Her mind fought for a moment to pierce the blankness with which I met it. Then it recognised its failure. “Wait,” she answered. “I have a thought,” and again she turned to her Leader, and a longer silence followed.
At last she turned to me, and relief of some kind gave light to the serenity of her eyes. “She goes. I stay with you. How long depends on yourself. But it is a condition that I must not explain.”
I was so gladdened by this decision that I was disposed to be generous. “I am very glad,” I answered, “unless it will expose you to greater danger than you would otherwise meet. But I hope I have not been the cause of any difference between you and your Leader, who so plainly dislikes me.”
She answered coldly, “I am in no danger that I fear to meet. We are not animals such as you are. Nor do we differ among ourselves. Our Leaders are always right.”
As she gave me this thought, her Leader looked at me for the first time. I thought there was inquiry in her glance, but it passed me dumbly. She threw a thought to my companion, “You should watch the floor,” and turned and went out, and the door closed behind her, with the click which had sounded so ominously in the night when I first heard it.
XXIV
The Fight in the Arsenal
When the door closed I was very glad to sit down with my back against it, as we had done before, and my companion was quick to perceive my exhaustion. Again I felt the small life-giving hand in mine, and, for the time at least, the effects of thirst and starvation, and the long night-hours, were overcome by the reserves of her vitality.
She was very quiet at first, and indisposed for conversing.
At length I asked her, “I know how I must appear to you in many ways, but why was your Leader so contemptuous of me, beyond anything I have met among your people previously?”
She answered, “She was not contemptuous. She did not regard you at all. Why should she? She had more serious things of which to think. Besides, you think of our Leaders as one, because their decisions are always unanimous. But this is wrong. Each is different. There is none like this one in all practical issues, and in control of material things. That is why it was she who came to seek the first one, when she did not return. I think she regards the whole expedition as a mistake, and that she should have been left to her own ways. But such things are not for me. They are for themselves only.
“She taught me much while we talked together. When I am with you only, I think myself superior in many ways. Your body breaks so easily, and you are never sure when it will fail you. Your mind is confused, and inconsequent. It is only when I think of yourself as of a Leader whose followers are mostly treacherous or disloyal, but who still endeavours without loss of courage to fulfil his purpose, that I respect you at all. But when my Leader showed my stupidity I felt that there is little difference between us.
“She showed me, among other things, that I accept your conclusions without thought, and that I do not even take notice of what is beneath me.
“You are used to opening doors in certain ways, and so you assumed that this could not be opened at all from the inside, and I believed you without reason. The Killers must have been preparing an attack from beneath our feet, and were only interrupted when they ran out to waylay my Leader, and I did not hear it. I know that your senses are rudimentary, but do you not hear it now?”
No—I heard nothing. But she said that they were moving busily under our feet, so that we must be prepared for an attack at any moment. She showed me what her Leader had known at a glance, that if we pressed the hinge the door would open.
I said, “If there be a cavity beneath us, there is probably a trapdoor from it to this hall. In that case, I wonder they haven’t used it earlier. Let us see what we can discover.”
We examined the floor from end to end. It was of the same hard smooth substance as the walls. It was laid in squares, about a yard each way, so finely morticed that the divisions were scarcely perceptible. But there was one in the middle of the hall that attracted our attention.
It was set as close as the others, even more so, but there was no appearance of mortar between it and those adjoining. I cleaned the dust from the floor with my ragged sleeve, and the difference became more evident.
As we bent above it, there was a slight sound overhead, and looking up suddenly I saw a row of yellow heads that were regarding our movements with interest. “I wish I could kill those creatures. They will harm us yet,” I thought, and my companion answered, “They wish us evil, but you will do us injury if you fear them. They know every thought they cause you. But tell me what plans you have. Our Leader is rescued—if any rescue were needed. We can open the door when we will, and there is nothing to keep us here, if we have courage to venture out. But perhaps it would be better to defend this sheltered place, till our friends come in the evening?”
I answered, “I think we can go free together when we will, though I could not have done so singly, for I shall have no strength of my own till I come
