inner wall rising before them. Romero was the first to find the opening that led to the city proper and, calling to his fellows, he stepped boldly into the narrow passage. Then once again the hideous scream shattered the brooding silence of the ancient temple.
The three men halted. Zveri wiped the perspiration from his brow. 'I think we have gone as far as we can alone,' he said. 'Perhaps we had all better go back and rally the men. There is no sense in doing anything foolhardy.' Miguel Romero threw him a contemptuous sneer, but Ivitch assured Zveri that the suggestion met with his entire approval.
The two men crossed the court quickly without waiting to see whether the Mexican followed them or not and were soon once again outside the city.
'Where is Miguel?' asked Ivitch.
Zveri looked around. 'Romero!' he shouted in a loud voice, but there was no reply.
'It must have got him,' said Ivitch with a shudder.
'Small loss,' grumbled Zveri.
But whatever the thing was that Ivitch feared, it had not, as yet, gotten the young Mexican, who, after watching his companions' precipitate flight, had continued on through the opening in the inner wall determined to have at least one look at the interior of the ancient city of Opar that he had travelled so far to see and of the fabulous wealth of which he had been dreaming for weeks.
Before his eyes spread a magnificent panorama of stately ruins, before which the young and impressionable Latin-American stood spellbound; and then once again the eerie wail rose from the interior of a great building before him, but if he was frightened Romero gave no evidence of it. Perhaps he grasped his rifle a little more tightly; perhaps he loosened his revolver in his holster, but he did not retreat. He was awed by the stately grandeur of the scene before him, where age and ruin seemed only to enhance its pristine magnificence.
A movement within the temple caught his attention. He saw a figure emerge from somewhere, the figure of a gnarled and knotted man that rolled on short crooked legs; and then another and another came until there were fully a hundred of the savage creatures approaching slowly toward him. He saw their knotted bludgeons and their knives, and he realized that here was a menace more effective than an unearthly scream.
With a shrug he backed into the passageway. 'I cannot fight an army single-handed,' he muttered. Slowly he crossed the outer court, passed through the first great wall and stood again upon the plain outside the city. In the distance he saw the dust of the fleeing expedition and, with a grin, he started in pursuit, swinging along at an easy walk as he puffed upon a cigarette. From the top of the rocky hill at his left a little monkey saw him pass-a little monkey, which still trembled from fright, but whose terrified screams had become only low, pitiful moans. It had been a hard day for little Nkima.
So rapid had been the retreat of the expedition that Zveri, with Dorsky and Ivitch, did not overtake the main party until the greater part of it was already descending the barrier cliffs; nor could any threats or promises stay the retreat, which ended only when camp was reached.
Immediately Zveri called Abu Batn, together with Dorsky and Ivitch, into council. The affair had been Zveri's first reverse, and it was a serious one inasmuch as he had relied heavily upon the inexhaustible store of gold to be found in the treasure vaults of Opar. First, he berated Abu Batn, Kitembo, their ancestors and all their followers for cowardice; but all that he accomplished was to arouse the anger and resentment of these two.
'We came with you to fight the white men, not demons and ghosts,' said Kitembo. 'I am not afraid. I would go into the city, but my men will not accompany me and I cannot fight the enemy alone.'
'Nor I,' said Abu Batn, a sullen scowl still further darkening his swart countenance.
'I know,' sneered Zveri, 'you are both brave men, but you are much better runners than you are fighters. Look at us. We were not afraid. We went in and we were not harmed.'
'Where is Comrade Romero?' demanded Abu Batn.
'Well, perhaps, he is lost,' admitted Zveri. 'What do you expect? To win a battle without losing a man?'
'There was no battle,' said Kitembo, 'and the man who went farthest into the accursed city did not return.'
Dorsky looked up suddenly. 'There he is now!' he exclaimed, and as all eyes turned up the trail toward Opar, they saw Miguel Romero strolling jauntily into camp.
'Greeting, my brave comrades!' he cried to them. 'I am glad to find you alive. I feared that you might all succumb to heart failure.'
Sullen silence greeted his raillery, and no one spoke until he had approached and seated himself near them.
'What detained you?' demanded Zveri presently.
'I wanted to see what was beyond the inner wall,' replied the Mexican.
'And you saw?' asked Abu Batn.
'I saw magnificent buildings in splendid ruin,' replied Romero; 'a dead and moldering city of the dead past.' 'And what else?' asked Kitembo.
'I saw a company of strange warriors, short heavy men on crooked legs, with long powerful arms and hairy bodies. They came out of a great building that might have been a temple. There were too many of them for me. I could not fight them alone, so I came away.'
'Did they have weapons?' asked Zveri.
'Clubs and knives,' replied Romero.
'You see,' exclaimed Zveri, 'just a band of savages armed with clubs. We could take the city without the loss of a man.'
'What did they look like?' demanded Kitembo. 'Describe them to me,' and when Romero had done so, with careful attention to details, Kitembo shook his head. 'It is as I thought,' he said. 'They are not men; they are demons.'
'Men or demons, we are going back there and take their city,' said Zveri angrily. 'We must have the gold of Opar.'
'You may go, white man,' returned Kitembo, 'but you will go alone. I know my men, and I tell you that they will not follow you there. Lead us against white men, or brown men, or black men, and we will follow you. But we will not follow you against demons and ghosts.'
'And you, Abu Batn?' demanded Zveri.
'I have talked with my men on the return from the city, and they tell me that they will not go back there. They will not fight the jan and ghrol. They heard the voice of the jin warning them away, and they are afraid.'
Zveri stormed and threatened and cajoled, but all to no effect. Neither the Aarab sheykh nor the African chief could be moved.
'There is still a way,' said Romero.
'And what is that?' asked Zveri.
'When the gringo comes and the Philippine, there will be six of us who are neither Aarabs nor Africans. We six can take Opar.' Paul Ivitch made a wry face, and Zveri cleared his throat.
'If we are killed,' said the latter, 'our whole plan is wrecked. There will be no one left to carry on.'
Romero shrugged. 'It was only a suggestion,' he said, 'but, of course, if you are afraid-'
'I am not afraid,' stormed Zveri, 'but neither am I a fool.'
An ill-concealed sneer curved Romero's lips. 'I am going to eat,' he said, and, rising, he left them.
The day following his advent into the camp of his fellow conspirators, Wayne Colt wrote a long message in cipher and dispatched it to the Coast by one of his boys. From her tent Zora Drinov had seen the message given to the boy. She had seen him place it in the end of a forked stick and start off upon his long journey. Shortly after, Colt joined her in the shade of a great tree beside her tent.
'You sent a message this morning, Comrade Colt,' she said.
He looked up at her quickly. 'Yes,' he replied.
'Perhaps you should know that only Comrade Zveri is permitted to send messages from the expedition,' she told him.
'I did not know,' he said. 'It was merely in relation to some funds that were to have been awaiting me when I reached the Coast. They were not there. I sent the boy back after them.'
'Oh,' she said, and then their conversation drifted to other topics.
That afternoon he took his rifle and went out to look for game and Zora went with him, and that evening they
