TORPEON now fought single-handed against the maddened thousands of his subjects. He laughed as he fought. He cleared a space around him, and at every wave of his truncheon a man fell. But they still came on, for they were desperate. They knew that, so long as Torpeon survived, misery, torture, and death would be their portion. The gage of battle having been thrown down, there could be no truce or quarter until he was slain; and if he were to be victorious, so much the more reason for them to fight to the death. They hated him more than they loved their own lives. They had served him in fear, and groaned in their servitude. Now the hour had come for liberty or annihilation.
“Snatch his truncheon from him,” they shouted to one another. “Tear him to pieces!”
Torpeon smiled, and death leapt out from his hand. But they still drove in upon him, for they were very many, and the fight was to the finish.
A gigantic creature, half ape, hairy and hideous, nurtured in the caverns and gorges of the dark mountains, came toward him from behind, crouching low behind the others, crawling between their legs, his lips drawn back from his grinning fangs, snarling in his throat, gripping in one hand a flint with a jagged edge. The flint had been soaked in the venom of crushed serpents. Asgar, realizing the opportunity, roused those in front to a fiercer attack, so that the prince’s attention might be diverted from the true point of danger. He tossed his thick arms frantically, and his gross body shook as he shrieked out his orders. Torpeon caught sight of him over the heads of the nearer fighters; he lifted his staff and pointed it at him. The invisible bolt flew to its mark. With a screech of rage and agony, Asgar sprang in the air and fell dead, the top of his skull blown off and his brains spattering the heads and faces of those behind him.
“Good old Asgar!” said Torpeon, chuckling in his beard. “Who next?”
But, an instant after, there rose from the crowd such a yell of horrible triumph and bloodthirsty frenzy as made the previous uproar seem tame by comparison.
The man-ape, seizing his chance, burst through the foremost ranks of those who hemmed the prince in from the rear, and made his spring. He alighted on Torpeon’s back, his short legs gripping him round the body, while his left arm, powerful as a bar of iron, encircled his throat, and with his right hand, armed with the poisoned flint, he strove to dash death into his face. Torpeon, overbalanced by the immense weight of the grisly creature, and half throttled by the squeeze of the hairy arm, staggered back and nearly fell, striving all the while to bring to bear the truncheon; but his antagonist warded it off with his upthrown shoulder; and now a headlong rush by those in front threw the prince off his feet, and he would have fallen had he not been held up by a simultaneous rush by those behind. By a titanic effort of strength he wrenched himself free from the strangler, and, twisting about, laid him dead with his staff; but not before the other, with a final blow of his armed fist, had succeeded in wounding him on the forehead with his envenomed stone.
At that juncture the gates of the castle were thrown open, and Miriam appeared on the threshold. Those who first caught sight of her uttered shrill cries of amazement and alarm, which turned the attention of others from their enemy; and in a moment the whole mob was facing toward her. None of them had ever seen her before, nor any creature resembling her; and the unknown terrified them. Her beauty and dignity struck them as a menace. She could have come for no other reason than to succor Torpeon, and therefore to attack them. They hesitated, wavering back and forth, not knowing with what powers she might be armed, or in what form the new assault would be made. But the masses in the rear, heartened by their advantage over the prince, forced forward those in front, and the space between her and them grew narrower. Miriam, on her side, after casting a comprehensive glance over the tumult, stepped out from the gateway and advanced straight toward the storm-tossed multitude. She seemed alone, for the companion who walked at her side was invisible to their eyes.
Torpeon, meanwhile, had gained a respite; but he was aware of his wound and of the deadly peril it involved. Already he felt the first chill of the poison congealing the current of his blood. For the time being, however, by the use of the charm against such dangers which he possessed, he was able to ward off the effects in some measure; but what aided yet more to restore him was the apparition at such a moment of Miriam.
It kindled a wild fire in him; for he could interpret her presence only as designed to aid him or to share his fate. She loved him, then! At that thought so fierce a tempest of emotions burst out in his heart that he shivered like a tower in earthquake; all else was lost, but she was won, and of what value beside that was any other victory or defeat! He threw himself toward her, slipping in blood, stumbling over corpses; if he could but gain the castle with her, and force his way to that guarded crypt below where was hidden the engine prepared against the last emergency, lurking there like a monstrous jinnee, biding its time to defy God and nature, he could wrench asunder the invisible cables that bound his globe to a hated obedience, and soar with her untrammeled into cosmic freedom. There would be leisure, then, to heal him of his wound; or, if death must come, it would find him in her arms. His brain began to reel; moments of blankness drifted across his mind; but he staggered onward.
To Jack the spirits of the slain were more conspicuous than were the still incarnate, and he perceived that they swarmed round the prince, bewildering his brain, urging him to insane thoughts, causing him to step amiss, and distracting his attention from the assaults of the mob. They constituted a peril more immediate than from the latter. He saw, too, that he could himself exercise more control over these dead than over the living. They saw and feared him, whereas the others divided their menace between Torpeon and Miriam.
The spirit of the hairy monster, reeking from his own corpse, and incomparably more hideous and infuriated than before, was especially active against his slayer. At this instant, seconded by the rampant specter of Asgar, he swerved Torpeon from his course, so that he tripped over Asgar’s body and fell headlong. The shock of the fall caused the truncheon to fly from his hand and left him defenseless. The mob made a rush for him.
No wrath or hatred against any living creature dwelt in Jack’s soul; his insight had now become too penetrating and comprehensive for that. He had no desire but to save the prince. With a gesture he drove back the murderous ghosts from their prey, but he could influence only indirectly the savage hosts of the earth-bound; and that would not suffice!
Miriam, however, hesitated not a moment. Unarmed and unshielded, she sprang to the rescue. The mob, lacking a leader either dead or living, gave back in transient panic before her, not knowing what magic weapon might be at her command. Torpeon struggled to his feet once more. But he was no longer fully conscious of what he did. Miriam said to Jack:
“Guide him to the castle, where he will be safe; leave these poor creatures to me.”
But a new element entered into the fray.
Jim, who had not noticed Miriam’s absence from the upper window, where he and Jenny had been observing the conflict below, had been greatly startled to behold her emerge from the gateway, apparently unaccompanied. Whatever had been his original plan of campaign, the turn of affairs had seemed so well calculated to forward his main object, that he had been satisfied to let it continue; a free fight, too, is always a captivating spectacle for a boy. But Miriam’s unexpected participation in the battle threatened total disaster to all his projects; and the necessity of protecting her swept all other considerations from his mind.
Disregarding the lamentations of poor Jenny, he seized his crutch and made off incontinently for the stricken field. He had not stopped to consider what form his intervention should take; he thought of himself not at all, except as an instrument of use for persons he loved; but he had full confidence in the efficacy of Solarion’s gift.
Selfless love for others is the soul of the faith that works what we regard as miracles. Things may happen in our daily walk and pass unobserved that are in their essence more marvelous than the transformation of a blackthorn stick into a battle-charger.
Be that as it may, it was a mounted cavalier who issued forth from the castle just as Miriam helped the dazed and moribund Prince of Tor to his feet and assigned him to Jack’s care while she faced the mob. She faced them, but made no demonstration. They were intimidated, but it would not be for long. The sight of Torpeon making his escape into the castle set fire to their rage anew. They were gathering courage for an onset.
Jim, as he rode forth, marked Torpeon entering in, but he had no consciousness of his guide. He had no misgiving but that his boss was many thousands of miles distant from this debatable ground. And if he could furnish the means of getting him and the woman he loved together, the chief end of his existence, as he saw it, would be achieved. To what else might happen he was royally indifferent.
“De boss an’ de missis is de real goods,” he told himself complacently; “not’in’ else ain’t in dere class; de on’y t’ing ails dem is, dey ain’t got no caution! Any guy what makes good in de ring has to be wise to side-steppin’; foot-work is de cheese; but dese here folks o’ mine, dey rushes in head down an’ wide open. De odder guy lands his uppercut, an’ ef de time-keeper ain’t on de job wid de bell, dey’s counted out! Well, I’s de timekeeper for dis roun’, an’ I figgers ter make a reckud!”
As he rode up to Miriam he hailed her cheerfully.
“Here yer are, miss! Las’ call ter lunch! Forw’d cyar on yer right! Hop right aboard while de hoppin’s good! On’y line what issers free passes ter N’York! Step lively an’ avoid de rush! All clear ahead, no sidin’s nor interference!” He had dismounted and taken his place on the left, with his hand ready to assist her in mounting. “Put yer foot here, miss, an’ up yer goes! Are yer on? Firs’ stop, Sattum, an’ de boss waitin’ fer yer on de platform. So-long!”
“But you must ride behind me, Jim!” said Miriam, holding out a hand to help him to the crupper. The creatures were closing round them.
Jim recoiled with an air of injured dignity. “Say, miss, fer de sake o’ Mike, git busy wid yerself! What, me? Is I de sort ter take de boss’s place, I arsks yer? Me, I takes me time, see! Jes’ you leave dese here slumgullions ter me! Say, cleanin’ up a bunch like dat is me middle name! An’ I’ll lan’ in N’York befo’ you does, at dat!”
Miriam felt that there was no leisure to parley. She stooped down quickly and caught the little anatomy round the body. But even as she lifted him to the saddle, a heavy stone, hurled with deadly aim and tremendous force, struck the boy just over the heart. He gave a gasp, and lay limp across her saddle-bow. The horse bounded into the air.
A blaze of light, spanning the heavens from east to west, arched across overhead—Lamara’s sign of the ring to the Saturnians. The whole stupendous circle had burst into dazzling flame. That appalling splendor sent its rays throughout the firmament. Simultaneously, Miriam saw the solid globe from whose surface she had just risen rock and lurch like a balloon straining at its moorings. It seemed to be endowed with a terrible life; it yawed and plunged this way and that; groanings broke from it; the peaks and crags were overthrown in ruin; the boiling rivers were tossed from their channels and emptied into the belching craters of the volcanoes; and the Bitter Sea, rushing from its bed, poured its flood over the city and its people. It whirled around the castle, deep down in whose rock-quarried crypt the crazed desperado had set in motion the huge wheels of his impious engine. The waters beat upon the walls and towers; they tottered and crumbled, and, whirling as they fell, buried their builder beneath a pyramid of shattered stone.
But, as Miriam still rose aloft, she saw the vast sphere of Saturn outspread beneath her. Upon its surface, revealed in the intense light of the blazing arch, the myriads of the Saturnians performed in concert the evolutions of their mystic rite. They covered the face of the sphere like a network of many colored strands, ceaselessly shifting and reforming in harmonious figures; a living web, through whose threads coursed the single will and impulse to master disorder with order, darkness with light, hate with love. The great globe was clothed with a lovely iridescence, the mingling hues of which united in white shafts of light, bearing in their bosom the invisible rays of spiritual energy which should counteract and overcome the profane forces of dissolution. Slowly but irresistibly the gigantic struggle issued in the victory of law and peace, and the infernal armies of rebellion and chaos gave way before the might of their opponents. Miriam saw the throes and heavings of tortured Tor gradually subside, and the planet resumed the steadfast track of its orbit. The embassy of Zarga, faithfully fulfilled, had not failed of its object.
A hand was at her bridle rein, though invisible to her sight; but she yielded with confidence to its guidance.
“Dearest,” she said, “must that draft which you accepted for my sake from Solarion part us on earth henceforth, or may we be fully reunited here?”
“I took the risk, beloved,” he replied. “What will be the outcome I cannot tell. We love each other, and love’s gains must always be greater than its sacrifices, for any sacrifice in that cause can but give each of us to the other the more. But it seems to me that the halo of which Lamara told me must be the reward of a soul so loyal, loving, and magnanimous as to give all for the sole happiness of giving. No other gift is pure enough to be divine.”
Tears gushed to Miriam’s eyes; and she bent down and kissed the forehead of the little gnome who lay lifeless across her saddle.
The flames of the ring subsided as they dropped in wide circlings toward Saturn. The choral dance had ceased, and the people had retired to their places. But the planet bloomed with a fresh, unprecedented beauty; the air rang with birdsongs, and was rich with flower-fragrance. When Miriam alighted on the turf in front of the amphitheater, a deputation of the little Nature people were awaiting her. They took Jim’s body and laid it on a bier which they had brought, made of green boughs woven together and covered with flowers, and bore it away, to the music of quaint chantings, just as Lamara and some others came up the slope from the sea.