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- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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“And what will you use?” asked Leonard.
“Fear not, Baas. Do these men bear lights?”
“Yes.”
“Then in two minutes I will make me a weapon.”
And, untying the hide rope from the stick, he began to fumble with it busily.
“Now I am ready, Baas,” he said presently. “Where shall we stand?”
“Here,” answered Leonard, leading him to the door. “We will crouch in the shadow, one on either side of this door, and when the priests have entered and closed it, and begin to look round for me, then we can spring upon them. Only, Otter, there must be no bungling and no noise.”
“I think that there will be none, Baas; they will be too frightened to cry at first, and after that they will become dumb.”
“Otter,” whispered Leonard, as they stood in the dark, “did you kill the Water-Dweller?”
“Yes, yes, Baas,” he chuckled in answer. “I caught him with the hook that I made ready. But he did not die easily, Baas, and if I had not been able to swim well he would have drowned me.”
“I heard something of it from Nam,” said Leonard. “You are a wonderful fellow, Otter.”
“Oh, Baas! it was no valour of mine; when I saw his eyes I was horribly afraid, only I thought how gladly you would have attacked him had you been there, and what a coward you would hold me, could you have seen me shivering like a little girl before a big lizard, and these thoughts gave me courage.”
“Oh, that is all very well!” replied Leonard, and suddenly added, “Hush! be ready!”
As he spoke the door opened, and two great priests came through it, one of them bearing a candle. He who bore the light turned to shut the door, for he suspected nothing. Then, at one and the same instant, Leonard, emerging from the shadow, dealt the first priest a blow upon the head with his staff, which stunned if it did not kill him, for he fell like an ox beneath the pole-axe, while Otter, standing where he was, dexterously cast his hide rope about the throat of the second man, and drew the noose tight with a jerk that brought him to the earth.
In twenty seconds it was all over. The men, who were the same that had held Leonard suspended in the oubliette, lay senseless or dead, and the dwarf and his master were engaged in possessing themselves of their knives and keys by the light of the candle, which, though it had fallen to the ground, fortunately remained burning.
“That was well done, Otter,” said Leonard, “and I am not ashamed to have done it, for these devils kicked me when I was bound. Now we are armed, and have the keys. What next?”
Just then Otter sprang to his feet, crying, “Look out, Baas; here are more.”
Leonard glanced up to see, and behold! the second door in the cell was opened, and through it came Juanna, Olfan, Nam, Soa, and three other men.
For a moment there was silence; till one of the captains cried out, “See! Jâl the god has come back, and already he claims his victims!” And he pointed to the two priests.
Then followed a scene of confusion, for even Olfan and Nam were amazed at what seemed to them little short of a miracle, while Leonard and Juanna had eyes for each other only, and the three captains stared at Otter like men who think they see a ghost.
But one person in that company kept her head, and that person was Soa. The captain who guarded her had loosed his hold; silently she slunk back into the shadows, and, unseen of any, vanished through the doorway by which she had been led in. A minute passed, and Otter, thinking that he heard a noise without that door of the cell whereby the two priests had entered, which had been left ajar, went to it and tried to open it. Just then, also, Olfan missed Soa.
“Where is the woman, Nam’s daughter?” he cried.
“It seems that she has escaped and shut us in, King,” answered Otter, calmly.
Followed by the others, Olfan sprang first to the door of the cell where they were, and then through the connecting passage to that of Juanna’s prison. It was true, both were closed.
“It matters nothing, here are the keys,” said Leonard.
“They will not avail us, Deliverer,” answered Olfan, “for these doors are made fast without by bars of stone thicker than my arm. Now this woman has gone to rouse the college of the priests, who will presently come to kill us like caged rats.”
“Quick!” said Leonard, “waste no time, we must break down the doors.”
“Yes, Deliverer,” said Nam mockingly; “batter them in with your fists, cut through the stone-work with your spears; surely they are as nothing to your strength!”
“I AM REPAID, QUEEN”
Their position was terrible. Soa had escaped, and Soa knew everything. Moreover, she was mad with hatred and longing for revenge on Leonard, Otter, and in a less degree on Olfan the king. Had they succeeded in revealing themselves to the people, all might have gone well, for Otter and Juanna would certainly have been accepted as true gods, who had passed and repassed the gates of death scatheless. But now the affair was different. Soa would tell the truth to the priests, who, even if they were inclined to desert her father in his extremity, must strike for their own sakes and for that of their order, which was the most powerful among the People of the Mist, and had no desire to be placed under the yoke of secular authority.
It was clear to all of them that if they could not escape, they must fall very shortly into the hands of the priests, who, knowing everything, would not dare to allow them to appeal to the army, or to the superstition of the outside public. The only good card they held was the possession of the person of Nam, though it remained to be seen how far this would help them.
To begin with, there are always some ready to step into the shoes of a high priest, also Nam had blundered so extensively in the matter of the false gods, that the greater part of the fraternity, whom he had involved in his mistakes, would not sorrow to see the last of him.
These facts, which were perfectly well known to Olfan and guessed at by his companions, sharpened their sense of the danger in which they had been placed by Soa’s resource and cunning. Indeed, their escape was a matter of life and death to them and to many hundreds of their adherents. If once they could reach the temple and proclaim the re-arisen gods to the people, all would go well, for the army would suffice to keep the priests from using violence. But if they failed in this, their death-warrant was already signed, for none of them would ever be heard of again.
No wonder, then, that they hurled themselves despairingly upon the stubborn doors. For an hour or more they laboured, but all in vain. The massive timbers of hard wood, six inches or more in thickness, could scarcely be touched by their knives and spears, nor might their united strength serve even to stir the stone bolts and bars that held them fast, and they had nothing that could be used as a battering-ram.
“It is useless,” said Leonard at last, throwing down his knife in despair; “this wood is like iron, it would take us a week to cut through it.”
“Why not try fire, Baas?” suggested Otter.
Accordingly they attempted to burn down the doors, with the result that they nearly stifled themselves in the smoke and made but little impression upon the woodwork.
At length they gave up the experiment—it was a failure—and sat looking blankly at each other as they listened to certain sounds which reached them from the passages without, telling them that their enemies were gathering there.
“Has anyone a suggestion to make?” said Leonard at last. “If not, I think that this game is about played.”
“Baas,” answered Otter, “I have a word to say. We can all go down through that hole by which I came up to you. The Water-Dweller is dead, I slew him with my own hand, so there is nothing to fear from him. Beneath the hole runs a tunnel, and that tunnel leads to the slope of the mountain above. At the top of this slope is an ice-bridge by which men may reach a fair country if they have a mind to.”
“Then for heaven’s sake let us cross it,” put in Juanna.
“I have seen that bridge,” said Olfan, while the captains stared wonderingly at the man whose might had prevailed against the ancient Snake, “but never yet have I heard of the traveller who dared to set his foot upon it.”
“It is dangerous, but it can be crossed,” replied Otter; “at the least, it is better to try it than to stay here to be murdered by the medicine-men.”
“I think that we will go, Leonard,” said Juanna; “if I am to die I wish to do so in the open air. Only what is to become of Nam? And perhaps Olfan and the captains would prefer to stop here?”
“Nam will go with us wherever we go,” answered Leonard grimly; “we have a long score to settle with that gentleman. As for Olfan and his captains, they must please themselves.”
“What will do you, Olfan?” asked Juanna, speaking to him for the first time since the scene in the other prison.
“It seems, Queen,” he answered, with downcast eyes, “that I have sworn to defend you to the last, and this I will do the more readily because now my life is of little value. As for my brethren here, I think, like you, that they will choose to die in the open, rather than wait to be murdered by the priests.”
The three captains nodded an assent to his words. Then they all set to work.
First they took food and drink, of which there was an ample supply in the other cell, and hurriedly swallowing some of it, disposed the rest about their persons as best they could, for they foresaw that even if they succeeded in escaping, it was likely that they would go hungry for many days. Then Leonard wrapped Juanna in a goat-skin cloak which he took from one of the fallen priests, placing the second cloak over his own shoulders, for he knew that it would be bitterly cold on the mountains. Lastly, they tied Nam’s arms behind him and deprived him of his knife, so that the old man might work none of them a sudden injury in his rage.
All being prepared, Otter made his rope fast to the staff and descended rapidly to the cave below. As his feet touched the ground, the priests began to batter upon the doors of the cell with beams of wood, or some such heavy instruments.
“Quick, Juanna!” said Leonard, “sit in this noose and hold the line, we will let you down. Hurry, those doors cannot stand for long.”
Another minute and she was beside Otter, who stood beneath, a candle in his hand. Then Leonard came down.
“By the way, Otter,” he said, “have you seen anything of the jewels that are supposed to be here?”
“There is a bag yonder by the Water-Dweller’s bed, Baas,” answered the dwarf carelessly, “but I did not trouble to look into it. What is the use of the red stones to us now?”
“None, but they may be of use afterwards, if we get away.”
“Yes, Baas, if we get away,” answered Otter, bethinking himself of the ice-bridge. “Well, we can pick it up as we go along.”
Just then Nam arrived, having been let down by Olfan and the captains, and stood glaring round him, not without awe, for neither he nor any of his brethren had ever dared to visit the sacred home of the Snake-god. Then the captains descended, and last of all came Olfan.
“We have little time to spare, Deliverer,” said the king; “the door is falling,” and as he spoke they heard a great crash above. Otter jerked furiously at the rope, till by good luck one end of the stake slid over the edge of the hole and it fell among them.
“No need to leave this line for them to follow by,” he said; “besides it may be useful.” At that moment something appeared looking through the hole. It was the head of one of the pursuing priests. Nam saw it and took his opportunity.
“The false gods escape by the tunnel to the mountains,” he screamed, “and with them the false king. Follow and fear not, the Water-Dweller is dead. Think not of me, Nam, but
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