbs, young wild boars,—fattened on chestnuts and stuffed with them,—haunches of venison and sirloins of beef; then cream cakes set with pistachio nuts, almond cakes, cakes baked of a puree of dates in a syrup of nectarines, cakes flavored with the juices of peaches, of persimmons and of melons—indeed a new world of sweets; then cheese made from goat's milk, antelope milk and cream, then nectarines, peaches, pineapples, melons, plums and small mountain strawberries with clotted cream, of a delightful flavor.
With the courses they drank wines made from grapes that had enjoyed two thousand years of untroubled culture,—white wines, amber-colored and red,—wines delicate and dry, fruity and rich.
THERE was a great moment when roast peacock was served,
and the Moon Gods took out their knives and forks to cut it
up. A murmur ran round the table, and the Queen and Pyrrha
and the Greeks watched their delicate manner of eating with
admiration and envy. "What fine instruments!" said Queen
Rhodopis. Budge caught the note of envy in her voice. He
reached for his attache-case, took from it two red morocco
cases, opened one, and handed it to her.
"If Your Majesty will accept them," he said with a bow. The other he passed to Nicholas, saying: "For the High Priestess of Aphrodite."
They took them, thanking him with delighted eyes, and imitating the Moon Gods, were presently using the strange implements as if they had been accustomed to them from childhood.
Nicholas and Pyrrha were growing more friendly with each course, and the courses came with an ordered slowness which gave those feasting leisure to enjoy each. She had as many questions to ask Nicholas as Budge had to ask the Queen, but she was restrained by the respect due to a Moon God. High Priestess of Aphrodite and daughter of Sophron,—the most powerful and one of the wealthiest of the Greeks,—she had had many suitors, young and brave and gay, middle-aged and brilliant and fascinating, but none of them had awakened her interest as had this stranger.
Nicholas and Pyrrha were growing more friendly with each course.
Queen Rhodopis missed none of their growing absorption.
Queen Rhodopis missed none of their growing absorption in one another; for all that Budge's questions kept her busy, she saw Nicholas' face warmed with animation; she saw the charm of Pyrrha's smile. The imperious Queen knew more about love at first sight than most women, for she had often been smitten with it herself. Though she smiled at Budge, her face grew dark, and her nostrils now and then twitched in a growing anger.
The feast went on; delicious dish followed delicious dish, wine followed wine. The Greeks ate delicately and drank with moderation; the Canaanites were hearty trenchermen and gluttonous; they were hard drinkers. The talk rose high; the tall roof echoed and re-echoed with laughter, the mellow rippling laughter of the Greeks, the strident mirth of the Canaanites. With the sweets came musicians and singers, dancers and tumblers and conjurers. The throbbing, heady music of the East, with its shrilling pipes and monotonous drumming was followed by the clear, sweet music of Greek lyres in delightful melodies; graceful Greek dancing girls followed posturing and whirling Canaanites; the tumblers and the conjurers filled the intervals between the dances.
The dessert had been on the table half an hour, and even the most gluttonous of the Canaanites were no longer at work when Queen Rhodopis rose and left the hall with Pyrrha, and the court ladies followed. The men, and the priestesses of Tanit and Aphrodite, remained; the slaves filled their cups again with old wine; the laughter rose on a wilder note.
Eloul rose, walked down the hall, and sat down by the side of Simaetha, High Priestess of Tanit, and of all her priestesses the most beautiful—a languorous creature in whose dark eyes gleamed fire, whose voluptuous body moved with the graceful smoothness of a snake. Eloul spoke to her in a low voice. She twisted round to hear him; they talked in whispers with their eyes on Budge, while the fire in Simaetha's eyes flickered up, and she smiled a subtle smile.
Sophron moved to the side of Budge and answered more questions. Billy, who though thrown upon his own resources, had been very happy with the delicious strange foods and wines, had been exchanging looks and amiable smiles with Arisbe, a pretty priestess of Aphrodite.
Nicholas had learned from Pyrrha that the Queen and her ladies were betaking themselves to the gardens of the palace; he left the banquet-hall and went briskly upstairs to reconnoiter. The Queen and her ladies were moving toward a pavilion on the left; he could not see Pyrrha. Then among the trees on the left he saw a patch of violet, fie hurried down the stairs and into the garden, and keeping out of sight of the pavilion took his way through the trees to the left. He had not gone fifty yards when he came through a belt of shrubs to find Pyrrha sitting on a bank on the farther side of a shaded lawn.
She looked up with a startled air as he came out of the trees; then she smiled.
"You have had enough of the feast so soon?" she asked in some surprise.
"No. But I had not had enough of you," said Nicholas frankly. He sat down beside her and took out his cigarette-case.
"May I smoke?" he said.
She did not understand, and he explained by signs. Eagerly she gave him leave, and with awed eyes watched him light a cigarette and begin to smoke it.
"I suppose it is only for men—not for girls?" she said wistfully.
In three minutes, after a little coughing, she was herself smoking, proudly—and they took up the thread of their talk where the Queen's leaving the feast had broken it.
Nicholas had taken her hand in his, when there came a gleam of bright color among the trees on the other side of the lawn, and Queen Rhodopis came quickly across it.
Pyrrha glanced at her and said innocently: "What can have annoyed the Queen?"
"What does this mean?" said Queen Rhodopis imperiously.
BUDGE gazed about him with an air of immense satisfaction: here he was, a simple American citizen of the Twentieth Century, in the very heart of the life of the ancients, feasting in the Carthaginian manner, the honored guest in a superb palace of a queen! He drew a brown cylinder from the pocket of his jacket and placed the end of it between his lips. An awed murmur rang along the table. With an air of ineffable beatitude he lit the stogie.
But presently it was not enough for him to enjoy that felicity alone; it must be shared by others. He took from his pocket another stogie and offered it to Eloul.
The crafty but unfortunate eunuch, amazed and delighted at being picked out for this signal favor by the head Moon God, took the gift with fingers that trembled a little, and imitating the gracious donor, put it in his mouth. With the air of a man introducing a fellow-creature to a new and exquisite pleasure, Budge applied the flame of his lighter to its tip. Again imitating the gracious donor, Eloul breathed in deeply. Then he began to cough uncontrollably.
Budge gazed at his contorted face and starting eyes with astonishment and commiseration, then patted his back with a kindly earnestness that nearly jarred his teeth loose. Presently Eloul ceased coughing; he held out the stogie and gazed at it with dread and horror. There came an urge from the depths of his being to throw the beastly thing away. But he could not show himself unworthy of that signal honor! He continued doggedly....
Eloul began to cough uncontrollably. Budge patted his
back with an earnestness that nearly jarred his teeth loose.
Simaetha rose, walked the length of the table with her smooth, snakelike gait, sat down beside Budge, smiled at him, and said: "You are more noble and marvelous, divine one, than I had ever dreamed a god could be."
Budge began to speak of his aims in life and business, and his ideals, with an eloquence that astonished him. He realized that she was one of those women who bring out all that is best in a man....
Eloul would have watched the progress of their friendship with gloating satisfaction, had he been able to give his close attention to it. But the component parts of the feast had now begun an internecine war inside him. This perforce diverted his mind from his scheme.
THE conversation of Billy, though less egotistic than
that of Budge, had grown hardly less fluent; his halting
Arabic was—under spur of the need to make it clear
to his charming companion Arisbe that she was his soul's
affinity—becoming a passable Megarian. But a
restlessness invaded him, the urge to be up and doing and
join the dance. Plainly, the musicians did not know the
modern fox-trot, or they would have played one.
Fired with a noble resolve to extend the boundaries of knowledge, he hurried up to his room and came back with his banjo. The dancers, though so admirably dressed for exercise, were now resting. Billy went to the musicians. Greeks and Canaanites, united by the bond of a common art, they were talking and drinking together in the friendliest fashion. When Billy made it clear to them that he wished to teach them a new melody, they showed themselves greatly flattered by a Moon God's condescension. There was a hush, broken by the strains of the banjo as Billy began a "hot" tune.
The musicians listened with all their ears and with a growing excitement. It was their first introduction to syncopation. The leader of the lyrists was the first to take it up on his lyre; then the leader of the drums came in with verve. In five minutes both the two orchestras were in full and excited swing, and already the drummers were jerking about and making hideous faces.
Billy went back to Arisbe, took her to the empty floor at the foot of the table and showed her the steps of the fox-trot. That simple measure presented no difficulty to a dancer trained in dances of the festivals of Aphrodite. Then, to her astonishment, he seized her in his arms, they moved rhythmically out onto the floor, and in three minutes she was dancing the fox-trot to perfection.
The feasters, to whom ballroom dancing was wholly strange, watched them, spellbound.
Then Simaetha said in excited accents to Budge: "Can you do that?"
"Dance the fox-trot? Yes," said Budge.
"Then come along!" said Simaetha.
Iddibal rose, sore as he still was, and followed them, jigging curiously in time to the music as he went. He seized a priestess of Tanit, and plunged onto the dancing-floor; pell-mell, Greeks and Canaanites, archons and councilors, priestesses of Aphrodite and priestesses of Tanit hurried onto the floor and circled round it, the Greeks smoothly, the Canaanites jigging and swaying and pump-handling in a splendid abandon.
Only Eloul was not with them. A sudden need for the wide-open spaces had come upon him; he was lying on his face in a turfy dell in the middle of the gardens, clutching a tuft of grass and striving with all his might to prevent the world from going round.
"WHAT does this mean?" repeated Queen Rhodopis
imperiously.
Politely but reluctantly Nicholas loosed Pyrrha's hand and rose. Rather at a loss, he gazed at the Queen. Pyrrha rose languidly, gazing coolly at her, raised the cigarette to her lips and breathed out a little cloud of smoke. Then she held up the cigarette and said: "This is soothing and invigorating. The Moon Gods use the smoke of it to restore their vigor when they are weary. Neek—this Moon God is called Neek—gave it to me."
Queen Rhodopis did not like her manner nor her tone.
She said coldly: "I do not know what you Greek girls of today are coming to. You must have something new every minute of your lives; it is all you think about. I am quite certain the Moon God would not have given you one of these strange things and shown you how to breathe in the smoke from it, unless you asked him for it. Unmaidenly, is what I call it. But you Greek girls do not know what maidenliness is!"
Pyrrha seemed unabashed, for she laughed softly and said in careless accents: "There is maidenliness and maidenliness, Great Queen."
There must have been a sting to the apparently simple statement, for the eyes of the Queen flashed, and her nostrils dilated. But she had played the part of a queen for too many years to lose entirely her self-control; and Pyrrha was not only the High Priestess of Aphrodite, she was also Sophron's daughter.
"You're the most impudent hussy in Megara!" she said.
Nicholas interposed quickly: "Will you not smoke a cigarette, Great Queen?"
Queen Rhodopis sat down on the bank and looked at him with a dazzling smile as he put the flame of his lighter to the end of her cigarette.
AS they talked, the sound of the throbbing music of the
Orient had been coming faintly to their ears; then it had
died away. Of a sudden there came the sound of another
music—the strains of a modern fox-trot.
A question died on the lips of Queen Rhodopis; her nostrils dilated and her eyes sparkled; she said imperiously: "What is this?"
The thrilling strains seemed to have abated somewhat the austerity of Nicholas, for his eyes were also shining as he replied: "It's the tune of a fox-trot—a dance."
"A new dance!" said Pyrrha. "Let's go and look at it." She rose lightly to her feet.
Queen Rhodopis rose readily enough, and they walked toward the palace, not by the path by which they had come to the lawn but by a shorter path to the left of it, and had gone some fifty yards when they came into a turfy dell. In the middle of it, prone on its face, lay a white-robed figure, shaken by a convulsive shuddering. They stopped short, and Queen Rhodopis said: "Why, % it's Eloul!"
"It is Eloul. What an astonishing attitude for a High Priest of Tanit to lie in! I wonder what he thinks he's doing," said Pyrrha.
"What does this mean?" said Queen Rhodopis to Eloul imperiously.
Eloul raised a distorted sea-green face.
"Curse the Great God Budge!" he said violently, then buried his face in the grass again and shuddered.
Queen Rhodopis and Pyrrha cried out in horror at the blasphemy, and looked to Nicholas to smite him with some appalling punishment.
Nicholas only smiled; that strange pallor had assured him that the crafty but unfortunate eunuch was merely suffering from the effect of near-tobacco on a digestion quite unaccustomed to nicotine.
"It's nothing to worry about—he's only been smoking one of Budge's stogies. He'll be better in a couple of hours—or at any rate sometime tomorrow," he said in reassuring accents.
Eloul shuddered and uttered a deep groan.
"Come along!" said Nicholas hastily. "He will be better alone."
They walked on briskly and came to the palace. As they came near it the pattering of many feet mingled with the music, moving in time to it. They looked through a window into the hall and saw everyone in it dancing.
Iddibal came jigging by, his face set in an iron determination. Not a word passed his lips; this was no time for conversation. Budge came, wearing a stern and purposeful air and striding mightily, with Simaetha looking up into his eyes and murmuring her admiration of his strength and vigor. Billy and Arisbe swung by swiftly, laughing; then came Sophron gliding slowly and smoothly with the beautiful Ipsithilla.
A dozen ladies-in-waiting, flocking to the window, separated Pyrrha and Nicholas from the Queen.
"Would you like to dance it?" he said.
Pyrrha smiled and nodded; he picked her up, swung her over the window-sill and set her on her feet on the floor of the hall. He slipped over the sill himself, took her in his arms, and they moved out on to the floor.
The eyes of Queen Rhodopis flashed; she said in a hushed voice: "The—the brazen hussy! She asked him!"
ON the morning after the feast the court barber came to shave the Moon Gods. Budge examined his shaving outfit with interest; the razor was large, and since it was of iron, its edge not as sharp as it might be. There was no soap to soften the skin, only unguents. But there was pumice-stone. So that was how the Megarians shaved—a long and painful business and poor results! He bade the barber sit down. Then he called for hot water, took from his suitcase his own shaving-kit, lathered, and shaved himself with his safety-razor.
The court barber was amazed by the brevity of the process and the excellence of the result; and before ten o'clock his report was the talk of all the hair-dressing circles and baths in Megara.
Shaved, Budge went to the bathroom, shooed out the slaves and took his bath. He had just taken it when Billy came in, wearing a gloomy air.
Budge asked him if Nicholas was awake. Billy said bitterly that Nicholas was quite awake—had indeed awakened him at least two hours earlier to tell him that the gardens of the Temple of Aphrodite were delightful in the early morning. Billy added even more bitterly that Nicholas always had had a head of iron.
They dressed, and then Nicholas came. He admitted, in a guarded fashion, that the gardens of the temple of Aphrodite had been nice in the early morning.
Slaves were laying a table in Nicholas' room, which looked out over the garden, and they breakfasted on quails baked in a rich pastry, roasted capon, and a suckling pig stuffed with olives and green peppers. They drank with it a light and delicate wine.
Then came one of the Queen's chamberlains to ask what they would like to do till she was at leisure after the morning's audience. Budge said they would like to explore the city. The chamberlain said he would make arrangements for them to do so.
Presently they went down into the courtyard to find that the chamberlain had made arrangements for them to explore the city in style. Three litters, each carried by fourteen sturdy negroes, awaited them; two hundred of the Queen's guards and a band of trumpeters were their escort; twenty slaves, dressed in gray tunics and wearing on their heads conical gray caps, like all the slaves in the city, were also awaiting them. The gates of the palace were thrown open; the trumpeters marched out with a great blare of trumpets; then came a hundred of the Queen's guards, next the three litters with twenty-five of the Queen's guards marching on either side of them, then the twenty slaves. Fifty of the Queen's guards brought up the rear.
First the procession moved to the plane, of the safety of which Nicholas had assured himself first thing in the morning. There it halted, and Budge went aboard. First he handed down a de-luxe model of his baby-carriage, then a dozen twenty-eight-by-fourteen-inch placards on stiff cardboard. He came down and hung them from the necks of a dozen of the slaves. On each was printed a baby-carriage slogan in Arabic such as: "Why Be Afraid of Twins? The Budge De Luxe Holds Two." Or: "Sell the Litter, Buy a Budge De Luxe and Raise a Family." He arranged these slaves in a file, at the end of which came a slave wheeling the Budge De Luxe itself.
He returned to his litter, and Billy photographed the procession from different points, always keeping Budge the central figure, for the sake of the business and of Carthage. As he finished taking them, Sophron approached briskly and after greeting them talked with the officer in command of the Queen's guards. Then he shouted an order to the officer in command of four companies of hoplites who had poured out of their quarters, and those four companies marched up and added themselves to the procession.
Then Sophron came to Nicholas' side and said: "I have given orders that the litters and guards keep to the main street of the Canaanite city, where there is room to fight."
"It's like that, is it?" said Nicholas cheerfully.
"I do not think it likely that anything will happen today. But it is well for you to be on your guard. On no account enter the temple of Tanit!" Sophron warned.
THE Greek agora was empty, except for two or three
hundred Greeks who had come into it to see the Moon Gods;
but in the agora of the Canaanites it was market-day. On
both sides of it were rows of stalls, and a picturesque
crowd was buying its food for the week.
As the procession entered the agora, the crowd came flocking from the stalls, to the edges of the broad, clear space in the middle of the agora to see the Moon Gods pass, and as the procession passed they fell on their knees.
Budge was beaming; thanks to his advertisement of the Budge De Luxe, he felt that he was combining business with pleasure. In the middle of the agora his keen business sense showed him what he wanted, a tall negress carrying lusty twins. He stopped the procession, clambered out of his litter, and beckoned to her. Thrust forward by the crowd, she came hesitatingly; but in two minutes the twins were in the Budge De Luxe, and she was wheeling it along, fairly bursting with pride and wearing an air of grandeur seldom attained by a human being.
In two minutes the twins were in the Budge De Luxe, and
she was wheeling it along, fairly bursting with pride.
Sophron, standing with Pyrrha and Cleisthenes, on the roof of the temple of Aphrodite, watching the march of the procession, frowned and said sharply: "I don't like the way the Canaanites sing that Hymn to Tanit; they don't sing it like that at the festivals—not with half the fervor. I hope they're not going to work themselves up into one of their religious frenzies and give trouble. That scoundrel Eloul is going to make the most of the coming of the Moon Gods and his priests are already at work, stirring up the worshipers of Tanit."
"I wonder whether he will make another effort to get the Moon Gods into his temple, now that they're in the eastern quarter," said Pyrrha anxiously.
"I have given instructions," said Sophron.
The hymn came to an end; the procession took its way along the broad thoroughfare. For more than a mile and a half the procession moved between big houses and beautiful gardens; then came the open country, a plain running ten miles to the spurs of the mountain. From the number of slaves at work in the fields, it seemed to be intensively cultivated.
They had come back to within half a mile of the city wall when there came, flying from the right, fifty feet from the ground, a dove pursued by a hawk. Over the road in front of Budge's litter, the hawk swooped. In what seemed one movement Budge drew his automatic and fired. The hawk jerked upward; its feathers flew, and it dropped dead among the crowd.
"A fine shot!" cried Nicholas in warm admiration.
"I was a cowboy once," said Budge. "It's a trick."
In an hour it was all over the city that the big Moon God had pointed his finger at a swooping hawk, that fire had flashed from the finger, and the bird had fallen dead.
The procession came through the eastern gate to the temple of Tanit to find that the steps of it had been cleared of the crowd. On the bottom step stood Simaetha and on those above a hundred priestesses of the goddess were ranged in a half-circle.
As the litters were passing before Simaetha she came forward through the line of guards beside them, and the procession stopped. She stepped to the side of Budge's litter and smiled at him, a ravishing smile.
"Will not the Moon Gods honor their servants and the holy goddess, by paying a visit to her shrine?" she said.
Budge smiled at her, a warm, expansive smile and was on the point of accepting her invitation, when Nicholas intervened, saying in English that the temple of Tanit was the last place they should enter.
Budge was protesting, when the commander of the Queen's guards came bustling up and cried: "The Queen waits! The Queen waits!"
Simaetha frowned and said sharply: "It is for the Moon God to decide!"
"And the answer is 'No!'" said Nicholas to Budge.
Budge looked back at her wistfully and cried, "Some other day!" And as he was borne away, he said to Nicholas gloomily: "It was a shame to disappoint the girl!"
Eloul, watching hopefully inside the doors of the temple, ground his teeth and cursed.
FOR the rest of the day they rested. They took their
midday meal with Queen Rhodopis, who had been busy all
morning with affairs of state. After this they went with
her and her ladies to a pavilion in the palace gardens. At
least Budge and Billy went, though sometime between the
end of the meal and their going, Nicholas disappeared.
The Queen entertained them with music and dancers and
conversation. Budge contrived to ask many questions and
learned that Megara enjoyed three forms of government:
the northern quarter was a monarchy, in which a King or
Queen of the House of the Barcae ruled as autocrat; the
eastern and southern quarters were an oligarchy, with a
Grand Council and a Council of the Rich in the manner of
ancient Carthage; the western quarter was a democracy after
the model of that of ancient Athens. About the business
activities of the leading citizens Rhodopis knew little.
Nicholas was also well entertained, though not with music and dancers; he sat with Pyrrha in a shady nook in the garden of the temple of Aphrodite.... Next morning they went in their litters through the Greek quarter of the city and into the country beyond it under the guidance of Sophron, who rode in Nicholas' litter. The houses of the wealthy Greeks were not as fine as those of the wealthy Canaanites, and their gardens were not as large. But the people who lined the roads to see them pass were a finer people, and Sophron told them that every male citizen was trained as a soldier from boyhood.
"We can always fight three times our number of Canaanites," he went on in a confident tone. "Indeed, we have done it seven times in the last two hundred years. We have kept apart from them; we do not marry them; and they have always coveted, and still covet, our land and slaves and wealth. Therefore we have to be soldiers. Fortunately the House of the Barcae has always been too wise to combine with them against us, fearing what would happen to it later."
HE went on to tell of the founding and growth of the
city. Budge's tale of the seven thousand who had left
Carthage with the Zaimph was true. But the seven thousand
had been not only a guard of the Zaimph and its priests;
among them had been a score of the rich, and members of
the House of the Barcae with their families and slaves,
a number of poorer Carthaginians, two cohorts of the
Sacred Legion, and three companies of Athenian hoplites,
mercenaries, and their women and children and slaves. Out
of those elements the city had been formed and grown to its
present size.
They had been moving straight across country toward the western mountains and had come about eight miles from the city when he announced: "And now we come to the end of the world—the Megarian world."
Their bearers stopped and set down the litters; they stepped out of them, and he led them along a narrow path for a hundred yards and stopped on the verge of a precipice. For miles on either side of them an unbroken cliff fell sheer to a sandy plain from twelve to fifteen hundred feet below; and the plain, a treeless waste, except for small oases at the foot of the cliff, ran empty and desolate to the foot of the western mountains thirty miles away.
Every mile or two an underground river burst out of the side of the cliff and fell in a splendid cascade through the rainbows in its spray into the basin it had hollowed out, covered the plain for half a mile round it with a rich growth of vegetation, then vanished in the sands.
They gazed down and across the plain. Nicholas asked: "But how did the founders of the city scale this cliff?"
"They did not scale it," said Sophron. "Their scouts, so the legend goes, found caves that ran up one after another from its bottom to its top,—the bed of an underground river that had been diverted from its course, they thought,—and explored the plateau. Their leaders decided that it was the stronghold they were seeking, a stronghold the Romans could never seize. Leaving their elephants, they brought their families up through the caves and built the city. Later a convulsion of the earth filled in the caves, so that this is the end of Megara."
THAT afternoon Queen Rhodopis did not take her visitors
to the pavilion in the garden; instead, she showed them
the palace. She led them through thirty lofty rooms,
adorned with frescoes—battle-scenes, hunting-scenes,
processions. All of them recorded deeds of her ancestors,
the kings and queens of Megara and the great men of the
House of the Barcae. On the walls hung weapons with which
they had fought—spears with jeweled shafts, swords
with jeweled hilts and sheaths, maces and battle-axes.
They had seen most of the palace, and Budge was losing interest in the kings and queens, when Rhodopis said that she would now show them her treasury. Budge brightened.
"Now we shall see the currency," he said cheerfully.
They followed the Queen into the gardens, and in a far corner they came to a square and squat and solid building along each of the four sides of which paced a sentinel. They went into it; its vestibule was a guardroom, and a score of the Queen's guards sprang to attention as they entered. At the back of it was a short passage, and at the end of that an iron door. An iron bar two inches thick and standing out three inches from the door was locked into the door-posts; a ring to which was welded a heavy iron chain ran along the bar, and at the end of the chain, fettered by his right ankle, was a man.
His hollow, sunken eyes gazed dully out from under a tangled mat of hair with an ineffable weariness; his beard was a tangled mat; his clothes hung in rags over his emaciated limbs. He rose sluggishly and leaned against the left wall to make room for a guard to unlock the right-hand end of the bar, while he gazed at Nicholas with a weariness and longing that were truly heartrending.
As she turned the key, Rhodopis laughed softly and said in grating accents: "The sun is shining, Micipsa, and the spring wind is blowing through the forests where we hunted the boar that spring."
The man drew himself up, and a gleam shone in his dull eye.
"But you will never again see the sun, and the spring wind will never blow through your hair," she went on in cruel accents. "Do you sleep well on this stone?" She stamped her foot on the paved floor. "Do you ever think of the soft couches in the chamber of the leopards, and the moonlight falling through the window, and how the air came in cool and fragrant with the scent of roses? You will never see a rose again."
There was no beauty in her face now; it was distorted into a mask of brutality.
Micipsa said nothing, but his dull eyes were smoldering fires of hate.
"Dog!" she said, and stepping forward, struck him on the lips with her clenched fist.
"You will never again see the sun," she said, and there was no beauty in
her face now. "Dog!" she said, and struck him on the lips with her fist.
The guard had drawn back the bar and unlocked the door and thrown it open. He stepped sharply between Micipsa and the Queen to guard her.
But she turned to Nicholas. There was a warning, almost threatening note in her even, indifferent tone as she said: "Micipsa was brave and gallant and handsome. In all Megara there was no young man so brave and handsome; he pleased me; I made him Captain of my Guard and heaped favors upon him. But his heart wandered. You see him now."
Micipsa and Nicholas looked at one another as she swept through the doorway into the treasure-house. He thought that Micipsa seemed about his own age.
"Damned tough luck!" murmured Billy.
Nicholas said nothing, but he was frowning as they followed the Queen, preceded by two guards carrying torches, into a square room along the middle of which ran a narrow pavement between two iron bins, the tops of which were level with her waist. With one of the keys which hung from her girdle she unlocked the iron lid of a bin. Two guards raised it, and the light fell on a dully shining mass of gold coins which rose level with the top of the bin, twenty feet long and ten feet broad.
"Good God! That's currency!" said Budge in a hushed voice.
"The coffers are seven cubits deep," said the Queen proudly.
At a sign from the Queen the guards shut down the lid. She locked it, patted the iron bin opposite and said; "Full."
"Boys! You don't realize what you've seen. Millions and millions and millions!" said Budge in excited accents.
"What I realize is that they aren't mine," said Nicholas.
Rhodopis looked at him with disappointed eyes: he seemed wholly unmoved by her wealth, uninterested in it.
In the second room were two bins of the same size, and on the left-hand bin were heaped, almost to the ceiling, bags about eighteen inches long and a foot broad, all full. Rhodopis unlocked the lid of the right-hand bin and raised it: the bin was full to the brim of gold dust. And in the third room there were circular iron coffers, filled with magnificent rubies and sapphires.
Rhodopis stepped to a small shelf at the end of the room and unlocked an iron coffer about eight inches square.
"But here is the great treasure of Megara. The Barcae were a thousand years collecting them—every one in the city," she said proudly, and drew out four ropes of pearls of no great size, dull and discolored. "I only wear them at the great festival of Tanit."
Budge stepped forward, opened his attache-case, and took out a rope of a hundred shining pearls as large as marbles; with a splendid air he slipped it over the Queen's head and let it fall round her neck.
"Five-and-ten's best," he murmured, chuckling. "Ten for the pearls and ten for the clasp! Do I get away with it?"
Rhodopis uttered a cry of amazed delight. She fingered the pearls, staring at them; she took off the rope and held it out, gloating over it. Then she slipped it on again, stepped to one of the coffers, dipped her two hands into it, made them into a cup, brought it out full of rubies, and held them out to Budge.
He made a motion to take them, then stopped short and with a splendid air, said: "The Moon Gods do not take gifts for gifts."
She gazed at him with awed admiration. "Truly you are the Great God Budge!"
She turned to Nicholas and with an alluring smile said: "But you, divine one, will you take a gift from me?"
"A gift?" said Nicholas, looking at her thoughtfully.
"Take what you will," she said with a gesture.
Nicholas looked round the room at the tall coffers; then he said slowly: "I will take Micipsa, Great Queen."
"Micipsa!" she cried in a startled voice. "But how can I give you Micipsa? I have said that he shall never again see the sun!"
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders. "It is a trifle," he said coldly. "I had a whim that your favorite should be my slave."
"Oh!" cried Rhodopis; she flushed, and her eyes shone. "That was your whim? I did not understand. He is yours."
"Thank you, Great Queen," said Nicholas, and he smiled his rare, charming smile.
Rhodopis stared at him, and blinked, and the flush deepened in her cheeks.
MOVING like a woman in a dream, she locked the coffers
slowly, and went through the doorway. Budge followed on her
heels; Nicholas and Billy followed them; one of the guards
locked the door.
They came through the third door into the passage to the vestibule.
Rhodopis called to a guard to bring the key of the fetter. Then she turned to Micipsa, waved her hand toward Nicholas, and said harshly: "I have given you to the Moon God Neek, dog! You are his slave."
Micipsa stared at her as if he could not understand, then turned dazed eyes on Nicholas. Rhodopis passed on. The others followed her; Nicholas remained by Micipsa, who leaned nervelessly against the wall, gazing at him with dull, incredulous eyes. The guard came and unlocked the fetter. Micipsa took an uncertain step forward, and staggered; Nicholas gripped his arm and steadied him and guided his halting steps down the passage through the vestibule into the sunlight.
IN the palace the Moon Gods and their gracious hostesses were dancing and making merry. But there was little laughter—and that mocking or sinister—in the gathering in the chamber on the second tier of the temple of Tanit. Fourteen of the leading Canaanites were lying round the room, each on his pile of cushions, listening to Eloul setting forth his plan for the destruction of the Greeks and how much it would cost them. The Big Three were there: the elephantine Sanballat, who owned most of the silk industry and controlled all of it; Gisco, with his oily gurgle, who owned the workshops in which the arms and armor of the Canaanite army were made; and the wrinkled Geddenem, the great provision merchant, who had made his millions by cornering now this food and now that. The two Suffetes were there as Well as the other eight Canaanite members of the grand council, all fat men, heavy-jowled, and with greedy eyes.
All of them already knew the gist of what Eloul was saying, and had talked it over with one another. When he came to the end of his plan, Sanballat heaved up his enormous bulk and turned his enormous face toward the eunuch as he said: "The first thing to do is to hold the Moon Gods in the temple and use them to fan the people's enthusiasm to a flame and get them solid. That is plain. But on your own showing we shall only be three to one against the Greeks—and we've been three to one before, and been smashed." Then his eyes wandered over their faces again. "But—there are the Children of Moloch."
"Arm the blacks?" cried Eloul on a shrill note, and there came murmurs of astonishment and protest from three or four others.
"This is a business proposition," said Sanballat firmly. "But who will disarm them when we are victorious?" said Eloul.
"There need be none, or very few, to disarm," said Sanballat; he paused and bent forward and added earnestly; "Look you! Schebar can madden the blacks and set them on the Greeks. They fight like the beasts of the forest when they are mad. Of course in the end the Greeks will beat them and kill thousands of them; but the blacks will kill hundreds of the Greeks, and it will be a terrible and exhausting fight. Eloul's mob will do the same as the blacks. Then at the right moment—just when the Greeks win—our legions, fresh and complete, come in. They come on the blacks or what is left of them, from behind; the blacks think they're friends, and half of them are stabbed or cut down before they know what is happening. Then the legions fall on the tired Greeks and finish them off. That's business."
Eloul himself nodded approval; then he frowned. "It is good—it is excellent; but it brings Schebar in, and that means a different division of the spoils—a third to Moloch and a third to Tanit and a third to you."
The rich looked at one another, and most of them grinned. Then the fat Gisco burst into a gurgling laugh and said: "Come, come, Eloul—you seem to think we're fools! We put up the money. It's half to us, a quarter to Tanit, and a quarter to Moloch."
Eloul sat up slowly and his gaze ran round the circle: "I'll agree to that," he said quietly. "But it only applies to the Greeks and their wealth. Of the Treasure of the Barcae you take half and Tanit takes half. Schebar doesn't come into that—it comes later, and we can destroy the Barcae without any help from him. Those are my terms. Take it or leave it."
"Leave it!" boomed Iddibal happily.
"No, no; don't be so hasty, Iddibal!" gurgled fat Gisco. "If we treat you fairly about the wealth of the Greeks, Eloul, you ought to treat us fairly about the Treasure of the Barcae. A third to Tanit would be fairer."
"Take it or leave it," said Eloul.
"Leave it!" boomed Iddibal.
"No, no, Iddibal!" said Sanballat; then he added sadly: "We'll take it, Eloul. Send for Schebar."
Eloul went to the door and told one of the priests who were keeping it to tell Schebar that Sanballat desired his presence at the temple on important business, and to bring him; then he went back to his cushions.
"You put the proposition to Schebar," he said to Sanballat. "If I open my mouth, he'll have nothing to do with it. You know what he is. And whatever you do, do not let him dream that Moloch is going to lose seven or eight thousand of his accursed children. He is always mad about keeping up the number of his dirty flock."
"I will not," agreed Sanballat..
"Wine!" shouted Iddibal, gesturing to the slaves.
The three deaf mutes from the Bath of the Rich, who were waiting in the corner, came forward with flagons and filled the cups.
Adherbal sat up, raised his cup, and cried: "Here's to Megara—a Canaanite city for the Canaanites!"
They drank the toast with enthusiasm and turned again to their talk of details.
The door opened, and there entered a tall, gaunt, fierce-looking, brown-faced man with staring red-rimmed eyes, wearing a red mantle drawn tightly round him—Schebar the High Priest of Moloch. He looked round on them with hostile eyes and asked: "What do you sons of backsliders and apostates want with me?"
At the moment Schebar was a man to be humored, and Sanballat unfolded the plot to him slowly and patiently. Patience was needed, for Schebar kept raising objections to detail after detail.
WHEN Sanballat ended, Schebar reflected for a while,
then said: "Moloch will aid you, but his share of the
spoils shall be one-third."
A bitter wrangle followed, for he was stubborn—even more stubborn than Eloul; but, proven hagglers, in the end they wore him down, and he agreed that Moloch's share should be a quarter. At once they got to the matter of arming the negroes.
Schebar said: "I want four thousand spears, four thousand battle-axes, and eight thousand bucklers."
They looked at fat Gisco, the owner of the armament workshops. Gisco's eyes glistened; it was a large order, but here was the opportunity of selling thousands of weapons that had been stored in his warehouses for years. "You shall have them," he said.
"Good. I want them early on the morning of the festival of Moloch, for that is the day propitious for the destruction of the accursed Greeks," said Schebar. "And there is one thing more I must have. I must have the High Priestess of Aphrodite."
"The High Priestess—" boomed Iddibal; he stopped short, then boomed yet more loudly: "But I want the High Priestess of Aphrodite!"
"You cannot have her. She will be an acceptable sacrifice to Moloch, and to Moloch she shall be sacrificed," said Schebar stubbornly.
"I will have her," said Iddibal no less stubbornly.
"Then you get no help from the children of Moloch," said Schebar.
Here was a deadlock.
"Come, come, Iddibal, you don't want to make a fuss about a trifle like this; you would not wreck a splendid business proposition for such a trifle as a girl, and a Greek girl at that. You're a reasonable man," said Sanballat in honeyed accents.
"Reasonable man!" boomed Iddibal. "I am a reasonable man! There won't be a more valuable slave in Megara. Let Schebar sacrifice another priestess of Aphrodite—a dozen of them."
ELOUL and Sanballat had been whispering together, and
now Sanballat intervened. He proposed that since neither
Moloch nor Iddibal could get Pyrhha till the Greeks had
been crushed, the matter should stand over until then.
Iddibal accepted the suggestion. But Schebar sneered.
"Trust you sons of backsliders and apostates?" he almost howled. "If I did that, I should be the biggest fool in Megara!"
"There'll be no difficulty about it," said fat Gisco with an oily gurgle, "if you two toss for the girl."
"Yes, yes! That's it! Toss for the girl!" said a dozen voices in a tone of relief.
Schebar hesitated; then he said, still scowling: "We'll toss."
"Tesserae! Tesserae!" cried several voices happily, and three or four of them fumbled in their pouches for dice.
"I have my own tesserae," said Schebar coldly, and he took them from his pouch, pulled out a cushion and sat down, facing Iddibal. "Throw," said Schebar.
Iddibal drained his wine-cup, dropped the dice into it, shook it, dropped them onto the floor—two fives and a four.
"A good throw," murmured one of the onlookers.
Schebar smiled a superior, irritating smile, took the cup from Iddibal, dropped his dice into it, rolled them onto the floor—three sixes.
There was a murmur of applause; the fact that the throw had doomed a young girl to a horrible death seemed to have no weight with them.
"He's done it again! He always does it—always! How does he do it?" cried Eloul to Sanballat exasperatedly.
A smile of understanding flitted across the brutish face, and Sanballat said: "Among the Children of Moloch dicing is not wholly a game of skill."
Iddibal cursed; he boomed that he never did have any luck at the game; then he boomed: "I shall come to the sacrifice."
"You will not. You are not a member of the Church of Moloch," said Schebar coldly, and he rose.
"Then I'll become a member of the Church of Moloch! I've never seen a woman burn," boomed Iddibal.
Schebar walked to the door; then he looked round the gathering with a triumphant air, and said to Iddibal: "I will make preparations to receive you into the Church of Moloch tomorrow." And with a supercilious whisk of his red mantle, he went out.
The Blue Book Magazine, August 1932,
with the 2nd part of "The Moon Gods"
Budge shot out his hand toward the auctioneer and cried: "I bid a pearl!"
The climax of this fascinating novel—the story of an
Anglo-American aviator's daring flight to a secret
mountain-girt city; of the strange civilization he found
there; and of the astonishing adventures that ollowed.
"WHO is Carthage?" said Billy Elsom, looking up from the radiogram—which read:
MEET CARMANIA FLY ME TO LOST CARTHAGE CITY MOUNTAINS SAHARA YOUR OWN TERMS BENJ J BUDGE
The celebrated Anglo-American aviator Captain Nicholas Dering looked at him without surprise and said: "Carthage was an ancient African city—nearly smashed the Romans. But who is Benjamin J. Budge?"
"You don't know who Benjamin J. Budge is?" cried Billy in incredulous accents. "Why, he's Baby-carriage Budge, the baby-carriage king. Sells a baby-carriage every twenty-seven seconds. Has made scads of money."
Soon thereafter Dering was closeted with the newly arrived plutocrat—who explained that he had been born in a little Canadian town called Carthage; that all his subsequent life the ancient Carthage had held a special fascination for him; that now when wealth gave him leisure he proposed to pursue his hobby—for he had learned that before the fall of ancient Carthage, seven thousand soldiers had escaped into the Hinterland bearing with them the sacred veil known as the Zaimph. More, he had trustworthy information which made him believe that descendants of the Seven Thousand still lived in a secret city in an inaccessible mountain range some five hundred miles southeast of the Atlas.... Thus it happened that a few days later Dering's plane, with his mechanic Billy Elsom and his strange passenger Benjamin Budge, winged its way southeast across the desert mountains. Thus too it happened that the inhabitants of the ancient mountain-girt city, of Megara—cut off by earthquake cliffs and chasms from the outside world for nearly two thousand years—beheld one day a winged dragon, bearing gods from the moon, alighting in their classic marketplace....
Budge and Dering and Billy were well received in this really splendid ancient city—had the time of their lives, in fact. The queen Rhodopis made a dead set at Dering, but Pyrrha the high priestess of Aphrodite smiled on him also, and was more to his taste. For Rhodopis was a cruel harridan—as Dering discovered when he rescued from chains and torture her discarded lover Micipsa. Budge was in ecstasies at the fulfillment of his life's dream in discovering the survivors of old Carthage; nor was his joy diminished by his achievements in trading a stock of ten-cent-store pearls for real gold and jewels; by his success in teaching poker to the local business men; or by the attentions of Simaetha, high priestess of Tanit. And Billy Elsom spent happy hours in the society of Arisbe, another lovely priestess.
But a dark cloud of war loomed savage on the horizon. For though Megara was governed by the Canaanite queen Rhodopis, it was divided into three hostile factions: the Greeks, who worshiped Aphrodite, and—led by the archon Sophron and his daughter the high priestess Pyrrha—held the ascendancy; the Carthaginians or Canaanites, who worshiped Tanit, goddess of the moon and were led by Eloul the high priest; and the black slaves, who worshiped Moloch and were loyal to Schebar the priest of Moloch. And now the Canaanites schemed to overthrow the Greeks by arming the blacks and then inciting them to rebellion; the more intelligent Greeks would defeat the blacks, but would be so weakened that the Canaanites could destroy them. Schebar, priest of Moloch, had been persuaded to revolt; part of his price was possession of Pyrrha, to be offered up as sacrifice to Moloch. But spies had brought word of this conspiracy to the Greeks.
"I SAW that durned Zaimph last night," Budge calmly informed Dering one morning. "I nearly brought it away with me, but that dodgasted Eloul butted in."
Nicholas stared at him. "You went to the Temple of Tanit, and Eloul let you get out?" he said in no little astonishment.
"Well, he didn't exactly let me get out. I came out," said Budge, and grinned. "I guess I mussed their temple up a bit!"
And he proceeded to tell how he had bribed Simaetha, the high priestess, with a gift of ten-cent-store pearls; how she had led him by dark and secret stairways in the temple walls to the holy of holies wherein was domiciled the fantastic idol which represented the moon goddess—a place only the high priests were allowed to enter. He had seen the glittering mysterious Zaimph draped about the image and had been about to make way with it, when Eloul and his followers approached; he had made his escape by setting off a gas-bomb, shooting up the place and rushing out carrying Simaetha in his arms during the subsequent confusion.
He had made his escape by shooting up the place
and rushing out carrying Simaetha in his arms.
"Hot stuff!" said Nicholas in admiring accents. "But I'd better tell you how things stand. I've had permission to do it; only I must have your word you won't tell a word of it to a soul—especially to Simaetha!"
"Sure, I won't," said Budge.
So Nicholas told him at length of the plot against the Greeks and Queen Rhodopis.
Budge gave him close, frowning attention; at the end he said: "Those rich are sure out for big business, and it's a mighty fine proposition. But of course I don't stand for all this bloodshed and making slaves of people. It may be the way they do business over here; but it isn't the way it's done in God's country, and I don't stand for it. They must drop it, and we've got to help make them."
"That's my idea," said Nicholas.
They talked the matter over at length but found no way of making Eloul and his friends drop it. Even if they did make them drop it now, they would be at the throats of the Greeks as soon as the plane had gone away.
"Business is business," said Budge, "but that's carrying it too far."
"Much too far," said Nicholas.
Micipsa, who had become devoted to Nicholas, finished the exercises which his new master had prescribed to restore his prison-wasted body. He manifestly enjoyed a fine vitality, for already he was another man.
"We shall have you fit to fight for your life in another week," said Nicholas, smiling at him.
Micipsa smiled back at him, a slow, stiff smile. And then somewhere in the palace, somewhere near, a woman screamed agonizedly.
"What's that?" said Nicholas sharply, starting to his feet.
"It sounds like a slave," said Micipsa in a tone of indifference.
Nicholas was out of the room and along the corridor to the Queen's suite, while Budge bolted into his room for his pistol. The guards at the entrance to the Queen's suite made way for the racing Nicholas. He ran through two long reception-rooms, to find in the corridor beyond, a group of girl slaves looking through a door ajar. Through that doorway came the screams. He burst through the group into the room, one of the Queen's dressing-rooms.
In the middle of the floor lay a T-shaped cross, and three men knelt beside it. Two of them held down a screaming girl, whose tunic had been torn half off her in her struggles. The third had nailed her right hand to the cross and had seized her left hand. A few feet away stood Rhodopis, watching the writhing victim with cold eyes in a face distorted out of all womanly semblance. About the room stood half-a-dozen of her ladies and as many slaves gazing at the tortured girl with eyes so indifferent that they must have looked on a like sight many times.
As the hammer rose again, Nicholas fired. It was a lucky shot: it caught the executioner's forearm just below the elbow.
As the hammer rose again, Nicholas fired. It was
a lucky shot: it caught the executioner's forearm.
Nicholas strode across the room, gripped Rhodopis by the shoulder and shook her till her teeth chattered. Her hard eyes grew soft with tears of pain.
"What's this? What are you doing?" he cried fiercely.
She clutched at his fingers, digging painfully into her soft flesh, and stammered: "She—she b-b-broke the string of my lovely p-p-pearls, and they f-f-fell all over the floor."
Without loosing his grip,—though in his anger he was unaware how hard he was gripping,—he shouted at the three men: "Go!"
They went at once, the two unhurt helping their wounded companion. Budge came through the door.
Nicholas shook Rhodopis again, with no less violence.
"You stop this kind of thing! Stop it!" he said, and sent her flying into the arms of her ladies.
"What the hell's this?" said Budge.
"The custom of the country, apparently," said Nicholas savagely.
He dropped on his knees by the moaning girl. A bag of tools beside the cross. He found a clumsy pair of pincers and slowly drew out the nail. The girl winced and moaned but lay still.
Rhodopis rubbing her bruised shoulder, stared fascinatedly at Nicholas' set face and blazing eyes.
THE nail out, Budge picked up the girl and carried her
to Nicholas' room. Nicholas took a first-aid outfit from
his suitcase and dressed the wound. When he had bound it
up, she fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion.
Budge and Nicholas were looking down at her when Sophron came into the room. He looked down at the girl and said: "What has happened?" Nicholas told him.
"The Canaanites are savage brutes. We don't treat our slaves like that," he said sharply. Then he frowned thoughtfully at Nicholas and added: "So you shook Rhodopis! Well, you have done her a service, if you really hurt her. But it will make things more difficult, for I'll wager she will insist on marrying you and making you King of Megara. I know her—well. I might have been King of Megara myself. But we do not marry barbarians."
"And I am plighted," said Nicholas.
"It is on the knees of the gods," said Sophron gravely. "But now be doubly on your guard against her. To get you she will stick at nothing. She'll very likely join forces with that cursed eunuch."
He made a sign to Nicholas to get Budge, who was laying a silk coverlet over the sleeping girl, out of the room.
"He knows. You can speak," said Nicholas.
Sophron hesitated; then he went on: "We are in a difficulty, and I came to discuss it. Just before the festival of Moloch there is the annual fight of the champions. Every year fifty of our best fighters fight fifty of the best fighters of the Canaanites, most of them picked from the Sacred Legion. They fight till the fifty champions of one side or the other are killed, or disabled, and have run away. It is a brutal business; but the blood-letting has certainly prevented many civil wars, and we get rid of fifty hot-blooded sons of the rich every year with the loss of about thirty men. But this year we do not wish to lose thirty of our best fighters before the Feast of Moloch. In heavy armor they will destroy many more Canaanites than in the light armor of the champions. But we cannot devise a way of stopping the annual contest. We must not seem afraid."
Nicholas frowned, considering.
"If we refused to let our champions fight, it would encourage those cursed Canaanites to fight far more bravely on the Feast of Moloch," said Sophron.
Of a sudden Budge's face lit up, and he said: "I got it! Say, Sophron, how would it be if we Moon Gods forbade this fight for the championship and ordered another kind? Captain Dering says those Canaanites have fallen for us good and hard: so what we say goes," said Budge.
"Another kind of championship?" said Sophron.
"Yes. A football championship," said Budge, and explained the game.
"We Greeks would like it very much," said Sophron smiling. "But the Canaanites love blood."
"Well, they got to do without blood," said Budge firmly. "We Moon Gods forbid bloodshed. And anyhow it won't do to get this Canaanite crowd bloodied up before the big fight comes on. A football game is what they'll get and nothing else."
"It will serve our purpose," said Sophron, smiling cheerfully. "After all it will be something new, and a new thing makes the mob happy."
"Right," said Budge. "And say, boys, we'll give them such a game as never was! We'll take most of the Square and play fifty champions a side."
So it was settled, and Sophron was to bring the hundred champions to the hoplites' drilling-ground to learn to kick a football.
Then Budge said: "I'm going along to the slave-market. I aint seen it yet. I got to do something about those slaves I won in that poker-game. I may get an idea in the slave-market."
They went out of the palace together; Nicholas went with Sophron; Budge, followed by his human winnings in the poker-game, went to the slave-market. Schaoul, his purse-bearer, and one of Budge's winnings, carried a bag containing a thousand kikars.
On their way to the slave-market in the southern quarter of the city Budge and his retinue, swelled by a train of some eighty persons of leisure, came out of a long golden street into the square in which stood the Temple of Moloch. A perfect cube, seventy feet long, seventy feet broad, and seventy feet high, built of square blocks of black marble, it was a black patch in the golden city, gloomy shrine of a dreadful god.
On the other side of the Square was the slave-market, a commodious building, admirably equipped for its purpose, with rooms for the slaves to sleep in that they might be rested and look their best, if they had come from far away in the country, and with baths and tiring-rooms for their final toilet before the sale. In a half-circle in front of the auctioneer's desk were five rows of cushioned seats for wealthy customers. Humbler bidders, and the crowd of spectators who were there for amusement, stood packed together beyond them. Beside the auctioneer's desk was a block of stone four feet high, up to which the slaves mounted by steps that the buyers might see them clearly.
The five rows of seats were nearly full and the crowd was large, for it was a good sale and had been well advertised. Not only were the usual slave-dealers selling some uncommonly good lots, but two of the chief slave-breeders had come in from their farms with the pick of the year's stock. Gisco was there, and Iddibal, and about forty of the rich, and Schebar, the High Priest of Moloch.
ALL the first lots were children, and to the disgust
of the auctioneer they fetched low prices, for the
slave-breeders had arranged with one another which lots
they would buy and were not bidding against one another.
Most of the children looked scared, but presently a small
boy of twelve ran lightly up the steps and stood on the
block, smiling gayly. At seven kikars the dealers dropped
out of the bidding; one of the breeders dropped out at ten,
the other at twelve; the bidding became a duel between one
Hasdrubal Barca, and the buyer for Tanit.
The bidding rose slowly till the buyer for Tanit bid twenty kikars. Hasdrubal scowled and shook his head. "Hasdrubal's beaten!" cried the onlookers joyously. Hasdrubal scowled round at them; the buyer for Tanit smiled an arrogant smile; the auctioneer raised his gavel.
Budge, who had gleaned the information that Simaetha desired this lad for a page-boy, decided to bid. "Twenty-five!" he said in his rich and ringing voice. The buyer for Tanit jerked round and glared at him; then he said: "And a half."
"Thirty!" said Budge.
The buyer for Tanit glared again and turned away. Down came the gavel.
"The Moon God wins! The Moon God wins!" cried the crowd and roared with laughter.
The next lots were of little interest—field-slaves and house-slaves, dealers' stock. Heavy and stolid, they looked to care little who bought them; they hoped dully for good masters and mistresses; they did not expect to get them. They were bought by buyers in the crowd. Then a haggard woman of thirty mounted the block with a little girl of six holding tightly to her faded gray tunic. That woman was not dull; her harried face was full of fear and anxiety: what kind of mistress would she get? One who would be kind to the child?
It turned out far worse than she had expected: a burly middle-class woman in the front of the crowd called out that no housewife wanted to be bothered with a slave's brats; the lazy hussies found plenty of things to waste time over without having brats to look after. A murmur of assent followed the observation.
The auctioneer smiled an agreeable smile and said: "By all means—by all means. I'll sell them separately—the woman first."
The woman wrung her hands, and a long, low moan, scarcely hearer for the noise of the chattering, jolly crowd, issued from her lips. She raised her eyes to the bright sky, and slow tears rolled down her thin cheeks.
There were few bidders for the woman, for there appeared to be little strength in her, and she was on the point of being knocked down to the burly woman for three and a half kikars.
"Ten for the two," said Budge who had looked on with grim eyes.
The burly, hard-faced woman protested loudly that mother and child were to be put up separately, and part of the crowd supported her. The auctioneer yielded to the clamor: the woman must be sold first and then the child.
"Right," said Budge. "Six kikars."
The burly, hard-faced woman glared at him and was silent; the gavel fell.
"Two for the child," said Budge.
There was no other bid, and the gavel fell again.
A slave hustled the woman down from the block and along to Budge. It was a good three minutes before she could get into her anguished mind the fact that she was not parted from her child. Then she dropped in a crumpled heap, still holding the child.
Budge laid the woman out flat, and when she came to, he gave her a cup of wine Schaoul bought from the buffet. The wealthy men in the seats and the middle-class crowd watched him in an immense astonishment, amazed that he should even touch her. When she rose, gazing at him with eyes that shone with inexpressible emotion, he patted her on the back, pulled an empty chair out of the row, and put her into it.
The crowd fairly gaped at him; only in the eyes of some of the slaves was there a dim understanding.
Somewhat upset by Budge's strange behavior, the auctioneer resumed the sale and presently came to the cream of it—ten young girls from the farms of the slave-breeders, picked out of the scores of working-slaves for their prettiness, trained to sing and dance and play the flute and the seven-stringed Phoenician harp, and to dress and keep house.
Budge looked at the girls with a fatherly kindness but compassionately. Innocent and light-hearted young creatures, their entry into the world seemed to him as unfortunate as it could be; he foresaw for them bitter disillusionment—helpless slaves. An idea came to him; he turned and considered the retinue of slaves he had won at poker. They were all picked men, as the slaves of wealthy men would be, young men between twenty and thirty, and intelligent; many of them would have risen to the stewardship of great households. His idea became a purpose.
"Who are going to buy these lots?" he said to Schaoul.
Schaoul nodded toward the group in the back row and said: "Those scum—the keepers of the dancing-halls. They will buy most of them. They form a ring and outbid any single bidder, so that few bid against them. They have another auction afterward among themselves," said Schaoul.
"They do, do they?" said Budge. "And the High Priest of Moloch is going to buy three of them to sacrifice to the god of blood," said Schaoul. "The hell he is!" said Budge.
Smiling agreeably now at the back row and now at the other rows, the auctioneer made a little speech. Here were ten of the finest lots it had ever been his privilege and pleasure to sell, ten of the finest lots that ever came under the hammer. He set forth their charms and accomplishments, then beckoned to the first of the ten lots to mount the block.
"Put 'em up in a bunch," said Budge in firm accents.
The auctioneer hesitated and looked round the crowd and said: "If the other purchasers are agreeable."
A number of other purchasers said they were not agreeable; there was indeed a storm of protests. When it had passed the auctioneer, who wished to oblige the Moon God but was mindful of the fact that the dealers were regular customers who would be bringing slaves when the visit of the Moon Gods had passed into the realm of legend, said that the lots would be put up one at a time in the order in which they were listed, and Budge said no more.
A girl mounted the block; the auctioneer dwelt at length on her charms and accomplishments; the first bid was for twenty kikars.
"Twenty-one," said Budge.
The bidding went on briskly; at forty-five and a half kikars the lot was knocked down to Budge.
The second lot was knocked down to him for forty-six and a half kikars and the third for fifty and a half.
The fourth lot took Schebar's fancy and he came into the bidding. He bid proudly, in a tone of opulence, five kikars at a time. Budge's: "And a half," came monotonously, but surely, after each bid; it came when Schebar had bid fifty-five kikars, and that lot walked, smiling, to Budge. He bought the fifth lot, the sixth lot, and the seventh lot for fifty and a half kikars apiece, and the humorists of the slave market, burning to make their jokes and get their laughs, but in too great awe of the death-dealing Moon God to shout them, had to mutter them to those near them only.
When the eighth lot mounted the block it flashed on Schebar that there were now only three more lots to be bought; he must buy all three, or his sacrifice would be asymmetrical. Also it flashed on the dancing-hall king that, if he did not buy them, he and his colleagues would be short of new talent for the new season. They came into the bidding, both with five-kikar bids. Budge bought the lot for sixty and a half kikars. Schebar's blood was up and so was the blood of the dancing-hall king. But eighty-two kikars brought the ninth lot to Budge.
The ring was furious; Schebar was furious.
And then the loveliest girl mounted the block. The crowd murmured admiration; Budge thought she was almost lovelier than Simaetha. There came a curious grunt from Schaoul, who was paying for the last lot. Budge looked up at him to see that he was staring at the girl and his face was working strangely.
"What's the matter, Schaoul?" he said.
"It's my—my little sister. I haven't seen her for years," said the slave, and his voice was shaky.
"Don't you worry," said Budge in reassuring tones.
The auctioneer was in no hurry to start the bidding. This lot had not been on view, and he was letting surprise do its work. There was a bustle in the middle seats, and half a dozen heads of wealthy men came together. Then Gisco moved along the row to Budge.
"Seven of us have put up twenty-five kikars apiece; one of us buys her; then we throw the dice for her. Will you put up twenty-five and make the eighth? Two hundred kikars make it certain that we shall get her," he said.
Budge smiled amiably at him but shook his head, saying: "I never like to leave things to chance."
"As you will," said Gisco, and he moved back to his seat, looking puzzled.
"And this," said the auctioneer, "is the finest lot that has come under the hammer for ten years. Shall we say fifty kikars?"
"And a half," said Budge.
So the bidding went. At ninety-five and a half there was applause.
"And a hundred!" cried Schebar, his face purple. His eyes blazed with excitement.
SLOWLY the bidding rose to a hundred and fifty
kikars. The dancing-hall king went out; the ring
groaned. The others went on. Sanballat bid a hundred and
seventy-five.
"And a half," said Budge, and Sanballat went out. Schebar and Budge went on. "Two hundred!" yelled Schebar.
Budge hesitated. The girl, her lips parted, her nails driven into her palm, stared at him with imploring, terrified eyes. Schebar looked at him, felt that he had him beaten, and laughed like a hyena.
Budge shot out his hand toward the auctioneer and cried: "Ibid a pearl!"
He opened his hand; on his palm lay a glistening jewel from a world-famous "five-and-ten" emporium.
"Oo-oo-er!" said the crowd.
Bang went the gavel—and the lot was Budge's!
BUDGE led his train to the buffet and gave the girls
cakes and wine, for those for whom Schebar had bid were
still pale and shaken. Presently they were chattering
and smiling: like most of the slaves, they lived in the
present, for in the future there was no security.
The owners of the dancing-halls came past in a body, scowling. The leader, as repulsive a slouching ruffian as the eye could rest on, came along with a moneyed swagger. One of Budge's lots was in his path; he gave her a shove which nearly knocked her down, and came on, glaring truculently at Budge. Budge's right arm came round like a flash; his large palm landed on the ruffian's cheek and ear with the sound of a whip-crack. He would have pitched over had-not Budge's left arm swung round quite as quickly and his no smaller left palm landed, quite as hard, on the other side of the rascal's face and straightened him up. For the first time in his life he sprinted, howling like a dog. The crowd cheered.
Budge left the market at the head of his train. As he came out of the gates of the slave market, he was accosted by Schebar, who said with an air: "I am Schebar, the High Priest of Moloch."
"Pleased to meet you," said Budge politely but with no warmth and without stopping.
Schebar fell in beside him and said in the tone of one making a self-evident statement: "You do not want ten virgins."
"You said a jugful. But I got them," said Budge.
"I need three of them for the festival of the mighty god, Moloch—the last three you bought. I will give you four hundred and fifty kikars for them."
"Nothing doing," said Budge, smiling at him amiably.
Schebar was taken aback, but he persisted.
Budge stopped short, his face grave. "Say, High Priest, did you ever think of pearls?" he said.
"No," said Schebar.
Budge gave him an unwinking gaze. "Think of them," he said solemnly. "Consider them! Give your mind to them—to them and to Moloch. Moloch has no pearls—not a single pearl. Do you think Moloch does not think of pearls?"
Schebar blinked.
Budge laid a hand on his shoulder and said with yet deeper gravity: "You bet Moloch thinks of pearls, Schebar! 'Why haven't I pearls?' he says. 'Why has Rhodopis, who is a mere mortal and a woman at that, pearls—and I haven't a pearl at all? That's what Moloch is saying, Schebar."
Budge's solemn tones troubled Schebar.
"Virgins? What are virgins to a mighty god like Moloch?" Budge went on more solemnly, and his gaze grew more intense. "How many virgins have you sacrificed to him?"
"Altogether? Only thirty," said Schebar after a short calculation.
"Thirty! Only thirty?" cried Budge. "Why, Moloch's fed up with them—fed up to the brim! Do you know what he's saying, Schebar? He's saying: 'Enough! I've had enough! I'm fed up! No more virgins for me!'"
Schebar perceived that that was what Moloch was saying, so impressive was Budge. He did not perceive this clearly; the oppression of Budge's insistent eyes and insistent voice was too heavy.
"Pearls, not virgins! Pearls, not virgins! That's what Moloch wants," said Budge, and his voice fell into troubling singsong. "Has Tanit got any pearls? Not a pearl. Has Aphrodite got any pearls? Not a pearl. Have you ever seen one of these lovely pearls?"
"No," said Schebar, a trifle uncertainly.
Budge drew three pearls from his pocket and held them out on his palm.
"Look at them," he went on. "Look how they glisten! Did you ever see ordinary pearls glisten like that?"
"No," said Schebar.
"No more did I," said Budge. "Ordinary pearls don't—only these pearls! And I tell you, Schebar, that they're something like an offering—better than all the virgins in the world! They're what Tanit would like, and Aphrodite. They're what Moloch wants."
"How much do you want for them?" asked Schebar.
"I hadn't thought about the price," said Budge. "To one of the rich, to Iddibal for example, it would be seven hundred and fifty kikars."
"It is too much," said Schebar firmly.
"But this is different," said Budge. "I want to stand well with Moloch—anybody would. What's more, I like you, Schebar; I've taken a fancy to you. You're one of those men who know their own mind. When you see a thing you want, you go for it—baldheaded! I can see you do. So to you and Moloch they're six hundred kikars—four hundred down and the rest in thirty days."
"Done!" Schebar said with decision.
Budge gave him the pearls; he opened his robe and unfastened the bag from his girdle and handed it to Budge. Budge handed it to a slave and shook hands with Schebar warmly. They parted with expressions of mutual esteem.
Budge went on toward the palace, wearing an air of content. He had made Schebar happy and prevented him from spending his money on virgins to sacrifice. Also he had reduced the cost of his kind deeds by twelve thousand dollars.
As he came to the gates of the palace, Billy, strolling back from the gardens of the Temple of Aphrodite, met him.
"My hat! What pretty girls!" he said with warm admiration.
"Yours?"
"Sure," said Budge with modest pride.
"Starting a harem, I suppose. Well, it's the custom of the country; there are some who can stand the tropics and some who can't," said Billy sadly.
"Not on your life, I'm not starting any harem!" said Budge with some heat. "I'm going to marry these girls to these boys and set them free, and give Megara the finest beauty-parlor in Africa!"
THE mid-day meal lacked cheerfulness. Rhodopis came to it in a frowning majesty and did not relax. Never before had a man laid his hand on her save in the way of kindness—and she was very angry with Nicholas.
But Nicholas was at a loss: what was the proper course to follow for a guest who had shaken his royal hostess and thrown her across the room? In England he would, of course, pack up and go. But in Megara—Even in Megara he could hardly come to lunch as if nothing had happened!
Budge was not depressed by the frowning majesty of the Queen; he talked about the institution of slavery, and in particular about her cruel treatment of the girl who had broken the string of her necklace.
The Queen paid very little heed to his talk; but all of a sudden she turned on Budge in a passion and cried: "But why all this to-do about slaves? Why shouldn't I crucify a clumsy slave like Taanach? I do not understand!"
She rose and went into the garden, followed by her ladies. Budge did not follow her; he went up to Nicholas' room to make sure that Taanach was being tended. He found her asleep, and Micipsa, whom Nicholas had left in charge of her, set his mind at rest. He went on to the house of Sophron.
As he had expected, he found Nicholas with Sophron; they had had a busy morning inspecting men drilling and the toiling armorers and swordsmiths and makers of spears, considering the points to be defended and the best methods of defending them. The ends of the streets where the southern and western quarters of the city met were easily defended; the weak point was the side of the western quarter facing the Square, for there the Canaanites could use their crushing weight of numbers, and there the eight thousand maddened negroes and the mob would make their weakening attack. Nicholas' experience in the war enabled him to make useful suggestions, and he was to spend the afternoon training picked men to use the two Lewis guns which formed part of their armament. Unfortunately they had only two thousand rounds of ammunition.
At the coming of Budge they stopped talking of the coming fight. Gossip had already brought word of Nicholas' rescue of Taanach. This was inexplicable to them.
"You are a strange people, troubling yourselves like this for the sake of slaves! We do not understand it. But I—I like it," said Pyrrha.
"Slaves are human beings," said Nicholas rather shortly. "And this cruelty must be stopped."
"If we win, we will make the Canaanites treat their slaves kindly," said Sophron.
"You'll have to stop slavery altogether," Nicholas insisted.
"It can't be done. There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water," argued Sophron. "Thousands could not earn high enough wages to feed themselves."
"Then let them work for their freedom. They'll learn to work all the better for that," said Nicholas.
"If we win, you shall do it," said Sophron finally. "But now all things are on the knees of the gods."
THE conspirators, though they knew that the Greeks were
drilling and hard at work making armor and weapons, were
not sure whether they knew of their plot, for the Greeks
were always drilling, and the archons had stated that they
were fitting out the hoplites with armor and swords of a
new pattern, a thing they did about every twenty years. The
chief men of the rich left nothing but the fighting to the
soldiers; to all the other preparations they applied their
business talents. But they made no change in their manner
of life, so when Budge later came to the Bath of the Rich,
he found his friends waiting to play poker.
When the game was over Budge told them firmly that there was to be a new kind of contest, a bloodless contest, for the championship this year. They showed no pleasure at learning it. The fact that it was new seemed to console them little for its bloodlessness, and they did not grow much more cheerful when he assured them it would make them laugh far more than killing....
Next day Budge spent a busy morning selecting the teams who should oppose one another in the coming championship. First he picked fifty from among a hundred young Greeks. He thought it well that the teams should not come into the great Square on the day entirely ignorant of the game; and before making his choice, he divided the hundred into two sides of fifty each and set them to it. He bothered them with no rules forbidding them to strike or kick one another, and the game was such an enjoyable sight that he let them go at it for an hour before he made his choice. Then he spent an even more enjoyable hour with a hundred young Canaanites, for they proved players of the wilder kind. Eleven of them had to be replaced after the game. Nicholas left the palace soon after breakfast and spent the morning with Sophron, inspecting the preparations to repel the Canaanite onslaught. Billy went with him as far as the plane, and after an hour's work on the engine went in search of Arisbe. Nicholas left Sophron soon after noon and betook himself to the Temple of Aphrodite, where Pyrrha showed him the shrines of the goddess. He was surprised to find no statues of her in those shrines—only pictures, in front of which were altars.
"It is strange that you have no statues of your goddess," he said. "In ancient Greece, three hundred years before your ancestors came here from Carthage, there were some of the greatest sculptors the world has ever known, and they carved chiefly statues of gods and goddesses."
"No, we have no sculptors; there are none in Megara," replied Pyrrha. "Like Aphrodite, Tanit too is represented only in paintings. There is a figure of Moloch, but it is made of bronze plates; his face is a painted bronze plate, and his arms are of bronze plates jointed and hinged to draw the victims into the furnace over which he stands. All the fine work in all the crafts is done by the Greeks; the Canaanites are poor craftsmen; in fact, they're dolts—outside of business."
"Then it is no wonder that they wish to enslave the Greeks. I suppose they mean to collar their industries and exploit them."
"They have not enslaved us yet, and they will not enslave many. Most of us know that it is better to be dead than a Canaanite slave, and the old men have been told off to make sure that the women and children do not fall into their hands alive," she said quickly.
He stared at her, hardly believing his ears. Truly, under the beauty and splendor of this golden city there were sinister depths!
At four o'clock he went back to the palace; the major-domo stopped him in the hall and told him that the Queen awaited him in the garden. Nicholas was not pleased to hear this, and before going to her he went up into his room, filled the magazine of his automatic, and put two clips of cartridges into his pocket.
He found the Queen in the shady and sheltered nook in which they had spent the other hours. As he came into it the gloom vanished from her face, and she dismissed her ladies.
But she greeted him coldly. "Why have you deserted me?" she asked.
"After our last meeting I did not know whether you desired to see me," said Nicholas.
She looked at him with somber eyes and said impatiently: "Of course I desired to see you I You children of the Moon pass all understanding. What is a slave girl to you?"
"Nothing," said Nicholas. "But we do not allow women to be hurt."
"But you hurt me!" she cried. "Are you not going to ask to be forgiven?"
"Well, no," said Nicholas coolly. "If I again caught you treating a woman cruelly, I should again shake you."
It was very plain to her that she would get no further on those lines, and she said with a penitent air: "I am beginning to see that I was wrong."
Nicholas doubted it.
She bade him sit down, and he sat down on the bank beside her, very ill at ease. She told him mournfully that she had missed him and that the hours of his absence had been empty and dreary. Then to his great astonishment and discomfort she burst into tears and threw her arms round his neck, declaring that she loved him and he was treating her cruelly.
Nicholas was wholly at a loss how to deal with this situation. "I—I like you very much," he said lamely and untruthfully.
"Ah, you love some other woman!" she cried fiercely. "Who is she?"
It was plain to him that Pyrrha had in Eloul all the enmity she needed, that it would be senseless indeed to make this cruel and dangerous creature her enemy also.
"There's a girl in my own country," he said.
She gazed at him with gloomy eyes and said scornfully: "A Moon girl! A pale, cold creature like yourself! What use is such an one to you? What you need is warmth—passion to melt your cold heart as Melcarth melts the snows of Agash. You must love me! You shall love me!"
NICHOLAS came back to his room, wearing the strained air of a man who has been wooed by a lovely woman who does not charm him.
Micipsa had found a heavy sword—doubtless a sword which had been hanging on the wall of one of the reception-rooms—and had been hard at work trying to recover his old skill in the use of it, for a cushion, hanging from a beam, was cut and pierced, and beads of sweat were rolling down Micipsa's face. "Don't overdo it," said Nicholas. "I will not. But I must lose no time. Trouble is coming, and it is coming soon," said Micipsa gravely.
So Micipsa knew! Well, he would know; he belonged to one of the leading families of the House of the Barcae, and had been going about as he liked. "The Greeks are my friends," said Nicholas quietly. "You are my master and my friend. Where you fight, I fight," said Micipsa simply.
Budge, dressed for supper, came in, as the Hymn of Tanit rose from the roofs of the eastern and northern and southern quarters of the city in an immense volume of sound.
Budge said gravely: "I sure don't like that. These guys put their hearts into it too hard for me. They'll scrap like hell. We came to this city at the wrong time," Budge went on in a grumbling tone. "What we wanted was a quiet time for a holiday, and now it's going to be all spoiled. This scrap coming on threatens to muss things up for months, and what do I get out of it?"
Nicholas thought for a few seconds; then he said: "With any luck you ought to get the Zaimph."
"Great Scott! That's a fact!" cried Budge, and the discontent vanished from his face.
"I can't promise it to you. But I think you ought to have it for coming in on the side of the Greeks, and I'll do my best to get it for you," said Nicholas. "Have you seen Simaetha since she showed you the Zaimph?"
"Sure," said Budge. "She was around last night, dancing. She's a nice li'l girl, Simaetha!"
Sophron, who was supping with the Queen, came quietly through the doorway; he glanced at Micipsa—-who was quick to interpret the glance, and went out.
Nicholas turned to Sophron and said: "Budge is very much interested in the Zaimph, and if we win, he wants it as his share of the spoils. Is there any reason why he should not have it?"
"The Zaimph? I was forgetting the Zaimph," said Sophron quickly. "If he dares to take it, he shall have it. I would not touch it for all the rubies in Megara. I do not meddle with the gods, and it is said that she always slays those who see the Zaimph. What might she not do to those who touch it?"
"I guess she won't do anything to me," said Budge. "Besides, I've seen it, and I'm still moving around and taking regular nourishment."
"Yes. Why shouldn't you have the Zaimph since you do not fear it?" said Sophron, looking at him thoughtfully. "But why should you wait till after the feast of Moloch? Why should you not have it now—tonight? Nothing would shake Eloul as badly as to lose the Zaimph; nothing would so daunt the Canaanites."
Budge hesitated; then he said: "But I couldn't just steal it."
"It wouldn't be theft. It would be an act of war," said Sophron.
"Sure it would. I never thought of that," said Budge with an air of relief. "But Eloul has ten men of the Sacred Legion guarding the entrance to the passage to the underground temple night and day, and ten priests in the shrine of the symbols, guarding the Zaimph itself."
"But he has surely no guard in the shrine of the Zaimph?" said Sophron.
"Nary a one; no priest except Eloul dares set eyes on the Zaimph. But if they hear anyone in the shrine they're going to risk riling Tanit, and dash in and knife him," said Budge, who had full information from Simaetha.
"Then all he has to do is not to be heard," said Sophron.
"I'll be silent, all right," said Budge.
AS they went down to the great hall to supper, the k
talk fell upon the change that the Greeks were making in
their armor. Sophron described the new breast-plate and
back-plate and spear with such an air of good faith that
he shook the belief of the Canaanite notables present
that some rumor of the plot had come to the ears of the
archons.
Then Budge said: "It's mighty strange that you folks haven't bows and arrows. You had your archers when you fought the Romans."
"There are stories," said Adherbal, "and I have seen pictures of archers in a papyrus that has been in my family since we came to Megara. But no one has ever seen a bow, for there is no wood in the country that will make bows. All of them were tried hundreds of years ago."
"Oh, well, you have ways of killing one another as it is," said Budge.
"Who talks of our killing one another? We do not kill one another!" said Adherbal, looking round with suspicious eyes.
In all politeness Nicholas could not go before he had danced with the Queen, and since he wished to keep her in as good temper as might be, he danced with her twice before he slipped away to find Pyrrha.
An hour later Nicholas returned. He made his way through the throng of guests in the hall and went upstairs, where he found Budge and Sophron. Budge had already changed into plus-fours.
"This is the gun to stop a rush at close quarters," he said, as he dropped a small pistol into his jacket pocket and picked up his attaché-case.
Nicholas wished them good luck, and they left. A hundred yards from the palace a waiting slave came from under the trees, carrying two Canaanite robes and head-dresses. They went into the deep shadow by the trunk and put on the robes over their clothes.
"A bit hampering," said Budge, drawing the robe over the attache-case.
"I'm used to it. I've worn one often," said Sophron. "Of late years it has not been safe for a Greek to go openly about the eastern and southern quarters of the city in his own dress."
BRISKLY they walked to the end of the Square, turned
left and were in narrow streets of tall houses, each of
which held many families; but now the houses were dark and
silent, and the streets were empty. Making a circuit, they
came to the back of the Bath of the Rich, where Sophron
knocked at a small door—three quick knocks, a pause,
then two more. The door opened and a man peered out at
them. "Abdalonlim," Sophron requested. Abdalonlim came, and
they went through the door down to the basement.
"The quarters of the deaf-mutes," said Sophron to Budge.
Abdalonlim, carrying a small lamp, led the way along a long, narrow passage, and up into the Bath itself. They crossed the great chamber. On the other side of it Sophron took the lamp from Abdalonlim, who went quickly back to the door at the top of the steps to the basement and through it and down them. When he had disappeared, they went into the side chamber, and Sophron drew the curtain across the door carefully. He crossed the room to a picture of a hunting-scene painted on the opposite wall, and placing his hand on the head of a lion crouching to spring, he pushed hard. The six-foot slab of marble on which the picture was painted, revolving on a pivot, opened inward revealing a narrow flight of stone steps that went down to the very foundations of the Bath.
Sophron motioned to Budge to go first; then he followed, stopping on the steps to push back the slab into its place, and showing Budge the bronze handle by which it could be pulled open. They went down the steps into a cold, dark passage, the air of which was none too fresh.
"The architects, the contractors, and the foremen of the gangs who built the new Bath of the Rich and the new Temple of Tanit on the sites of the old ones, eighty years ago, were all Greeks—only the labor was Canaanite—and they took advantage of it to give us access to our enemies' very heart," said Sophron. "We have not far to go to the secret shrine of Tanit."
"If we don't smother on the way. This air is foul," said Budge doubtfully.
"It is better breathing when we come under the temple. There is a shaft in the wall there and the fresh wind from Agash blows down it. Go quickly," said Sophron.
Budge went quickly, but even so he was staggering, with bursting lungs, before they came into fresher air, and they both leaned against the wall, drawing in long, relieving breaths.
About the middle of the temple they came to a flight of stone steps that rose upward in the wall.
"The walls of this temple seem just honeycombed with these passages and stairs," Budge observed.
"These run up to the top of the temple, and there is an entry onto every floor—one of them into the very treasure chamber," said Sophron.
They went on to the end of the passage. Sophron tapped a bronze handle, set in the wall, and said: "Here is the entrance to the secret shrine. The rest is for you to do. I do not meddle with the gods; I will not see the Zaimph: I will not touch it."
He blew out the lamp.
"But I've got to use my torch," said Budge. "For I must see what I'm doing. You step along the passage, so you can't see anything."
Sophron moved down the passage. Budge slipped off the robe that hampered him, gripped the handle, and very gently and slowly pulled the slab round and looked through the opening into pitch-black darkness. The sound of voices came through the curtain, closely drawn across the doorway of the shrine of the symbols.
He felt in his pocket and made sure that the butt of the small pistol was ready to his hand; then he switched on the torch. The ray fell on the shimmering veil and strange figure of the goddess.
He stepped through the opening and ran the ray over that strange iridescent fabric which was the Zaimph. He saw that it was not fastened anywhere, but draped over the bronze pegs fixed in the wall. He marked carefully how it hung, switched off the ray, and stepped quietly to it; his upraised hand found the delicate fabric, and he began to draw it very gently off the pegs. It came smoothly, and he gathered up the folds as it came.
Then it seemed to stick. He still pulled gently, but he pulled too hard. The farther folds had fallen round the ebony torso of the goddess; it overbalanced to his pull, and fell to the floor with a bang that sounded to him loud enough to wake the dead.
There was an outcry in the shrine of the symbols, but the Zaimph came clear; Budge clasped it in his left hand, dropped his right into his pocket, and snapped out the pistol.
Then the curtain was torn aside from the doorway; a group of heads dark against the dim light in the shrine of the symbols filled it; Budge jerked up the pistol and pulled the trigger, and a charge of stinging, blinding ammonia shot from the muzzle into the faces he could not see.
There was a choking and a gasping, a scuffling and a squirming; Budge jumped through the opening in the wall and closed it and sneezed.
"Have you got it?" asked Sophron.
"Sure I got it!" said Budge; and deftly he rolled up the Zaimph and thrust it into his attaché-case.
"Have you got it?" asked Sophron. "Sure I got it!" said Budge; and
deftly he rolled up the Zaimph and thrust it into his attaché-case.
THERE was confusion in the shrine of the symbols. Those of the priests whom the ammonia had struck staggered about gasping, and upon recovering their breath, howled dismally, believing themselves blinded for life. The others clamored to know what had happened to them, what they had seen. But they had seen nothing; blindness had smitten them out of the darkness.
Then two of those who had escaped the ammonia recovered their wits enough to rush up to Eloul's chamber and tell him that they had heard a noise in the secret shrine, and that blindness from out of the darkness had smitten five of them. Eloul raced down the staircases and into the passage from the main shrine, calling the guards at its entrance to follow him. He rushed into the shrine of the symbols to find five of the priests moaning lamentations for the eyesight they believed to be lost, and the others cowering in fright. Through the doorway of the secret shrine he could only see the darkness.
Savagely Eloul checked the lamentations, and soon learned what had happened. It was plain that something, a presence that smote with blindness, lurked in that darkness. But what was this presence?
What was to be done?
Light was his first need. He sent for lamps, and set them in front of the doorway of the secret shrine. The soldiers, careful not to look into it, pushed them over its threshold with their spears and lit it up.
Eloul approached the doorway gingerly, his hand up to shield his eyes. He saw the torso of the goddess lying on the floor and the wall, against which the Zaimph had hung, bare.
A strangled cry came from his parted lips. But he had to believe his eyes: the Zaimph had gone!
He shook with dread and horror and dismay.
No human hand had taken it. That was sure. It must be—it must be one of the gods from the Moon! Yes—the great god Budge!
He stood staring, sick at the appalling loss. Then he perceived that there was only one thing to do: hush it up, in any way, at any cost.
He pulled himself together, went to the doorway, and said in a steady enough voice: "There is nothing wrong. The goddess herself blinded those priests. Not even they, priests as they are, may look into her shrine. Officer, take your men back to the entrance of the passage."
He entered and drew the curtain and heard the soldiers file out of the shrine of the symbols. Then he prostrated himself before the fallen torso, and after a long prayer, beseeching the goddess to forgive him for laying hands on her sacred image, he raised it with reverent hands and set it back on the black stone. Then, with hands raised high, he invoked her dreadful vengeance on the thief.
He went through the doorway and drew the curtain across it, and without a glance at the moaning priests, went back slowly, still shaken, thinking hard, along the passage and into the chief shrine. Already a Greek painter had restored the picture of the goddess damaged in Budge's previous raid; the altar had been repaired; the scattered offerings had been gathered together and heaped up beside it. Eloul crossed the shrine to the bronze gong beside the main entrance and beat on it. The scores of priests and priestesses in the temple and its precincts came hurrying from their beds to its booming, and ranging themselves in their hierarchy before the altar, waited silently for his message.
He mounted the altar steps and standing on the topmost, said: "Priests and priestesses of Tanit, Holy Queen of the Night, there has been a miracle, great and wonderful. The mighty goddess has blinded five of her priests who dared to look into her secret shrine, though the shrine was dark and her image and the Zaimph were hidden. Go through the city in procession, singing the Hymn of Tanit, and tell the people."
In ten minutes the procession was marshaled, and the Hymn of Tanit broke out on the silent night, waking the sleeping city, and swelled by the devout from every house it passed. Eloul went back to his chamber, wearing an air of crafty satisfaction.
But presently his face was again blank, as he pondered the loss, and the weakening of the power of the goddess.
Would it bring misfortune and failure? He called to the young priest who waited on him: "Fetch me the Keeper of the Records!"
Magdassin, the Keeper of the Records, was an old man and slow, but at last the young priest ushered him into the room.
"Magdassin, there is a matter I wish to know: It might be that the Zaimph should one day be stolen. In what manner should the mighty goddess, Queen of Heaven, be appeased?" said Eloul in careless accents.
"The Zaimph could never be stolen. The hand of the thief would wither from the wrist," said Magdassin.
"But surely there is a legend that it was stolen and a virgin brought it back—hundreds of years ago—before the Zaimph was brought from Carthage," said Eloul.
"Yes. But it was stolen by the magician of the South, the mighty black one. There are no such magicians nowadays," said Magdassin in a quavering but confident voice.
"Nor such virgins," said Eloul sourly.
"It will be in the book of the Ordinances of the Gods—if indeed there be any way of appeasing the goddess," and Magdassin, and he tottered out.
But Eloul did not sleep. Why had the children of the Moon stolen the sacred veil? Had they taken it to rob the Canaanite Megara of her luck at this crisis in her fortunes? Truly they were over-friendly with the cursed Greeks. Yes; it was the Greeks—those cursed Greeks!
Eloul lay still, and let his crafty mind work. For hours he heard the Hymn of Tanit rising and falling throughout the city. At last he found the way. He laughed....
Dawn came, and with the dawn Magdassin.
"Chief Priest of Tanit the Queen of Heaven, I have found the appeasement," he said with quiet pride.
Eloul raised himself on his elbow, smiling: "What is the manner of it?" he said eagerly.
"The noblest virgin in Megara must be sacrificed to Tanit at dawn," said Magdassin.
"Sacrifice a virgin to Tanit!" cried Eloul in stupefied accents. "But only the children of Moloch sacrifice virgins or children to their bloodthirsty master!"
"Ah, but if the Zaimph be stolen, all things change," said Magdassin confidently. "And only by the sacrifice of a virgin can Tanit be appeased. It is so written in the book of the Ordinances of the Gods."
Eloul sank back on to the couch and yawned. He must not seem eager in the matter.
"And what is the manner of the sacrifice?" he said carelessly.
"The virgin must be thrown into the sea at daybreak, for Tanit is also the Queen of the Sea and Ruler of the Tides—whatever those may be," said Magdassin.
"And how should we do that when we have no sea? The sea is hundreds of miles away—as the story goes," said Eloul.
Magdassin sank feebly into a chair and wrinkled yet more his furrowed brow. "As I see it, and I am the Interpreter of the Ordinances, the sacrifice will appease the goddess if the maiden drown," he said. "Tanit rules all waters. Therefore she rules the cisterns. Throw the virgin into the water-chute from the aqueduct, and she will drown—and the Queen of the Sea and Heaven will be appeased."
Eloul considered the pronouncement for a few seconds; then he said gravely: "You are a man of good counsel and very wise, Magdassin. Should the Zaimph ever be stolen, that is what I will do. But your rest has been broken, and you have worked many hours; you are weary. Drink!"
He raised the flagon on the table beside his couch and filled the cup to the brim. With a word of thanks Magdassin raised it to his-lips, and slowly he drained the cup.
"And who is the noblest virgin in Megara?" said Eloul idly.
"Pyrrha, the daughter of Sophron and High Priestess of Aphrodite. She is a descendant of the Eupatridae of Athens, and they are older than the House of the Barcae," said Magdassin.
"You know everything, Magdassin," said Eloul in a sleepy voice. "But you are weary. Sleep."
Warmed by the wine, the old man rose and went out on firm feet, with his head in the air.
"And by tomorrow you will have forgotten everything that has passed. That wine is full strong for so old a head," thought Eloul.
He smiled again, an evil smile, and then he frowned. It would be difficult to get the girl before the Festival of Moloch. Yet Tanit must be appeased at once—before the struggle began. The frown suddenly cleared from his brow.... It would not be difficult to get the girl—he would appeal to Rhodopis!
BUDGE sneezed again and gently packed away the rest of the Zaimph into his attache-case and closed it, while Sophron watched, almost incredulously.
"And that's a good night's work," he said in a tone of immense satisfaction. "It ought to jolt that yellow-faced guy good and hard."
"I should be surer of that if I knew how that crafty eunuch was going to try to get round it," said Sophron doubtfully. "He is sure to suspect you and try to get it back; and he will stick at nothing."
Abdalonlim was waiting for them in the basement, and before they went out into the street he made sure that it was empty. They came back to the Square briskly and presently handed over their Canaanite robes to Sophron's slave, who was waiting for them in the dark shadow of the tree. They walked to the palace calmly, and at the gates Sophron bade Budge good night.
Budge went up to his room and drew the curtain across the doorway, took the Zaimph out of the attache-case and dwelt on its beauties with gloating eyes. Of a sudden the priests and priestesses of Tanit, marching in procession out of the gates of her temple, broke into the great hymn. It startled him.
He turned sharply to the window, frowning. What did that mean?
Quickly he folded the Zaimph, wrapped it in a fine silk coverlet from his couch and packed it away at the bottom of a suitcase. Then he went to the window and listened to the hymn of Tanit awaking the city, with thousands of voices swelling its volume. It was still roaring when he fell asleep.
HE was awakened early next morning by sounds of
hammering, and went to the window to see hundreds of
slaves raising low stands round the sides of the Square
for the poorer spectators of the football match for the
championship of Megara. At noon the brilliantly garbed
crowd began to flock into the Square, and under the rough
shepherding of the hoplites was marshaled to the stands.
At two o'clock the roofs of the buildings round the Square
began to fill with the yet more brilliantly arrayed wealthy
families, Greek and Canaanite. At a quarter to three, amid
loud acclamations from the crowd, which being in a good
temper welcomed any opportunity of shouting itself hoarse,
Queen Rhodopis took her seat on the raised throne on the
edge of the roof of the palace. On either side of her
throne sat the Suffetes, the archons, the members of the
Grand Council, and the heads of the House of the Barcae.
Immediately on the right of the throne were three seats.
On two of these sat Billy and Budge; the seat of Nicholas,
next to her, was empty.
Rhodopis looked at it and frowned. She turned to Budge and said sharply: "Where is Neek?"
"Search me!" said Budge, in Canaanite, but he did not look toward the Temple of Aphrodite.
Eloul, who sat on her left, leaned forward and said: "Surely, great Queen, that is the young Moon God sitting beside the High Priestess of Aphrodite on the roof of her temple."
Rhodopis turned sharply. Nicholas sat beside Pyrrha, on a dais of the roof of the Temple of Aphrodite. The two were talking earnestly and smiling at one another.
"A beautiful pair," said Eloul in suave accents. "If only the gods mated with mortals, now! But of course it may be that Moon Gods do."
Nicholas sat beside Pyrrha... "A beautiful pair," said
Eloul in suavely. "If only the gods mated with mortals."
"What do you mean?" said Rhodopis sharply.
Before Eloul could answer the question,—and he was in no hurry to answer it, for he wished his words to sink in,—a burst of shouting greeted the entry onto the field of the rival teams. They were a fine sight: the Canaanites in orange tunics, the Greeks in blue, a hundred fit and hard young men.
The Greek captains won the toss; the two teams fell into the formation prescribed by Budge; he kicked off, and the game began. It was a furious game, for the Canaanite formation went to pieces on the instant and every one of them raced for the ball and pursued it in a body all over the ground, yelling, the three goal-keepers—Budge had trebled everything and still had men to spare—well to the fore. There were tremendous rushes, tremendous scrimmages. For five minutes the crowd watched the game in silence; then it began to yell, and the Canaanite team in close array went, screaming, through the Greek goal-posts, the hidden ball somewhere in the middle of them.
The Greeks quickly adapted themselves to these shock tactics, and kicking off, charged in their turn in a body and rushed the Canaanites before they could get together, kept the ball, and took it through the Canaanite goal. After the next kick-off the Canaanites were ready for them, and there was a great scrimmage; the Greeks at last came through with the ball into the unguarded Canaanite half with a clean run to the undefended goal, and again rushed the ball through the posts. The crowd was now really yelling, and the booming Iddibal danced madly on the roof of the palace.
So the game went—furious scrimmages, furious rushes, the steadier Greeks scoring two goals to the Canaanites' one. Not till the second half did the game settle down and the backs come into play behind the line, or rather the body, of forwards, and single players could show their merit. All the while the crowd was finding it more thrilling than the old sword-and-buckler fights of the champions; there was less blood, but so much more movement! It yelled itself hoarse. Football had come to Megara, and it had come to stay.
Probably Rhodopis was the only spectator who did not enjoy the game at all; she was glad when a long and final burst of shouting and howling announced the victory of the Greeks, and the Greek team and the Greek crowd broke into a roaring paean of victory; for she was impatient to have the truth from Eloul.
She turned to him and said sharply: "What did you mean by what you said about the Moon Gods mating with mortals?"
Eloul looked round the crowded roof. "This is no place to talk," he said.
Queen Rhodopis rose and moved toward the staircase, her ladies falling in behind her.
"Way for the Queen! Way for the Queen!" cried her chamberlain, and the throng drew aside, leaving a clear path for her and Eloul.
On the first floor she bade her train go on to the great hall and entertain her guests, then turned along the corridor with Eloul to the wing in which she chiefly lived. She led the way into a room that overlooked the gardens. She clapped her hands, and a slave brought wine.
ELOUL slowly emptied his cup; then he said: "And you
did not know that the Moon God Neek loves that cursed
girl?"
"He does not!" said Rhodopis firmly.
"Then those who keep watch for me lie," said Eloul calmly.
"But when a young man—I mean a young god, though in love the gods are as men—spends every free hour with a lovely maiden,—for no one can deny that that cursed girl is lovely,—it is natural to believe that he loves her."
The face of the Queen had grown darker and darker in a scowling wrath as she listened to him; of a sudden she burst out: "Yes: you speak the truth, and you love to speak it! But the Moon God has deceived me and mocked me and lied!"
"And which of the gods regards the lies of a lover?" said Eloul cynically. "Why should he not lie?"
Rhodopis seemed to choke; then she said: "Yes, you are right. It is not the fault of Neek—he had to lie. It is the fault of that shameless hussy! That brazen High Priestess has stolen him from me!"
"It may be; it may not," said Eloul in judicial accents, watching her carefully. "It is full early to say that she has stolen him. But that she is trying to steal him is certain. Now, if she were out of your way—"
He paused, and she broke in furiously: "Out of my way! How can I get her out of my way? The High Priestess of Aphrodite—Sophron's daughter! How could it be done? You talk like a fool!"
"It has to be done," said Eloul calmly. "Sit down!"
He had dropped his usual gentle, half-sneering manner and turned to her a face full of hard purpose—the face of the man of force that he was. Dominated, she obeyed.
IN a harsh voice he said: "Before the sun is above Agash
tomorrow, that accursed girl must die." Her eyes opened
wide, and she said quietly: "Eloul, you are mad."
"I am not mad!" he snapped angrily. "I am troubled. The Zaimph has been stolen."
"The Zaimph! Stolen!" she cried in unbelieving amazement. "It cannot be! No man in Megara, either Greek or Canaanite, would dare to risk the vengeance of Tanit."
"What a man of Megara might not dare, a Moon God might. And a Moon God has," he said somberly. "Not Neek?" she said quickly.
"I do not know which of the three. It does not matter. It may have been Neek, for Sophron is behind it—as he or that accursed girl has been behind a score of affronts that have belittled Tanit in the eyes of the people and exalted her rival and enemy Aphrodite. Tanit is wrathy with us. That is certain. Tomorrow is the eve of the Feast of Moloch, and before the Feast of Moloch, Tanit must be appeased."
"How?" said Rhodopis.
"The noblest virgin of Megara must be thrown into the sea at dawn, and Pyrrha is the noblest virgin in Megara."
The Queen's somber eyes brightened with a sudden sparkle; she drew herself up and said haughtily: "What words are these? I, Rhodopis, the descendant of Hamilcar Barca, the conqueror of Rome, am the noblest virgin of Megara!"
"So?" he said coldly. "Then you would be the sacrifice to appease the wrath of Tanit at dawn tomorrow?"
"I would not!" she said with decision.
"Well, then?"
They were silent; then she said: "But the sea is far away. How could you reach it before tomorrow dawns? How could you reach it at all? Will the Moon Gods lend you their chariot to carry her to it?"
"The sea of Megara is the great cistern at the foot of the aqueduct. Magdassin, the Interpreter of the Ordinances, has said it. At dawn tomorrow I throw Pyrrha into the water-chute of the aqueduct, and she drowns. Tanit is appeased, and you are rid of her."
She gazed at him with eyes that slowly grew bright as she saw Nichols freed from the wiles of her rival and his course to herself clear, and she said: "You are a faithful friend, Eloul."
"I am a faithful friend," said Eloul in ready agreement. "But I need your help. It will not be easy for me to seize Pyrrha. It must be done secretly, for I do not wish to have to fight a thousand hoplites at the aqueduct. Moreover the people would learn that the Zaimph has been stolen, and that they must never know. You are the only person who can make it easy for me to seize Pyrrha secretly and sacrifice her without anyone knowing that she is in my hands."
"I? How?" said Rhodopis quickly and eagerly.
"Tonight you give the feast of the championship at the palace. Pyrrha is your guest. You will be gracious to her—but soon after midnight lure her out into the gardens. It will be easy; the great hall will be hot with the dancing. Bring her to the door in the eastern wall. I will have a score of my priests waiting. They will bring her secretly to the temple."
"I understand; I will be sweet to her—very sweet. Why not? She dies, and will trouble me no more," said Rhodopis and she laughed softly and cruelly.
They stood, smiling at one another, well pleased.
A hush had fallen on the Square. The crowd was moving slowly out of it.
Of a sudden a great voice cried: "Be silent!"
"The voice of Sophron! I know it," said Rhodopis.
The hush deepened as the crowd halted; the great voice cried: "Tanit has lost the Zaimph! The Zaimph has been stolen!"
"And that's given Eloul the jolt of a lifetime!" said Budge in a pleased tone as Sophron drew the mouth of the megaphone from between the opening in the drawn curtains and stepped back from the window.
"It will surely give the dog trouble and keep him busy," said Sophron with little less pleasure.
A hubbub of excited cries rose from the Square, and the Canaanite crowd, dismayed and frightened, came flocking back, clamoring to know how and when the Zaimph had been stolen, what would happen now that the luck of Megara had gone, how could the thief be caught, how could the Zaimph be brought back?
"Curse Sophron!" snarled Eloul.
He turned from Rhodopis, and forgetting his priestly dignity, ran down into the gardens and through them to the door in the eastern wall and so came to the Temple of Tanit by streets clear of the crowd. He found the priests flocking into the main shrine, as troubled and fearful as the crowd itself. He walked quietly to the altar, mounted the steps and waved his hand for silence.
"This is a lie of the Greeks," he said calmly. "The Zaimph is safe in the secret shrine. Bring my robes. I will speak to the people."
A murmur of relief greeted his words, and the Keepers of the Robes hurried for them and brought one of those he wore in processions in honor of the goddess. Three minutes later he came out, with a score of priests behind him, on the roof of the first tier of the temple, a dazzling figure in the low rays of the setting sun, his tall headdress and cape a blaze of sapphires, the border of his white robe a blaze of rubies.
The crowd shouted. Again he raised his hand, and the crowd was silent.
"This is a lie of the Greeks," he said, and his shrill voice carried clearly to the edge of the crowd and beyond it. "Some follower of the Earth Goddess has tried to delude you. The Zaimph of the Queen of Heaven is safe in the secret shrine."
A DEEP murmur of relief came from the crowd, and then
it shouted for joy. Eloul let it shout for a time; then he
raised his hand again, and it again fell silent.
Then he said: "If anyone doubts that this is so and would see for himself, let him, if he does not fear the wrath of Tanit, come into the temple, and I will lead him to the secret shrine, and he shall look on the Zaimph and be sure."
The crowd, amazed at the offer, kept silence for nearly a minute; then a clamor rose. Most of them shouted that they believed; others muttered to one another that none but madmen would risk the wrath of Tanit. No one came forward to accept the offer; and presently, reassured, they began again to move out of the Square, on their way home.
Eloul's counter-stroke came, faintly enough, to the window of Budge's room in the palace; but they heard it.
Sophron said in careless accents that showed he was neither surprised nor vexed: "I told you the cunning dog would get out of it. There isn't a Canaanite in Megara who would dream of accepting that offer."
"Isn't there, now?" said Budge. "But say, Sophron, why did you megaphone that it had been stolen? What we agreed was that it was just an act of war, not stealing. I wouldn't steal a Zaimph—no matter how badly I hankered after it. 'Captured' was what you ought to have said—'captured'!"
"It was a slip of the tongue," said Sophron.
EVEN finer, that night, was the feast than that which had celebrated the coming of the Moon Gods, for it had been the custom since the founding of the contest for the championship, for the queen, or king, of Megara to give the chief feast of the year on that night, and the cooks and butlers had been preparing for it for many days.
The Moon Gods again sat on the right hand of the Queen, with Sophron and the Suffetes on her left, and again Pyrrha was seated next to the couch of Nicholas. Queen Rhodopis had had them placed side by side purposely. She would see for herself!
They made no display of their fondness, but their eyes told her their secret. She was sick with jealousy and anger. But she smiled on both of them, and her words were gracious. She told herself that she could afford to smile and be gracious, for after daybreak Nicholas' eyes would never again look into Pyrrha's, glowing with that light of love.
Eloul gave no heed to the talk of the Suffetes and Sophron; the crafty eunuch again watched the Moon Gods. Were they gods, or were they men? They looked like men—but no man had ever come and gone invisibly, like the thief of the Zaimph!
And what part would they play in the struggle with the Greeks? Neek would side with the Greeks for Pyrrha's sake. But there would be no Pyrrha. Budge should be on the side of the Canaanites: his friends were Canaanites—he had made no friends among the Greeks; and there was Simaetha. He smiled craftily. And Beel? Eloul thought little of Billy—a young and foolish god! Yes, the Moon Gods were divided, and he had divided them. Whatever strange weapons they brought to the fight, those weapons would be used on both sides with equal effect; they would counteract one another. Eloul had only to appease Tanit and all would be well. His eyes rose, malignant and gloating, to the face of Pyrrha; he thought joyfully of how she would scream and choke in the depths of the great cistern.
Pyrrha turned and saw his eyes on her, and shivered at their malignity. Then, smiling, she said: "They tell me, Eloul, that you have offered to show the Zaimph to anyone who doubts that it is in the secret shrine. Will you show it to me if I come to the Temple of Tanit tomorrow? If I say that Tanit has not lost her secret veil, no one will doubt any more."
Eloul perceived in her challenge another affront to the goddess, and said sharply: "I will not! No woman may enter the secret shrine! No woman has ever entered it, nor ever shall!"
"You seem very sure of that," she said with a curious smile. "But surely the High Priestess of Aphrodite may enter it."
"Never!" Eloul almost shouted.
"What about me?" broke in Budge. "I've been hankering to see that Zaimph! And I guess if I say it's there, everybody will believe me."
Eloul was taken aback; but he was relieved to hear that Budge was not the thief; and this was a man, not an accursed girl. He looked at him with indifferent eyes, but his mind worked quickly. Then he said suavely: "Surely a Moon God may see the Zaimph and the Queen of Heaven not be wroth! I will take you to the secret shrine tomorrow."
He would do nothing of the kind; on the morrow he would have Budge told, whenever he came, that he was not in the temple—on the morrow and till after the Feast of Moloch.
The laughing, jesting guests feasted on, hour after hour, as if no shadow of battle, murder, and sudden death rested on that golden city. Rhodopis was most gracious to Pyrrha. At the end of the feast, while slaves were clearing away the tables to give the dancers more room, and Pyrrha was beside her in the midst of a group of ladies, while Nicholas was talking to Budge and Sophron on the other side of the hall, Rhodopis slipped her hand through Pyrrha's arm, and said: "A little air, ladies, before we dance again!" And they moved out of the hall and into the gardens in a body.
Rhodopis made no haste; talking quietly about the feast, she drew Pyrrha away from her ladies into the shadow of a clump of trees so deftly that they were not missed, and then toward the door in the eastern wall.
Pyrrha went with her readily enough. The fresh and fragrant air and the dim, starlit night, so soothing after the noise and brightness of the feast, fitted her happy mood; her mind was full of Nicholas, and this was the very scene for lovers' dreams. She would presently be with him, and they would dance.
The awakening came suddenly. A score of white-robed priests rushed out from among the trees that screened the door; a shawl, blinding her and preventing an outcry, was thrown over her head; a dozen skinny hands gripped her, preventing any struggle; a rope was wound quickly and tightly round her, pinning her arms to her sides, and the priests were hustling her toward the door.
In her relief and triumph Rhodopis lost her royal self-control. She laughed shrilly. "Fool!" she cried. "Remember, when you drown, that I shall be Neek's comforter—that I shall soon teach him to forget you!"
THRILLING with triumph, Rhodopis went quickly back
through the gardens and slipped from the shadow of the
trees in among her chattering ladies. A dance had just
begun, and Nicholas was standing beside the door looking
for Pyrrha.
"I will dance this one with you, Neek," said Rhodopis, smiling at him.
The lady was his hostess; the wishes of royalty are commands. He smiled stiffly and with no warmth, and they danced. Rhodopis seemed possessed by restrained exultation; she laughed now and again with no reason. It was a long dance, and after it she kept Nicholas beside her. He was hard put to it not to show his impatience. He had been looking for Pyrrha among the dancers and the onlookers all the while, and was astonished that he did not see her. As soon as Rhodopis let him go he went in search of her.
She was not in the great hall and he went into the gardens, and searched. He could not find her. He came back and asked some of the priestesses of Aphrodite and the Queen's ladies if they had seen her. None of them had seen her since midnight. He did not ask Rhodopis, the one person who could have told him where she was.
He went to Sophron and told him that he could not find Pyrrha, that no one had seen her since midnight.
"It may be that she was tired," said Sophron, "or her head ached, and she has gone back to the temple, or home."
"She would have told me," said Nicholas.
Still uneasy, he went briskly to the Temple of Aphrodite. The temple guards had not seen Pyrrha. He went into the temple and asked the priestesses on duty in the main entrance if she had returned. Seven of them, eager to oblige a lover, went quickly to find out. They were sure that she had not returned.
Still more uneasy, Nicholas hurried to Sophron's house. She was not there. He went quickly back to the palace to find Sophron. When Nicholas told him that Pyrrha was neither in the temple nor in his house, Sophron became uneasy in his turn.
"This is strange," he said gravely. "I do not like it. If any ill has befallen her, it would be Eloul's doing." lie frowned. "I wonder whether the theft of the Zaimph has anything to do with this! I must try to find out whether it is Eloul."
He went briskly about it, questioning a score of people, but all that he could learn was that when the feast came to an end Pyrrha had gone out into the gardens with Rhodopis and her ladies; that she must have slipped away from them into the shadow of the trees, for she had not come back into the great hall with them. When he inquired of Rhodopis, she professed ignorance of this.
"I must get home and set my men onto this," he said to Nicholas in troubled accents.
"Wait for me," said Nicholas. He ran up to his room and put on rubber-soled shoes and armed himself quietly in order not to awake the sleeping Micipsa.
Leaving word that he was to be informed at once should any news come of Pyrrha, Sophron led Nicholas into the middle of the western quarter, where the poorer Greek citizens dwelt in small houses. One after another he had the masters of four houses awakened, and took counsel with them about Pyrrha; one after another they made haste, garbed in Canaanite dress, to the eastern quarter.
As the last one went, Sophron said to Nicholas: "I have fifty spies in the Canaanite city. Half of them have been on the watch tonight. If any of them have seen anything out of the common, I shall know it in an hour."
AS they went through the quarter they found women and older men everywhere at work; in the open spaces the fires of forges were blazing, and the clanging of hammers and the grating of steel on grindstones were loud in the night.
"They're hard at it," said Nicholas.
"The smiths and the older men and the women can sleep when the Feast of Moloch is over. The fighting-men must sleep now," said Sophron.
Passing the plane on the way back, Nicholas fetched from it two electric torches, and gave one of them to Sophron. They went into Sophron's house and put on the white robes and head-dresses of priests of Tanit and waited. Presently the four spy-masters came one after another to report that none of the spies had seen anything uncommon in the eastern or southern quarter, and the Temple of Tanit had been as quiet as on any other night.
When the last of them had told his news and gone, Sophron paced up and down the room, frowning, for more than a minute; then he said:
"We ourselves must search. If Eloul has her, she is in the Temple of Tanit."
Nicholas rose with a sigh of relief—any action was better than this waiting!
Sophron buckled on a short sword under his priest's robe, and they set out quickly. They kept in the shadow of the trees till they came into the Canaanite agora, then crossed it and came by the streets through which Sophron had brought Budge, to the door of the slaves' quarters under the Bath of the Rich. There was no clang of hammers or grating of grindstones in the Canaanite city. It slept.
Abdalonlim came to the door. Sophron told him that Pyrrha was missing and sent him to ask the deaf-mutes whether any of them had seen anything out of the common since midnight, for, working by day, they were wont to prowl about the city after dark. He came back to say that one of them had seen a party of the priests of Tanit coming from the gardens of the palace, but they were huddled together and he could not say whether or not they had a prisoner with them.
"I wonder," said Sophron, frowning. "I wonder!"
They went through the Bath into the underground passage and to the basement of the Temple of Tanit. They did not go to the secret shrine, but up the staircase in the wall to the first floor. Slowly and gently Sophron drew open a revolving slab of marble an inch or two and peeped through the opening. The coast was clear; he drew his sword and keeping the blade hidden in the folds of his robe, stepped out into a corridor, dimly lighted by a lamp in the middle of it. Nicholas drew his automatic from his pocket and followed him. Sophron pushed the slab to, and they stood listening. From the end of the corridor came faintly the voices of women.
"Those priestesses never sleep at night," said Sophron. "Now you mark carefully the way we go, so that if anything happens to me you can go back to the passage quickly."
They went along the corridor briskly, as if they were on an errand, but met no one. The corridor turned to the right repeatedly; it brought them back to the entrance of the secret passage. They had explored the whole floor, listening at many curtained doorways, and peeping into many rooms. They went up the staircase to the second story and drew that also blank. In that story were three rooms with doors, all three locked. Sophron knocked at each of them; at two no answer came to his knocking; at the third a man's voice asked sleepily what they wanted, and the man came to the door and shook it; he was a prisoner.
They went up to the third story, in which were the chambers of Eloul and the higher orders of the priesthood, and about it Sophron moved very carefully. Outside the curtained doorway of Eloul's chamber he paused and listened.
They heard Eloul say: "When the rim of the sun rises above Agash, I sacrifice. Do not forget the veil and the wreath and the white robe. Magdassin says that they are in order."
There was a murmur of assent; and peeping through the curtain, Sophron saw the eunuch lying on a couch and three priests standing before him, evidently taking instructions about a point of ritual. Sophron plucked Nicholas' robe and drew him along the corridor. "Nothing to do with our errand," he whispered.
They searched that story as they had searched the one below; then they searched the fourth story, with no better fortune. Yet they had been within twenty feet of Pyrrha, imprisoned in an inner room with no door onto the corridor!
"She is not in the temple," said Sophron at last in disappointed accents. They were not long coming out into the open air, and made haste back to the palace, the Temple of Aphrodite, and Sophron's house. Pyrrha had not returned; there was no word of her.
"It will be dawn soon. Maybe she will come back in the morning," said Sophron; but he was frowning and there was little hope in his tone.
NICHOLAS walked slowly back to the palace with a heavy
heart—full of fear for Pyrrha, but fear of what,
he did not know. He came up to his room to find Micipsa
awake.
"I awoke and found that you had not come home, and I was troubled," said Micipsa in a reproachful tone. "These are no times to be out late, unless I am with you."
"And I am grievously troubled," said Nicholas. "The High Priestess of Aphrodite is missing, and we can get no word of her. There are no times for a girl whom Eloul hates, to be missing."
"But Rhodopis can tell you where she has gone," said Micipsa.
"Rhodopis?" Nicholas cried in amazement.
"Yes; about midnight I was in the gardens and I saw Rhodopis and Pyrrha together."
"Yes; with Rhodopis' ladies," said Nicholas.
"No; by themselves—on the path to the door in the eastern wall. They went out of sight among the trees in front of it. Then presently Rhodopis came back alone," said Micipsa.
Rhodopis! Rhodopis should tell him on what business Pyrrha had gone. It was no time for ceremony; Nicholas rushed down the corridor to her room.
The drowsy guards sprang forward to hold the door, but when they saw who it was, they fell back, saluting, and he entered. He told the startled slaves that he must see the Queen at once, and he said it in a tone that sent them scuttling off to wake her and tell her.
Rhodopis had been a long while falling asleep, and the sudden awakening jarred her already ragged nerves. What had that fool Eloul done, that Nicholas knew to whom to come for information? Pyrrha's fate should not have been known for days; it need never have been known.
But she arranged herself in a becoming attitude and bade the slaves bring him in.
He came into the bedchamber, too full of his purpose to be surprised at being admitted to it, to find her lying propped up high on the pillows, her bare arms very white on the dark silk coverlet, her eyes bright with anger.
"Where is Pyrrha?" he said sharply and sternly.
"What is Pyrrha to you?" she said, no less sharply.
"She is my friend and a daughter of a friend," said Nicholas.
She glowered at him; then in faintly sneering accents she said slowly: "Well, you will never see your friend and daughter of a friend any more."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I have told you all you need to know," she said.
"You haven't told me anything I need to know. Where is Pyrrha?" he said, with enforced calm.
Suddenly she found his eyes daunting and understood how foolish she had been to tell him so much.
"I will tell you no more!" she cried.
"You will tell me everything," he said; he took a quick step forward and grasped her arm. "Tell me where she is!" He jerked her up into a sitting position.
At the look in his eyes, panic seized her.
"It is your fault—you stole the Zaimph!" she cried.
"I did not!" he snapped.
"Well, one of you Moon Gods stole it, and Tanit is angry. Her anger must be appeased. It can only be appeased by the sacrifice of the noblest virgin in Megara. I could not be sacrificed, for I am the Queen. And after me Pyrrha is the noblest virgin in Megara. She takes my place."
"Sacrificed? Where? When?" he almost shouted.
She winced; then she set her teeth—she would say no more, let him do what he would. Then she looked at the window and saw the brightening sky. It was almost daybreak; it was safe to tell.
"You are too late," she said.
"Where? When?" he shouted again, and shook her.
Again panic took her: "Eloul throws her into the water-chute—of the aqued-d-duct and she d-d-drowns in the g-g-great cistern—as the sun rises ab-b-bove Agash!" she said, stammering in a terrified haste to tell him.
He loosed her and ran out. He dashed into Billy's room and shouted to him: "Get to Sophron! Tell him that Eloul is drowning Pyrrha in the great cistern at sunrise!" He dashed into Budge's room and shouted to him: "Eloul is drowning Pyrrha in the great cistern at sunrise. Bring your slaves with ropes!" He dashed into his own room and said to Micipsa: "Take me to the great cistern! Quickly!"
Micipsa caught up his sword; they raced down the stairs and out of the palace. Nicholas glanced at the sky above the mountain. It was bright, too bright! They ran across the Square toward the southern quarter.
PYRRHA'S struggles had assured her that she could not free her arms; the muffling shawl prevented her wasting her breath in questions to her captors. So she pondered on her plight. Of course she had been kidnaped by Eloul. But why? He must believe his vengeance sure; why had he not waited a day, till the Feast of Moloch? Was she a hostage?
Her captors hustled her quickly through the streets, and presently she knew that she was in the Temple of Tanit. They led her up to the third floor into an inner chamber, and left her. She moved about it gingerly, and presently her shin touched what seemed to be a couch. She slipped off a sandal and felt the object with her bare foot.
It was a couch. She sat down on it; presently she succeeded in shaking off the muffling shawl and found herself in pitch darkness. For a while she tried to work off the rope which was wound tightly round her, and cutting her arms. The effort was vain, but she writhed and wriggled till it was less painful; then she stretched herself out on the couch and quietly went to sleep.
An hour later she was awakened, and two priests led her into Eloul's chamber. Smiling, and triumphant, he was waiting for her. She met his malignant stare with an air so cool, and eyes so serene that his fell before them.
But he said in jeering accents: "So, this is the end of your blasphemous mocking and affronting the Queen of Heaven!"
"What is?" she said coolly.
"Death, fool! Death!" he snarled.
She gazed at him, and her face grew scornful, but she said nothing, thinking the less she said the more she would learn.
"Yes. At last the mighty goddess punishes your insolence," he went on in a tone of malignant triumph. "When your foolish lover stole the Zaimph, he did not know the penalty you would pay for his crime. Tanit is wroth, and must be appeased. Do you know how she must be appeased?"
She gazed at him with incurious eyes.
He shuffled his feet in a sudden exasperation at her silence, then went on: "To appease her, the noblest virgin in Megara must be thrown at dawn into the great cistern to drown. You are the noblest virgin in Megara; that is your fate."
She laughed gently and said in taunting accents: "Great words, Eloul! But what will happen to Tanit and her High Priest if I drown? When my father hears of it, her temple will burn and her High Priest will hang."
He lost patience and turned to the priests: "Take her away!" he snarled. "Unbind her; let her rest and give her food and wine." He paused, and added with an ugly, twisted smile: "The gods like their victims sleek."
WHEN the priests had unbound her and gone, Pyrrha sat
down on the couch and rubbed her arms ruefully. She knew
now the peril she was in, and it was daunting. She herself
could do nothing; but Neek and her father were at liberty.
But how would they learn of her plight?
The door opened and a priest entered, carrying a lamp, a white robe, a white veil, a garland of white lilies. Curtly he bade her put them on, left the lamp, and went out. For a little while she did not stir; then with a sinking heart she slipped off the robe she was wearing and put on the robe of sacrifice, the veil and the garland. It seemed to her almost as if the action sealed her fate. Presently the priest came back, bringing food and wine. She was too wise not to make sure of being fit to take a chance of escape should one present itself, so she ate three of the cakes and drank a cup of wine. Then four priests led her down to the chief shrine.
Eloul and a dozen more priests were awaiting her, eight of them bearing the curtained litter in which she was to go. She sat bent forward in the dusk of the curtained litter, straining her ears for any sound of rescuers. She heard nothing but the clatter of the eunuchs' sandals on the hard road and now and again a muttered command from Eloul to hurry.
In twenty minutes they came to the cistern, a great building three hundred feet long and a hundred broad, covered by an arched roof which rose, twelve feet above the ground, from a wall ten feet thick, pierced with embrasures to let in the air and keep the water fresh. At its southern end the cascade, rushing down the chute from the aqueduct, kept the surface always a-roil. The band of priests marched along the cistern to the foot of the flight of stone steps, which rose beside the wall of the chute to a platform at the mouth of the aqueduct. Here they halted and set down the litter.
Pyrrha stepped out of it. Hope had gone; her face was pale but dauntless—these Canaanite dogs should not see her flinch!
They did not unbind her wrists, but closed round her. Following Eloul, she mounted the steps on steady feet. But for all her dauntless bearing the blood was running slow in her veins, and her limbs were cold.
Eloul walked to the middle of the platform. He turned, and said in a tone of immense exultation: "And here's the end of your mocking and scoffing, High Priestess of Aphrodite! So shall all the enemies of Tanit perish!"
She met his gaze with steady eyes in a scornful face, and he turned and looked at the mountain. Already the sky was bright behind it, and a line of gold marked its edge.
Eloul raised his arms to heaven and broke into a prayer to the faded crescent of the moon, low in the western sky. He besought Tanit to be no more angry at the theft of her sacred veil, but to accept this noble victim, and forgive.
Pyrrha's desperate eyes stared down the long road. Of a sudden, out of a side street, half a mile away, came two figures, running. On the instant, even at that distance, she recognized Nicholas, and on the instant she was all life and alertness. Eloul and the priests were gazing now at the shoulder of the mountain, watching for the rim of the sun to appear; the two who held her arms held them loosely. A jerk freed her, and she sprang for the steps. Hampered as she was by her bound hands, she was down ten of them before they caught her and hustled her, struggling with all her might, up to the platform again. The running figures were less than two hundred yards away now. They had seen her effort and her struggle. They were at the end of the cistern!
The rim of the sun rose above the mountain.
"The sun! The sun!" cried Eloul. "Throw her in!"
The words had barely left his lips when the priests flung her into the rushing chute; she sank, and vanished through the archway.
NICHOLAS was only half the length of the cistern away.
He saw her flung from the platform. He sprang into the
nearest embrasure and looked down at the water thirty feet
below. Among the bubbles and the foam, where the chute
poured into it, there tossed a wreath of lilies.
He dived sidewise for it, as Micipsa sprang into the embrasure, and Micipsa cried out. No one in Megara swam—there was no water to swim in—and to fall into the cistern meant death. Then he saw Nicholas come to the surface twenty yards from the wreath, as Pyrrha's head rose above the water not ten yards away. Three strokes, and he gripped the veil and her hair. She was choking and struggling; but with her hands bound, she could not hamper him. Easily he held her head above the water.
"Keep still I Keep still!" he repeated in an imperative tone.
Presently she heard his voice; then the meaning of his words came to her, but in her panic she could not for a while obey. Then it dawned on her that her head was above the water; she could breathe easily.
"You're quite safe," he said. "You cannot sink. You have only to rest on the water—I will hold you up."
"You're quite safe," he said. "You have only
to rest on the water—I will hold you up."
She understood; her wits and her courage came back; she relaxed and was quiet.
The amazed Micipsa gazed down on them, hardly believing his eyes. The water did not harm Nicholas! He was moving about in it! He was a god!
With Pyrrha quiet, Nicholas was able to give his mind to getting her out of the water. He looked about him and found it easier than he had expected: at the end of the cistern opposite the cascade a flight of stone steps rose from the surface of the water to a door.
"I hope I'm not tearing your hair out," he said anxiously.
"No. It doesn't hurt—much," she said bravely.
He shifted his grip and held her hair more loosely; drawing her gently after him, he swam very slowly to the steps, lifted her out of the water and sat down, holding her in his arms, in speechless relief.
FOR a while they clung to one another, kissing and F
murmuring endearments. Then Nicholas unbound her wrists,
and they walked up the steps to the door. As they came
to it, Micipsa—who had recovered enough from his
amazement to see what they wanted—ran round to the
cistern, unbarred the door and opened it. They came out
into the open air to find the long road empty. Eloul and
his priests had had eyes only for Pyrrha and the chute;
they had not seen the coming of her rescuer. Believing
the sacrifice complete, they had hurried down from the
platform, along the road, and turned into the first side
street on the right, never dreaming that Nicholas was at
the cistern. All of them were returning briskly by these
devious ways to the temple. And Eloul's heart was swelling
with triumph and joy; he had placated Tanit, and had seen
the end of that accursed girl!
At once Nicholas perceived the eunuch's mistake, and it flashed on him that it would be an advantage to keep him ignorant of Pyrrha's escape. But how was he to bring her back to the western quarter unseen and unrecognized? They stepped back through the doorway of the cistern and debated.
Then round the corner of the side street at the left, down which he and Micipsa had run, came Sophron with Budge and Billy and a company of hoplites, at the double.
Sophron cried hoarsely: "Were you in time? Have you saved her?"
"I just managed it," said Nicholas quietly.
When they came to the end of their congratulations he told them of Eloul's error and said that he must be kept in error. They agreed, and after a little discussion they hit upon a scheme. The doors of the houses were opening and slaves with baskets were coming out of them on their way to early marketing. Then down the street came a stout, important citizen. He stopped to gaze with a frown of stern disapproval at the hoplites, for no armed Greek was allowed in the Canaanite city.
It was Sophron who asked him what he was scowling at; it was the three Moon Gods who fell upon him and pommeled him. How he had incurred their enmity and how he lost his robe and his headdress, whether they slipped off him or were torn off him, he never knew; but he found himself half naked and running as he had not run for years, and the great god Budge helping him with a cruel toe.
Five minutes later the Moon Gods and a slight Canaanite citizen, in a very loose robe, were marching up the road in the middle of a square of hoplites—and Pyrrha came thus to the western quarter, unseen and unrecognized.
AT noon next day a dull drumming arose in the southern
quarter. It went on steadily and monotonously. "The drums
of Moloch," murmured Pyrrha, and she shivered, for even a
sound night's sleep at home had not restored her from the
shock of yesterday's terror.
Nicholas went in search of Sophron and found him making his last tour of inspection, in one of the streets that led into the broad road that ran between the western quarter and the southern quarter. Along the end of it were piles of hewn stone for the repair of the paved roadway.
"It is a good thing to know the exact hour of attack," said Sophron. "Half an hour before sunset slaves will use these stones to build a wall at the end of the street, and by half an hour after sunset the western quarter will be walled off from the southern, though probably Adherbal will attack only along the broad front of the agora, where he can make the most of his superior numbers."
"That's good," said Nicholas. "To look at your quarter, one would think that nothing whatever was going to happen. I never saw it quieter."
"Why not?" said Sophron. "Today our men are resting and eating good meals. The Canaanite legions are drilling; the mob is doing its usual day's work; the blacks are howling and dancing themselves weary, and most of them started very early this morning to make a long journey to the city. They and the mob will fight like fury as long as the wine spurs them on. But once it is out of them, they'll be good for nothing."
They sent back to Sophron's house, and were drinking a cup of wine when three spies came in from the eastern quarter to say that the priests and priestesses of Tanit were openly haranguing the Canaanites, urging them to vindicate the majesty of the Queen of Heaven, and destroy the unbelievers and scoffers and drive the rival goddess from the city, promising them great rewards. Scores of carts loaded with arms were coming into the city from the workshops, and the mob was arming.
Then Billy and Budge came from the palace. They reported that the House of the Barca? was excited and perturbed; that a council had been held and the Queen's guard was under arms. They brought no word of Rhodopis, except that a slave had come to learn if Nicholas had returned. She was, indeed, a prey to grave misgivings. She had rejoiced when a messenger came from Eloul to tell her that all had gone well and the wrath of Tanit was appeased; but she was wishing she had sworn to Nicholas that she had had no hand in the trapping of Pyrrha.
She waited for Nicholas to come back to reproach her and give her an opportunity of defending herself, but the hours passed; Nicholas did not come.
Then came another thought.' Eloul had kidnaped Pyrrha; why should she not kidnap Nicholas? Once he was in her power, she could make him love her. She sent for the captain of her guard and ordered him to take fifty men and bring Nicholas to her before midnight.
The captain of the guard saluted and went. It was no business of his to point out that in the circumstances, with Nicholas in the western quarter and the Greeks under arms, it was a very difficult order to carry out. It was his business to carry it out, and he cudgeled his brains for a way. They were astute brains, and presently he had it: the Moon Gods were with the Greeks; they would fight for them. The Chariot of the Gods—that was where he would find the Moon God! He picked fifty men with care, and just before sunset he had them waiting....
Toward the end of the afternoon the angry hum of the Canaanite city had risen to a steady roar; the negroes were drinking and yelling, and the mob was growing hysterical. The drums of Moloch were now but a throbbing undertone in the great uproar.
The sun was very low in the western sky when Eloul came out on the roof of the Temple of Tanit, and went to the parapet and gazed over the city. The din below gladdened his heart; it was the roar of the avengers, who would bring him the fruit of his laborious years. There should be but one goddess in Megara, and one High Priest!
And then across the roof of the Temple of Aphrodite came a girl in a violet robe. She walked slowly to the parapet, and looked across the Square.
Eloul's eyes opened wide. He stared and stared again. It was—it was that accursed girl!
He broke into savage imprecations. Motionless, she gazed at him; he thought that she was smiling. Then out of their barracks and from every street streamed the orderly columns of hoplites. The sun set.
ON that instant the roar rose thunderously. The masses of yelling negroes, marshaled and guided by the priests of Moloch and the slave-drivers, began to move toward the great Square from the south; the yelling mob, guided by its appointed leaders and the priests of Tanit, poured into the northern half of it from the west; the Sacred Legion was forming before the Temple of Tanit; the other legions came marching slowly in columns on the heels of the negroes and the mob. Thousands of flaring torches illumined the advance.
The captain of the Queen's guard and his men slipped through the gardens of Aphrodite to the plane, surprised and slew the dozen hoplites guarding it, and lay flat on the ground along the way Nicholas must come to it.
Nicholas and Billy stood on the steps of the Temple of Aphrodite with Sophron and the archons, watching the masses of negroes and Canaanites debouch into the Square. They were in no haste to get to the plane. It must not be used till the Square was full and the fight had begun. They had none too many bombs; every one of them must count. Not till the Square was half-full did they go down from the steps and take their way to the drilling-ground.
Micipsa was with them; he and Billy were separated from Nicholas and held back by a reserve company of hoplites taking up its position. Nicholas went on, knowing that they would follow him, and came into the drilling-ground some eighty yards ahead of them. Fifty yards from the plane he walked straight into the ambush; before he could draw his automatic a dozen arms had gripped him; he uttered but one half-choked shout before he was gagged and pinioned and rushed across the drilling-ground to the gardens of the Temple of Aphrodite.
Micipsa heard his cry, and said sharply: "That was Neek!"
They ran straight to the plane. Nicholas was being rushed along to the right of it, already a hundred yards away, hidden in the night. Just before they reached it Billy tripped over the body of one of its guards and fell to the ground. He picked himself up, ran to the plane and switched on the lights; they lighted up the bodies of the dead hoplites, and among them two of the Queen's guards.
Micipsa stooped over one of them and cried: "It is Rhodopis! This is her doing!" And he rushed away.
Billy stared after him. Then he climbed into the plane. It seemed best to stay by it; if Micipsa rescued Nicholas, they would come back to it; if not, it was useless.
NICHOLAS' captors hurried him through the gardens to the
palace; arrived there, three of them took him up a side
staircase, thrust him through the door of a chamber in the
Queen's suite, and left him, still gagged, with his hands
still tied behind him.
He gazed, scowling round the room; he strove to free his hands, but they had been too well bound.
He was still trying to break the cords when the door opened and Rhodopis came in—garbed in a leopard-skin, and carrying a whip with four lashes, fastened to a short handle; at the end of each lash was a bronze claw. She drew the gag from his mouth and stepped back, gazing at him with fiercely possessive eyes.
"You did not come to me, Neek. So I sent for you," she said in gentle accents. "Why did you keep me hungering for you all the dreary day?"
Nicholas looked at her, and his eyes were hard.
"You are blaming me for the sacrifice of Pyrrha," she went on more quickly. "It is not right. I am a faithful daughter of Tanit, and I must do as the High Priest bids me. Besides, Tanit was angry at the loss of her Zaimph—if I had disobeyed, she would have turned her anger on me, and her anger is terrible. Why should I destroy myself?"
Nicholas said nothing, and his face did not change.
"Do not look at me like that," she said in a pleading tone. "The goddess demanded the sacrifice of the noblest virgin in Megara, and I and Eloul are only her servants. We must do her bidding."
Of a sudden the note of the uproar in the Square changed; there came one louder, ear-splitting yell as the negroes and the mob surged forward on the Greeks. The struggle had begun!
Nicholas ground his teeth. What was he to do?
She waited for him to speak, then sighed sharply. "Do not look at me like that! I love you as no Pyrrha, or cold moon girl, could dream of loving. Love me, Neek, and I will make you King of Megara." In sudden abandonment, the tears streaming from her eyes, all pride and dignity lost, she sank down and clasping his knees, cried: "Love me, Neek I Love me!"
She might have been clasping the knees of a statue.
She realized that it was hopeless, and her mood changed; she sprang to her feet a raging leopardess, caught up the whip she had let fall, and muttered in a harsh voice: "So? You think I do not know! You think you tricked me with your tale of a moon girl! But I know! It is Pyrrha! And Pyrrha is alive and free!"
Her voice cracked. "But it shall profit her nothing! If you will not love me, no one shall love you!"
She laughed dreadfully. "You see this?" She drew the lashes of the whip through her left hand. "These lashes are clawed. I will cut out your eyes—I will cut the flesh from your face! You shall go into the world a blind and bony mask! Will Pyrrha love you then?"
She sprang forward and lashed at his face. Nicholas ducked, and jumped in with his head low. It struck her, stretching again at her full height to lash him, just below the ribs; she went down, the breath knocked out of her, writhing in the painful effort to get it back. As she fell, a small dagger from some fold in her leopard-skin tinkled on the floor. He sat down, leaned back and picked it up, and tried, twisting it about, to get its edge against a strand of the cords that bound his wrists.
She lashed at his face. Nicholas ducked, and
jumped in with his head low... She went down.
The curtains before the right-hand window parted. Micipsa peered through the opening, then slipped through it and grinned down at the Queen, his face twisted by a spasm of hate. He dropped on his knees beside her, gripped her white neck with his strong hands and pressed his thumbs into her throat. She stared up into his savage eyes in terror.
Nicholas shouted at him, but to no purpose; then he got to his feet and fairly kicked him off her, but not before her eyes were starting out of her head.
"Cut these cords!" Nicholas snapped.
Still dazed with hate, Micipsa cut the cords clumsily. Nicholas dashed to the door and unbarred it, dashed across the corridor and the room on the other side to a window looking over the courtyard of the palace and the Square, and yelled: "Hey there!" at the captain of the guard.
He looked up, and Nicholas yelled: "Stay the Children of Moloch! The Queen commands it!"
A shout of joy came from the soldiers, chafing and fretting to be in the fight; the palace gates swung back, and with a roar the Queen's guards, eight hundred strong, charged out into the thronged Square.
BUT Nicholas did not wait to see them go; he rushed back, and with a careless glance at the sprawling body of the Queen, slipped over the window-sill and half-climbed, half-tumbled down the creeper, with Micipsa beside him. Micipsa took the lead and they raced through the gardens to the plane.
They reached it, and the impatient Billy, not many minutes late. "Not very punctual, are you?" Billy grumbled.
"Plenty of time!" said Nicholas calmly, as he pulled his helmet over his ears.
The Greek hoplites had given some ground to the first rush of the maddened blacks, but now, locked with them in a swaying mass, they were holding their own, and protected by their thick armor, were inflicting heavy losses on them, aided by the machine-guns on the steps of the temple. The hoplites on the north of the Square were holding the feebler mob easily. But both negroes and mob were killing men who would be needed badly later.
The Megarian legions had advanced to the middle of the Square and were waiting at ease till the bulk of the negroes and the mob should be slaughtered, and the Greeks weakened by the savage struggle. The din was tremendous; and the throbbing beat of the drums of Moloch added their sinister and disquieting note to the tumult.
From the parapet of the topmost roof of the Temple of Tanit Eloul looked down and surveyed the battle with a thrilling heart. His confidence had come back; it was manifestly going as had been planned, and though the Greeks had not been taken by surprise, victory could only be a matter of a few hours. Plainly the Moon Gods could not, or would not, help.
THEN of a sudden came a new note into the tumult as
the plane came roaring over the Temple of Aphrodite. The
mob recoiled in a gasping hush; fear clutched at Eloul's
sinking heart. He stepped back; the Very lights came
flaring down.
Billy dropped the first gas bomb directly in the middle of the mass of blacks; the second fell between the Sacred Legion and the Legion of Agash. The plane rushed on over the Temple of Tanit and came back along the northern side of the Square. Billy dropped three bombs, two among the legions, one in the middle of the mob. The plane rushed over the Temple of Aphrodite, circled, and came back; Billy dropped two bombs among the legions and two among the negroes.
The din had hushed to a gasping, wondering murmur as the massed fighters paused to learn what the Moon Gods would do; the negroes and the mob recoiled a little from the Greek line. Then cries of affright, wild, animal cries, rose from among them as the smarting tear gas filled their eyes. Those cries rose in a crescendo, until the very heavens were filled with a dismal howling as of frightened, blinded beasts.
The battle was lost, the struggle was over. Eloul knew that the fruit of laborious years of intrigue and treacheries had been snatched from his teeth. He flung up his arms and shrieked imprecations at the plane, rising in spirals directly above his head.
At two thousand feet Billy loosed the big bomb. It was a fine shot: the bomb crashed through the roof of the temple within twenty feet of the furious eunuch, burst with a bang that drowned for a moment the dismal howling in the Square, and brought the two top stories crashing down in ruins, burying Eloul under tons of stone.
A piercing yell of horror rose from the crowded roofs of the eastern and southern quarters as the worshipers of Tanit saw the disaster to her fane. It died away, and again the dismal howling of the blinded fighters filled the heavens....
The moon rose, silver and serene.
The battle was over; the hoplites fell back into the western quarter, out of range of the tear gas. It hung on the still, hot air, a faint breeze from the west driving it slowly into the eastern city.
His work done, Nicholas brought the plane down and landed on the drilling-ground. Pyrrha was waiting for him in an ecstasy of joyful admiration. No less overjoyed, Sophron and the archons came hurrying to express their immense gratitude. Nicholas found himself, as the wielder of these paralyzing and devastating weapons, the arbiter of the destinies of the city.
WHEN the sun rose, the Greeks were masters of the whole
city. In the Square they were guarding the fighting force
of the Canaanites, miserable, disarmed, helpless and
hopeless prisoners. They held the barracks of the legions
and every strategic point in the eastern and southern
quarters. They held the palace, in which the disgruntled
Rhodopis was nursing a very sore neck—for thanks
to Nicholas, the Queen's guard was among the wretched
prisoners in the Square, and from the palace they held the
northern quarter. Already the order that the House of the
Bares should disarm was being obeyed. They had rounded up
the chief men of that House, the Suffetes, the "Big Three,"
and the leaders of the rich, and had them under guard.
There had been no more bloodshed and no looting. Nicholas had forbidden it. When he was assured that his order would be obeyed, he had gone quietly to bed.
He lay a long time, thinking deeply. Here was his chance, and he was going to take it! His chance and Pyrrha's—for he could not see her taken from this warm and sunny land of her birth to become but the wife of a stunting airman. Here was a bigger and better job for him—the right kind of job for Pyrrha's husband.
Power was in his grasp, and he was going to hold it. He saw that he had a busy, even toilsome, life before him—to deal properly with the matter of slavery alone would be the work of years—but he did not shrink....
Dering talked the matter over with Budge and Billy. Young Elsom heartily approved, and volunteered to stay on as Nicholas' handy-man. Clearly the charming Arisbe was a factor in his choice; but clearly also the prospect of a career in this fascinating city was alluring also.
But Budge, curiously enough, felt otherwise. The whole expedition had been his idea; ancient Carthage and its modern descendants had been his own personal hobby. But now he was fed up. He was determined to go back to the Budge de Luxe baby-carriage factory; nor had he any intention whatsoever of permanently forsaking the plump wife of his bosom, Mrs. Harriet Budge.
Nicholas agreed to fly Budge out to the Mediterranean port from which they had started. And here arose a problem: Megara lay within the territory of French influence—if not indeed within the actual French colonial boundaries. But none of them felt that this sequestered little commonwealth should be handed over to an alien power or made the subject of another of those international bickerings of which the intelligent world has become so weary. And Budge therefore, in a fine and unusual spirit of renunciation and self-effacement, agreed to keep his triumph a secret. He arranged to meet Dering once a year at the same Mediterranean port, for purposes of conference and mutual information; and they arranged a code whereby radio communication would be possible in case of emergency. Billy Elsom would take care of the practical side of that.
FOR the sake of preserving the idyllic peace of a
certain long-lost city and of its people, names have been
changed in this narrative and geographical exactitudes
distorted. But you who have wondered what has become of a
certain noted Anglo-American aviator, why he so suddenly
dropped out of the limelight, may know that he has come
happily into a private kingdom of his own, far from the
madding crowds of Europe or America: far from dismal talk
of Depression and weary squabbles about Prohibition; and
from the jealous plottings of selfish nations; far from
the dusty theories of capitalism and socialism—far
from a world made safe for democracy.... Let us respect his
paradise.
"The Moon Gods," Herbert Jenkins Ltd., London, 1930
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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