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Three hours after, the air-liner sighted a dim blue line that marked the Red Sea. The Master pointed at this, with a strange smile. "Once we pass that sea," he commented, "our goal is close. The hour of great things is almost at hand!" "Provided we get some petrol," put in Bohannan. "Faith, an open gate, that should have been closed, defeated Napoleon. A few hundred gallons of gasoline "
The sooner your pockets are full, to the extreme limit, the sooner something like reason will return to you. Jewels being of interest to a man at death's door it's quite characteristic of you, Bohannan. Help yourself!" "Thanks, I will!" Bohannan flung up at him, blood-drabbled face pale and drawn by the flaring lamplight. "A multi-millionaire! Death? I should worry! Help myself?
But as darkness fingered at the panes, something of the vastness of sky and air made itself realized; something of the illimitable scope of this adventuring. Bohannan slid the window shut and settled himself beside Captain Alden. He glanced at his wrist-watch, and a thrill of nervous exultation stabbed him.
Last of all, the river had diminished to a shallow, tortuous delta, where the Master's numbed feet had touched bottom. There he had dragged himself ashore, with his goatskin, far more dead than living. And there, for a time he knew not, consciousness had wholly ceased. A dull, toneless voice sounded in the Master's ears. Bohannan was speaking.
This habitation of man soon slipped away to westward, and once more nothing remained but the clear, cold severity of space, with now and then a racing drift of rain below, and tumbling, stormy weather all along the sea horizons. The Master and Bohannan spent some time together after the Azores had been dropped astern and off the starboard quarter. "Captain Alden" remained in her cabin.
With a gulp and a gurgle, the precious old wine, clear ruby under the dim light, gushed away down the steaming shaft that plunged to the River of Night. "Oh, faith now, but that's a damned shame, sir!" Bohannan protested, rubbing an ugly welt on his brow. His voice was thick, dull, unnatural. Madness glimmered in his blinking eyes. "With the blessed tongue of me parched to a cinder!
Impossible!" "True, nevertheless. Manderson has just now routed him out of the starboard storage-room, near the reserve petrol-tank." "Hm! Who is he?" Bohannan shrugged stout shoulders. "Don't know yet. He's still dopy. Just coming out of the effects of the lethalizing gas." "Ah, yes, yes, I see. One of the former crew, I suppose. This is quite inexcusable.
Barefooted, in their socks, or some still in slippers, they reached this door. A little silence fell on them, as they inspected it. One man coughed, spitting blood. Another wheezed, with painful respiration. The smell of sweat and blood sickened the air. "That's some door, all right!" judged Bohannan, peering at its dark wood, heavily banded with iron.
Sure, it can't be that!" "It not only can be, but is!" the Master answered. "The old legend is coming true, that's all. Have you no eyes in your head, Major? If that shine isn't the shine of gold, what is it?" "Yes, but the thing's impossible, sir!" cried Bohannan. "Why, man alive! If that's gold, the whole of Arabia would be here after it! There'd be caravans, miners, swarms of "
It's not impossible he might have been captured. By Allah!" And the man struck the table hard. "If I really believed Nasr ed Din " "Well?" "I'd go again, if I died for it!" "The pronoun's wrong. We'd go!" "Yes, we!" He took her hand. "We'd trail that rumor down and have Bohannan out of there, and the others too, if but no, no, the thing's impossible!"