CHAPTER XVIi—Continued.
snr] (heen
“Listen, while I tell you all from the
beginning! The sirkar sent me to dis-
cover what may be this ‘Heart of the
Hills’ men talk about. I found these
caves—and this! I told the sirkar a
little about the caves, and nothing at
all about the sleepers. But even at
that they only believed the third of |
what I said. And I—back in Delhi I
bought books. When I had read enough
I came back here to think, I knew
enough now to be sure that the sleeper
is a Roman and the ‘Heart of the
Hills’ a Grecian maid. She is like me.
That is why I know she drove him
to make an empire, choosing for a be-
ginning these 'Hills' where Rome had
never penetrated. I have seen it all in
dreams. And because I was all alone,
1 saw that I would need skill and much
patience. So I began to learn.
“Times I would go to Delhi
dance there a little, and a little In
other places—once indeed before ol
viceroy, and once for the king of Eng-
land. And all the while 1 kept look-
ing for the man—the man who should
be like the sleeper, even as I
her whom he loved! There was none
like the sleeper until you came. And
when the world war broke—for It is
a world war, a world war, I tell you!
I thought at last that I must manage
all alone. And then you came!
“But there were many I tried—many
—especlally after I the
thought that the man must resemble
the Sleeper. There a prince of
Germany who came to India on a hunt-
ing trip. You remember?”
King pricked his ears and allowed
himself to grin, for in common with
many hundred other men who had
been lieutenants at the time, he would
have given an
to know the truth of that affair.
grin transforced his whol
until Yasmint ben
“I'm listening, princess!” he remind.
ed her. |
“Well—he came—the prince of Ger-
many. I offered him India first, then
Asia, then the world—even as I now
offer them to you. The kar sent him
to see me dance, and he stayed to
hear me talk. When I saw at last that |
he has the head and heart of a hyena |
spat in his face and threw food at him.
“He complained to the sirkar against
me, s0 I told the sirkar some—npot
much, indeed, but enough—of the
things he and his officers had told me.
And the sirkar said at once that there
was both cholera and bubonic plague, |
and he must go His officers |
laughed behind his back. Ever since
that time there have always been Ger |
mans in communication with me, and |
I have not once been in the dark about
Germany's plans—although they have |
always thought I am in
“I went on looking for my man. |
There came that old Bull-with-a-beard,
Muhammad Anim. He thinks he is the
and
abandoned
wns
once an ear and eye
The
ATance,
ed on him.
dw
sr
% so!
aome |
the dark.
SALTY
AE Wag e—
“The Old Gods Who Built These Caves
in the ‘Hille’ Are Laughing! They
Are Getting Ready! Thou and |=”
man, having more strength to hope and
more will to will wrongly than any
man I ever met, except a German. |
have even been sure sometimes that
Muliammad Anim is a German; yet
now I am not sure,
“From all the men 1 met and
watched I have learned all they knew!
And 1 have never neglected to tell the
sirkar sufficient of what men have told
me, to keep the sirkar pleased with
me! It was fortumate that I knew of
a German plot that I could spoil at the
Isst minute. A million dynamite
bombs was a big haul for the sirkar!
My offer to go to Khinjan and keep the
‘Hills’ quiet was accepted that same
day!
“Rut what o:> a million dyneraite
By TALBOT MUNDY
Copyright by the Bobbs-Merrill Company
bombs! Dynamite bombs have been
coming into Khinjan month by month
these three years! Bombs and rifles
and cartridges! Muhammad Anim’s
men, whom he trusts because he must,
hid it all in a cave I showed them, that
they think, and he thinks, has only one
entrance to it, Muhammad Anim sealed
it, and he has the key. But I have
the ammunition!
“There was another way out of that
cave, although there Is none now, for
I have blocked it. My men, whom 1
trust because I know them, carried ev-
erything out by the back way, and I
have it all. We, my warrior, when Mu-
hammad Anim gets the word from Ger-
many and gives the sign, and the ‘Hilly’
are afire, and the whole East roars In
the flame of the jihad—we will put our-
the head of that jihad, and
the East and the world is ours!”
King smiled at her.
“The East isn't very
he objected.
selves at
well armed,”
“Mere numbers—"
laughed at him.
“The West has the West by the throat!
It is tearing itself!
America !
ion with its hands
those wolves fight,
and
gods, who
‘Hills,' are laughing!
ting ready Thou and I
As she coupled him and herself
gether in plan she read
“Numbers? She
free—and while
the meat! The
steal
built these
me
caves in the
ti
one the
“ey
You are his
$ head! That
wey 7
» did not answer,
betrayed
looked as if he had struck
“Oh, I have needed you
these many years!
something, for
her,
so much
have come you want to hate me be
you think I killed your brother!
Listen!
“Without my leave, Muhammad Anim
sent five hundred a
toward the Khyber.
needed an Englishman's head, for
proof for a spy of his who could not
enter Khinjan caves. They trapp~!
your brother ¢ All Masjid with
fifty of his
use
men on foray
utside
en.
after a ng
a houdred of thelr own in payment.
*EBull-with.a-beard was pleased, Bu*
he was careless, and I sent my men to
steal the head from his men. I needed
evidence for you. And I swear to you
~]1 swear to you by my gods who have
brought us two together—-that 1 first
knew it was your brother's head when
long fight, leavi
Drink !
anybody
“Why
| gee
then?
Then 1 knew it
else's head!”
bid me throw it to them,
he asked her, and he was aware
sould not be
his lips,
She leaned back again and looked at
him through eyes, as if she
must study him all anew,
lowered
|
i
thought so in the commonplace,
“What is a head to me, or to you
a head with no Hlfe in it—ecarrion!—
compared to what shall be? Would
you have known it was his head If you
you?
He understood. Some of her blood
was Russian, some Indian. She stood
up, and of course he stood up, too, So,
she on the footstool of the throne, her
eyes and his were on a level, She laid
his eyes until he could
see his own
a long passage, holding his hand all
the way, to show him slots cut in the
floor for the use of archers.
“You entered Khinjan caves by a
tunnel under this floor, well-beloved.
There is no other entrance!”
By this time “well-beloved” was her
name for him, although there was no
alr of finalliy about it. It was as If
she paved the way for use of Athelstan
and that was a sacred name, It was
amazing how she conveyed that im-
pression without using words.
“The Sleeper cut these slots for his
archers. Then he had another thought
and these cauldrons in place, to
boil oll to pour down. Could any army
force a way through by the route by
which you entered?”
“No,” he said, marveling at the ton-
weight copper cauldrons, one to each
hole,
“And I have more than a thousand
Mauser rifles here, and more than a
million rounds of ammunition!”
She showed him a
were stacked
set
cave
boxes in
piles,
“Dynamite
“How many boxes?
high,
borubs I" she boasted.
I forget! Too
“They Will Lay Waste India! They
Will Butcher and Plunder and Burn!
It Will Be What They Leave of
india That We Shall Build Anew
and Govern”
many to count! Women brought them
way from for even
Muhammad Anim not make
Afridi riflemen carry ads, 1 have
wondered what Bull-with-a-beard will
say when he misses his precious dyna
ill the the sea,
could
3
ALE
“You've blow
mountain up!” King advised her.
somebody fired a pistol in here,
least would be the collapse of th
sor into the tunnel below with a hun-
dred thousand tons of rock on top of
it. There is no other way out?”
“Earth's Drink!” she said, and he
ade a grimace that set her to laugh-
enough in there to
the
“1
the
0
jut she looked at him darkly after
at and he got the Impression that the
pn
IROL
to wonder
began
any loophole she had left him for
seen,
dred Mauser rifles stood in racks in
another cave, with boxes of ammuni-
ing sunset pools,
The heart of all the East seemed to
burn in her, rebellious!
“Are you believing me?” she asked
him.
helped believing her.
the truth, she was telling it to him,
ns surely as she was doing her skill-
ful best to mesmerize him. But the
gsorvice is made up of men
“Come!” she said,
down she took his arm.
She fed him past the thrones to
other leather curtains in a wall, and
through them into long hewn passages
from cavern to cavern, until even the
Rock of Gibraltar seemed like a doil's
house in comparison, She showed him
and stepping
the bronze had been worked, with
charcoal still plied up against the wall
at one end, There were copper and tin
ingots in there of a shape he had never
seen,
“l know where they came from”
she told him. “lI made it my business
to know all the ‘Hills.’ I know things
the hilimen's grent-great-great-grand-
fathers forgot! [ know old workings
that would make n modern nation rich!
We shall have money when we need
it, never fear! We shall conquer In.
and the best troops are overseas.”
Then she called him her warrior and
i
cartridge worth its weight in sliver
coin—a very rajah’s ransom!
“The Germans are generous in some
things-—only In some things-—very
mean in others!” she told him. “They
sent no medical stores, and no blan-
kets I”
Past caves where provisions of ev-
ery imaginable kind were stored, sufli-
cient for an army, she led him to where
her guards slept together with the
thirty special men whom King had
“1 have five hundred others whom 1
“but they shall stay outside until I
want them. A mystery is a good thing!
It is good for them all to wonder what
I keep In here!
sanctuary; it makes for power!”
Pressing very close to him, she
guided him down anothor dark tunnel
until he and she stood together in the
jaws of the round hole above the
river, looking down Into (he Cavern of
Barth's Drink.
Nobody looked up at them. The
thousands were too busy working up a
frenzy for the great jihad that was to
come,
Stacks of wood had been piled up,
six-man high in the middle, ‘and then
fired. The heat came upward like a
furnace blast, and the smoke was a
great red cloud among the stalactites,
Round and round that holocaust the
thousands did their sword-dance, yell
tng as ihe devils yeriled at Khinjan's
They needed no wine to craze
them, They were drunk with fanati-
din, mingling with the river's volce,
made a voleano chord, “They will lay
waste India!
plunder and burn! It will be what
they leave of India that we shall build
anew and govern, for India herself will
rise to help them lay her own cities
waste! It is always so! Conquests
always are so! Come!”
She tugged at him and led him back
tunnels to the throne room, where she
made him sit at her feet again,
absence, Instead, on the ebony table
there were pens and Ink and paper,
CHAPTER XVII.
“You know where is Dar es Sa-
laam?” asked Yasmini.
“East Africa,” said King.
“And English warships watch the
Persian gulf and all the seas from In-
dia to Aden?’
King nodded.
“Have the English any ships that
dive under water, in these waters?”
“I think not. I'm not sure,
think not.”
the rifles and cartridges were sent by
the Germans to Dar es Salaam,
suppress a rising of African natiyes,
friend 7"
He smiled as well
time,
“Muhammad Anim u
a hundred
on the seashore, What
the beach there he
as nodded this
sed to walt with
women at a
he
made the
curry their hea
they worked 1
{I know not ng—with
{ lish watching the seas
| wolves comb the valleys.”
“What
on Khinjan,
Is to
¥
how k
were the terms
stipulations did they ma
“With
| swore
Vere
ke?”
the
wise,
tribes? None!
A Jihad
was decided
; and when
thousand cartridges would
ly a hundred dead English
n times that number busily
Why rain when
vas no need? A rifle Is what it
The ‘Hills' are the ‘Hills !"™
he said. “You burn enough
Khinjan caves to light Bombay!
loes not
oll in
That
The
come in by submar
sirkar knows how much of
the Khyber, 1 have
Laie
myself—a
ine,
goes up
printed lists
cans of kerosene-
seen the
fow
fn few
ther north. There
isn't enough oil
caves going for a day.
all come from?
She laughed, as a mother laughs at
a finding delicious
enjoyment in Instructing him,
“There are three villages, not two
days’ march from Khabul, where men
have lived for by
oll for Khinjan caves,” she sald, “The
Sleeper fetched his oll thence, The
Sleeper left gold In here. Those who
kept the Sleeper's secret paid for the
afl In gold. No Afghan troubled why
oll was needed, so long as gold paid
for it. And I know where the Sleeper
dug his gold!”
They sat In silence for a long while
child's questions,
centuries
her.
She felt the pity. As she tossed the
hair back over her shoulder her eyes
glowed with another meaning-—danger-
ous-—like a tiger's glare,
“You pity me? You think because
I love you, you can feed my love on
a plate to the Indian government?
You think my love is 2 weapon to use
walt for a better time? You are not
But he knew he had won. His heart
was singing down Inside him as it had
not sung since he left India behind.
jut he stood quite humbly before her,
for had he not kissed her? He knew
he had won, Yet if anyone had asked
him how he knew that he had won, he
never could have told.
“If you were to go back to India ex-
cept as its conqueror, they would strip
the buttons from your uniform and
tear your medals off and shoot
in the back against a wall!
ture I8 known in India and I am
known. What I write will be believed.
Rewa Gunga shall take a letter, He
shall take two-—four-—witnesses, He
give them the letter when they reach
Khyber and shall send them into
India with it. Have fear.
with-a-beard shall intercept
8 I have intercepted his men. When
Rewa Gunga shall return and tell me
he saw my letter on its way down the
Khyber, thea we shall talk
you and I! Come!”
She took his arn
had been
from her She
chin and laughed
couraged to greater
tude, and hy the tis
ebony table and she had
dipped it in the
chuckling to herself as if th
Buli-
them,
no
not
agnin—
as if her threats
Triumph shone
tossed her brave
at
CUresses,
eyou,
only en
taken the pen
ink, she
e one good
joke had grown into a hundred.
She in Urdu, with
flowing hand, and in two min
had thrown {ter and had
t to King to rend. It was not
ke a woman's letter. It did not waste
a word.
Was
wrote an euasy,
utes she
sand on the je
Your Captain Kin
ibie. He } t
Germans. He
calied himself Kurram
8 Own Urother al
These men
ed the head to K jan
2 true, for 1. Yasmini, »
head for a passport
trusted ine
TASMINL
have better
He read it and passed it back to her.
“They will tne,” she
triumphant as the very devil over
They
they
not disbelieve
sald,
will
be sure you are mad, and will
believe the witnesses |”
shall start with
with more a
After that she was
still for a moment, watching his eyes,
gt a loss to understand his
ness, He seemed strangely unabased.
His folded arms were not defiant, but
neither were they yielding.
“1 love you, Athelstan!™
‘Do you love me?”
“l think jou are
yrincess ™
“Beautiful? I know I am beautiful.
“Rewna Gunga
today!” she sald,
muse-
CANCIONsS
she sald.
» {Ferd
beautiful,
very
with Its ink and pens and paper, and
he thinking. with hands clasped round
one knee: for it is wiser to think than
to talk, even when a woman Is near
vho can read thoughts that are not
guarded.
“Athelstan
yunds like a king's name |
"we
ghe said at last,
What was
a name in Rome?”
“No.” he sald.
“What docs
him.
“Row of resolution ™
She clapped her hands.
“Another sign!” she laughed. “The
gods love me! There nlways is a sign
when I need one!
art thou? I will speed thy resolution,
You quick to
it mean?" she asked
i well-beloved ! were
regiment, to Kurrnm Khan,
now into my warrior—my dear lord-—
my King again!"
him. All her dancer's art,
tamed poetry, her witchery, were ex-
pressed in a movement, Her eyes melt.
eye to eye again—almost lip to lip.
arms, clinging to him, kissing him.
And If any man has felt on his lips
the kiss of all the scented glamour of
the Easg, let him tell what King's sen-
gations were, Let Caesar, who was
kissed by Cleopatra, come to life and
| talk of it!
i stand like an idol.
swim, but she, too, tasted the delirium
of human passion loosed and given for
a mad, swift minute. If his heart
swelled to bursting, so must hers have
done,
“I have been all alone!
you!”
neither spoke,
she, was winning, The human answer
to her appeal was full, He gave her
all she asked of admiration, kiss for
kiss. And then—her arms did not
cling so tightly, although his strong
right arm was like a stanchion. Be
canse he knew that he, not she, was
winning, he picked her up in his arms
and kissed her as if she were a child,
And then, because he knew he had
1 won, he set her on her feet on the foot
“Clever!” he added.
fhe began to drum with the golden
dagger hilt on the table, and to look
means that she looked less lovely.
“Do you love me?" she asked.
“Forgive me, princess, but you for-
get, I was born east of Mecca, but my
folk were from the West. We are
often surrender nt first sight. 1 think
you are wonderful I
She nodded and tucked the sealed
er in her bosom.
“It shall go,” she sald darkly, “and
another letter with f(t.
That will
convince!
you asked him to destroy!
evidence, That will
ee
be
Come
He followed her through leather cur
'
“Do You Love Me?" She Asked.
sage into the outer chamber; and the
illusion was of walking behind a gold-
en-haired Madonna to some shrine of
innocence. Her perfume was like in.
censo; her manner perfect reverence.
She passed into the eave where the
taro dead bodies lay like a high priest
ess performing a rite,
Walking to the bed, she stood for
—— gazing at the Sleeper and his
queen, And from the new angle frong
which King saw him the Sleeper's likes
ness to himself wes actuslly startling.
Startiing-—weird-—Illke an incantation
were Yasminl's words when at last she
spoke,
“Mubammad lied! He led in his
teeth! His sons have multiplied his
He! Siddhattha, whom men lave called
Gotama, the Buddha, was before Mu-
hammad and he knew more! He told
of the wheel of things, and there is a
wheel! Yet, what knew the Buddha of
the wheel? He who spoke of Dharma
(the customs of the law) not knowing
Dharma! This is true—of old there
was a wish of the gods—of the old
gods. And so these two were, There
is a wish again now of the old gods,
Bo, are we two not as they two were?
It is the same wish, and lo! We are
ready, this man and I. We will obey,
i
ye gods—ye old gods |
She raised her arms and, going closer
to the bed, stood there in an attitude
mystic reverence, giving and re~
ceiving blessings,
“Dear gods!” she prayed. “Dear
gods—older than these ‘Hillg'—show
in a vislon what thelr fault wos —
why these two were ended before the
end!
“I know all the other things ye
me. I waow
creeds have made it ma
rend it f, and man
self,
reap where the nations se
old
[ee
shown
the w
4d, and |
nt 3 :
and hall
wd ¥ y
i Of
®
v
thie
. a
Vherein, ve old dear god
? X
we obey
wno love me, did these two disobey
pray vou, tell me |
She shook her
Ness seer
like a cold f
was as if she coul
plans foredoowed, and yet hoped on in
if It. The fatalism she
scorned as Muohamm
in its
over her
J Lael,
It
her
night
dimly
spite { the +
ad's lie held her
natural cours
nlike, she turned
onfided to
from
he,
must
| pitied
erly <
wii To
ite and
st thoughts, And
; BR to how she
; i nnder
armor?”
me nearer!
kill him?
breas
ter, and
no need i
wed him!”
fay wl
Jarneg
she I
Khe
her eyes, so that
| hood to bold h
that mis
ute she left no
{ BOX ~~ IT
slave
eR
(her eyes coul
flatter a hunts:
mystery—she used ever)
Yet he stood the tes
1
“Even if you fall
i T will love you! “he god
you me will know how to
love; and lessons are to learn
rgive, knowing that
the end the gods will
You are mine, and earth
for the old gods Interd it so!”
she knew,
t pat i .
fail me I will 1 ir
1 fall
urs,
never jet y
me! is o
She seemed to expect him to
‘in his arms again: but he
{ spectfully and made no answer, nor
any move, Grim his jowl
was, like the Sleeper’s, and the dark
hair three days old on it softened noth-
ing of its lines. His Roman nose and
steady, dark, full eyes suggested no
compromise. Yet he was ge look
fhe had not lied when said
she loved him, and he understood her
snd was sorry. But he did not look
sorry, nor did he offer any argument to
| quench her love. He was a servant of
the ral; his life anc his love had been
India’s since the day he first buckled
on his spurs, and Yasmini would not
have understood that.
Nor did she understand that, even
supposing he had loved her with all his
heart, not on any conditions would he
have admitted it until absolutely free,
any more than that if she crucified him
he would love her the same, supposing
that he loved her at all. Nor did she
trust the “old gods™ too wil, or let
them work unaided
“Come with me, Athelstan!” she sald.
| She took his arm-—found little jeweled
| slippers in a closet hewn in the walle
take hop
stood res
and strong
od to
at. she
tains he had entered by. She led down
the steps, and at the foot told him to
put on his slippers, as if he vere a
child, Then, hurrying as if those opal
eye: of hers were indifferent to dark
or daylight, she picked her way among
bowiders that he could feel but not
see, along a floor that was only smooth
in places, for a distance that was long
enough by two or three times to lose
him altogether. When he looked back
there was no sign of red lights behind
him. And when he looked forward,
there was a dim outer light in front
and a whiff of the cool fresh air that
presages the dawn!
She led him through a gap on to a
ledge of rock that hung thousands of
feet above the home of thunder, a
ledge less than six feet wide, less than
twenty long, tilted back toward the
cliff. There they sat, watching the
stars. And there they saw the dawn
come, 3
{TO BE CONTINUED)
'Arking Back.
The Viear--What a dreadful plague
of cu erpillars, John!
John~Ah; an’ ‘oo let loose the first
pale of ‘em? Noh I—Siretch,