THE way of the priest’s escape became clear at once. In the rear wall of the chamber a small door stood ajar.
“I thought not that he knew of the passage,” the Ayuti hissed; “but he shall not escape. Take you the hounds, Fairhair, and follow. I know whereto this passage leads, and will ride round upon Muswani to cut him off.”
Within five minutes the pursuit was in full swing. The hounds were loping down the passage on the trail of Nordhu, with the explorers close behind, while the king was galloping away from the city on his elk, hoping to intercept the flying priest.
“Say,” exclaimed Haverly, “I guess this temple must be kinder honeycombed with passages.”
“It’s a wonderful building,” returned Mervyn. “These passages are doubtless arranged for the convenience of the priests——”
“Nordhu must have the devil’s own cunning to have found that secret door,” interrupted Seymour savagely; “But he won’t escape for all his wiles. If the hounds get hold of him he’ll have short shrift.”
Down a flight of stairs the pursuers went, the great hounds making the passage ring with their baying; then on once more, the tunnel twisting and winding in such a fashion that neither of the friends had the least idea of the direction in which they were moving. Little they cared, however, so that they might again lay hands on the fugitive priest, who, should he succeed in effecting his escape, would assuredly once again attempt their destruction. His capture was a necessity if they would ever find their missing comrade and the vessel; for, with Nordhu at liberty, plotting their ruin, they would not dare venture forth to search for the Seal. So they put forth every effort in the chase, hoping at each bend of the passage they turned to come in sight of their quarry.
But Nordhu appeared to have obtained too good a start. The pursuers were beginning to think that, after all, they should lose him, when, rounding a curve swiftly, they pulled up in sheer astonishment.
Scarce twenty feet away, his gleaming jewel flashing a challenge to Seymour’s, stood the man they sought. Beside him was a great lever, upon which his hand rested, and at his feet in the floor of the tunnel yawned a hole some six feet in width. Close to the near edge of this crouched the hounds, their ferocity overcome by the hypnotic power of the priest.
At once the pursuers became watchful. What card was Nordhu about to play? they wondered. What devilish trick was he about to perform? The priest’s face puckered up into a savage grin as he noted the hesitation of his enemies.
“Why do ye not come on?” he cried ironically; “art afraid? I have waited to bid ye farewell, thinking perchance ye might grieve did I leave you without.”
Seymour’s face was distorted with fury as he gazed upon the priest. Scarcely could he control the mad passion which bade him rush forward and grip the grinning fiend. But what was that hole in the floor? What was the lever? That Nordhu was about to spring some diabolical trick upon them was certain, and the thought checked the baronet’s murderous desire. So for a space they remained, pursuers and fugitive glaring at each other with a world of hatred in their eyes, yet neither making a move.
Then once more the priest spoke:
“Since ye will not join me, I will go. Fare ye well until I return with my warriors to destroy ye.”
He laughed mockingly, and at that Seymour, losing control of his temper, leapt forward. Quick as thought Nordhu flung over the lever beside him, and at once, from the roof of the tunnel, a cataract of liquid light began to fall, plunging into the hole in the floor.
“Wilt follow now?” snarled the voice of the priest above the boom and splash of the falling light.
“Jupiter!” gasped the Yankee. “Checkmate!”
Ay! checkmate it was! for who dared attempt to pass that gleaming curtain after Chenobi’s warning as to its deadly power. Nordhu had played his card and played it well.
With a laugh of triumph he turned and strode down the tunnel, leaving his pursuers standing helpless and amazed at his handiwork.
“I almost feel inclined to risk it,” growled Seymour, as the sound of the priest’s footsteps died away.
“You must not,” cried Mervyn excitedly; “remember what the king said, as——”
But there was no need for the scientist to reiterate Chenobi’s warning.
While yet the words trembled on his lips the fact that the Ayuti had not exaggerated the terrible power of the liquid light was brought to the notice of all in a fearful manner.
Released from the fascination of the priest, the hounds had again grown restless, baying clamorously, yet not daring to venture near the curtain of falling light. Suddenly, while Mervyn spoke, from far away came a cry, faint, but easily recognisable as the voice of Nordhu. At the sound one of the dogs made a rash spring forward, as though he would have plunged through the cataract on the trail of the priest. Over the brink of the hole he leapt, his fore-paws outstretched, but touched the fringe of the falling liquid; then he was shrivelled up into a shapeless black mass, and was swept downward by the cataract.
“Great Heaven!” the scientist cried: “poor brute!”
The other hounds, awed by the fate of their fellow, drew back whining.
“What a fearful power!” Wilson exclaimed. “It must be some form of electricity, I should imagine.”
“I guess the Ayuti didn’t pile it on a bit too thick when he said it was death to touch it,” announced Silas; “but let’s get a move on. We’ll have to follow the trail of the elk now, and we may be in at the death, after all, if we flicker.”
With that they all turned and retraced their steps to the altar chamber. Then, descending to the square, they set the two remaining hounds on the trail of Muswani.
“I reckon,” Haverly averred, as they passed through the city gate, “as Nordhu’s a man of resources. He ought to be a financier. There’s not a blamed coup but what he could bring off.”
“He’s the craftiest brute I ever had dealings with,” returned Seymour; “but I think he’s about at the end of his tether. By this time Chenobi should have reached the end of the passage, and, if so, Nordhu will regret the bravado that inspired him to wait and bid ‘us farewell,’ as he put it.”
“How he comes to know the secrets of the temple so well puzzles me,” admitted Mervyn. “His knowledge of the workings of the place seems almost unlimited.”
“You can bet he’s used that passage before,” remarked the American; “perhaps to sneak into the city on some throat-slitting job or other; but I reckon he’ll have to be real cute to get away from Chenobi. Say, we’ll have to accelerate the pace considerable if we’re to see this job through,” and he set the example by striding forward briskly.
Over the plain they went for perhaps a couple of hours, close at the heels of the hounds, until the sound of the sea came to their ears, the booming of waves against the rocks.
“Great Scott!” the baronet exclaimed; “I did not know we were so near the sea.”
“We may see something of the Seal,” suggested Wilson, his heart leaping at the thought.
“I shouldn’t reckon on it,” replied Silas; “this underground sea appears to be fairly large, and there’s heaps of room for the old boat to get lost if Garth ain’t careful where he’s steering.”
“You don’t think the submarine’s come to grief?” queried the engineer anxiously.
“I think nothing,” was the reply, “but, what with wolf-men ashore and ichthyosauri afloat, I reckon our pard must be havin’ a hot time.”
Now the trail led down to the beach, and, swinging sharp to the right after the hounds, the party passed beneath the shadow of an immense cliff.
“Who goes?” cried a voice in Ayuti, and Chenobi stepped forward from an angle of the rock. He checked the noise of the hounds with a gesture, and turned to his friends with an air of surprise.
“Where is Nordhu?” he asked. “I have waited here long for ye to drive him forth, but he hath not emerged.”
Forthwith Seymour explained all that had happened, and told of the cry they had heard, at which the hound had leapt to his death.
“The priest hath doubtless met with some mischance,” Chenobi asserted. “Come; we will enter the passage.”
Moving a few paces along the cliff base, he turned into a dark opening. Ere the others could follow, however, he leapt back with a startled cry, as a dark figure appeared at the tunnel end.
It was the priest.
His one hand, uplifted above his head, held a small, shrivelled brown ball, and his whole attitude was so menacing that the explorers involuntarily stepped back a pace.
“Back!” the king cried, his eyes fixed upon Nordhu’s hand; “’tis the thunder-ball!”
“Move not,” snarled the priest; “I have somewhat to say ere I destroy ye. Thought ye to trap me in the tunnel, dogs? I tell you ye know not the resources of Nordhu. Ye are but babes.” Then, with a change of tone, he went on, “Why do ye pit yourselves against me? I offered you life for the secret of your fire-weapons, and ye would not take it. I offer you again. Join me; make my people into a strong race; teach them of your knowledge, and ye shall be rulers and kings among them. What say ye?”
“No, you devil!” thundered the baronet in a fury, “a thousand times, no! Think ye we would have dealings with a monster foul as you, who can take pleasure in sacrificing helpless prisoners to the appetite of the devilish Rahee? Truly you have no lack of conceit.”
“Hath he spoken for all of ye?” demanded the priest calmly, not a whit moved by this outburst. “Do all of ye choose death rather than life?”
“We choose nothing,” retorted Mervyn; “you are in our power. What is to prevent us slaying you?”
An evil grin spread over Nordhu’s features.
“This,” he cried, shaking aloft the ball he held, and at the movement the face of Chenobi grew pale as death; “the thunder-ball. ’Twill shatter you to fragments in a moment, if I but cast it at your feet.”
“Great Heaven!” whispered Mervyn to the baronet, “it’s a dried puff-ball! We must be careful.”
“Now hearken,” the priest went on; “step backward to the water’s edge and cast your weapons into the sea. Have a care”—as Seymour made a threatening movement—“I am not minded to destroy myself with ye, yet will I do that rather than fall again into your hands.”
“I guess he’s got the drop on us,” Haverly growled, as the scientist translated the priest’s command; “we’ll have to do as he says.”
In silence the party obeyed the order, though their hearts burned with shame at their humiliating position. As the last weapon splashed into the heaving water, Nordhu advanced from the tunnel, walking with a slight limp. The hounds, who had retreated with their master, whined piteously as the priest moved over the beach. Their terror of the man seemed to overcome all their natural courage.
“Stand where ye are,” Nordhu called, “and make no attempt to follow me, or ’twill be the worse for ye.”
So the adventurers stood, and watched him toil painfully across the shingle. Evidently he had fallen and injured himself in the tunnel, at the time when the four had heard his cry. Towards the plain they had crossed so recently he stumbled.
“Curse it! we’ve lost him!” muttered Seymour savagely, as the light of the priest’s jewel faded from view; then suddenly a savage bellow rang out of the darkness.
“’Tis Muswani,” cried the Ayuti; “I had forgotten him. He is loose on the plain, and has doubtless attacked the priest.”
An instant later the bellow was repeated, and the priest reappeared, scuttling down to the water’s edge with the giant elk pounding along behind him, mad with fury. Here was a factor in the game for which Nordhu was not prepared. If he used his explosive ball to destroy the great elk, he would be defenceless against his human foes, and he well knew that he would receive but scant mercy from them. Therefore he took to the water, hoping to swim out beyond sight of the Ayuti’s bellicose steed; then return to the shore at a point some considerable distance away.
“Good old hoss!” Silas cried, as the elk plunged into the water after his escaping foe; but his sentence broke off into a gasp of amazement as a hoarse shout broke from the engineer:
“The Seal! The Seal!”
Far away over the tumbling crests of the incoming waves shone a bright light—the searchlight of the Seal.
