A Chinese Command Part 16

The pirates wasted no time in reloading, but came on again to the foot of the steps. Here they were of course obliged to dismount, and some handed over their horses to others of their number to hold, so that they were only beginning to mount the steps as Drake and Frobisher reached the top and darted in through the great doorway. Drake was by this time dreadfully out of breath, and gaspingly protested that he had come to the end of his tether; nevertheless he managed to muster sufficient strength to jog along close behind his friend. At their last hiding-place they had sought concealment aloft, but Frobisher decided now to take refuge below, since the palace appeared to be the kind of structure that would afford a better prospect of escape from the vaults or cellars.

Accordingly the younger man kept his eyes open for a flight of steps leading downward, and, as the pirates were close behind, darted down the first that met his eyes. This was a narrow, winding, stone staircase that led downward so far that they appeared to be reaching to the very bowels of the earth; but the pair eventually came to the bottom, finding themselves in a long, stone-flagged corridor, extending a considerable distance, and very dimly lighted by small gratings which evidently communicated with some chamber above.

They seemed to have come to the end of their tether at last, however, for nowhere could they find an opening leading out of the corridor. And already they could hear the pirates descending the stairs.

"Come, Drake!" whispered Frobisher; "we dare not remain here. Let's try to the left; there may be a door concealed somewhere among the shadows.

I wish we had a little more light."

The other end of the pa.s.sage was reached without a single exit being discovered, and there was no time to run back and try farther in the other direction.

"This is the end, I guess," said Drake, as the approaching footsteps sounded nearer. "It's 'backs against the wall and fight to the death'

for us now, my friend."

Suiting the action to the word, the little skipper grasped his cudgel by the thinner end, took his revolver--with only one shot remaining--in his other, and flung himself backward against the wall.

Then a curious thing happened. The solid wall at the end of the pa.s.sage yielded to the pressure of the skipper's body, and Drake, still leaning against it, fell farther and farther backward, until at last he found himself in a reclining position on the now sloping wall. Then, to Frobisher's unbounded amazement, the little man disappeared from view, a dull thud from below announcing the fact that he had dropped a distance of several feet. In an instant the younger man realised what had happened. The corridor had a purpose, after all; and the door at the end was probably secured by a concealed spring of some sort which Drake must have unwittingly pressed when he flung himself back against the wall.

Without losing an instant Frobisher knelt down at the edge of the dark opening, then turning, allowed himself to slip downward gradually, for it was obvious that there were no steps; and as his feet touched bottom he was barely in time to remove his fingers from the sill when the door swung to above him with a m.u.f.fled "click."

The pirates had not reached the foot of the stairs when the door closed, so that, unless they knew or guessed at and found the secret of opening it, the fugitives were safe from them, at any rate. But the thought occurred to Frobisher when the door closed behind him: now that they were in, how were they to get out again?

He called softly to Drake, and soon found that that worthy was much more startled than hurt, although even yet hardly able to realise what had happened to him. As soon as the little skipper had recovered his faculties a little he listened, and hearing nothing of their pursuers, struck a match, a box of which he had fortunately concealed in his robe, and looked to see whether there was a spring inside the door. He failed to find one, however, and he and Frobisher exchanged glances full of apprehension. They seemed to have escaped a swift death for one of lingering starvation.

But they had no time to spend in dismal forebodings. They could now faintly hear the uproar above them in the pa.s.sage as the pirates hunted for the door by which their quarry had escaped, and crouched down together, wondering whether their pursuers would hit upon the spring.

Minute after minute pa.s.sed, however, and the door still remained closed; and after about a quarter of an hour the pirates were heard to take their departure, probably convinced that the fugitives had not gone down the stairs, after all.

With a sigh of relief Frobisher turned to Drake and asked him to strike another light, so that they might get some sort of notion where they were. Drake did so; and the first thing the light revealed was a great bundle of torches, evidently placed there in the bygone days for the use of people whose business took them into this underground chamber. The two men eagerly lighted one each, and then, taking a few more as a stand-by, proceeded to explore.

The enormous chamber which the light revealed appeared to contain nothing whatever; but there were several pa.s.sages leading from it--seven in all, as the explorers counted--and they tried the first they came to, to ascertain where it led.

It extended for a distance of about a hundred feet, and then terminated; nor did there appear to be any door, concealed or otherwise, at the end of it. Two more pa.s.sages were explored with the same result; but the fourth, or middle pa.s.sage of the seven, was different, in that, at the end, they came to a ma.s.sive iron door. Drake stretched out his hand and made an attempt to twist the iron handle, but it would not budge. Again he tried, and this time it seemed to move a little; and as it did so Frobisher thought he caught a slight grinding, whirring sound, like rusty machinery reluctantly moving.

What it was that prompted him to act he did not know, but suddenly becoming possessed with a suspicion of that door and a sense of danger in its vicinity, he dragged Drake quickly away from the handle, and himself retreated a few steps.

It was well that he did so, for at that moment the grinding sounds became quite perceptible, waxed louder, and then--like lightning from a cloud, a row of curved swordblades shot out of slots in the stone-work which the men had not previously noticed, and swept together for all the world like a pair of calliper legs. Any person standing by the door must have infallibly been stabbed through and through by that deadly device. Then, just as suddenly, the blades sprang back into the wall and the door swung back on its hinges, revealing another and smaller chamber beyond.

"By all the Powers," gasped Drake, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, "what a fiendish invention! Mr Frobisher, that's the second time this night that you've saved my life. I shall not forget."

"Pshaw!" answered Frobisher; "what about the times you've saved mine?

But, Drake," he continued excitedly, "I've got an idea that we are on the point of discovering something. The man who owned this palace must have had something very well worth guarding, or he would never have taken the trouble to instal such an elaborate arrangement as that to destroy possible thieves, for that's what it was intended to do, without a doubt. Let's get along and see what there is to see; but be careful, for goodness' sake. There may be more of these man-traps about, and we don't want to be left dead in this hole."

So saying, Frobisher stepped slowly and cautiously through the door-way, holding his torch high above his head, and at once found himself in a small, circular chamber, which was almost completely filled with ironbound cases and chests of every description.

"Great Caesar's ghost!" almost shouted Frobisher to Drake, who was standing just inside the door, with mouth wide open and torch almost dropping out of his hand; "we have dropped right into somebody's treasure-house, and no mistake. If those chests do not contain valuables, my name is not Murray Frobisher. Bring your stick, and let us see whether we can wrench off one of the locks. It should not be very difficult, for the wood looks so rotten as almost to be crumbling to powder."

No sooner said than done. Drake eagerly placed the end of his stout cudgel under the hasp of the nearest of the boxes and, using it as a lever, soon sent the iron flying, the nails drawing out of the soft, "punky" wood as easily as though they had been set in putty. Next they swung the lid back; and then--what a sight met their astounded eyes!

The box contained neither gold nor silver, but was full to the brim with jewels of the most magnificent description, unset, every one of them, and all flas.h.i.+ng and scintillating in the glare of the torches like a boxful of the most exquisitely coloured liquid fire. The sight was so extraordinarily beautiful that it fairly took the beholders' breath away, and for quite a minute neither of them could speak a word; they simply stood still, gasping with wonder and delight.

Another chest, and then another was opened, both of

Missing pages 223 and 224.

Missing page.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MUTTERINGS OF WAR.

The single, and scarcely original, exclamation of "Oh!" was all that Captain Drake appeared to be capable of uttering for the moment. His eyes continued to bulge from their sockets, and he looked like a suddenly-awakened somnambulist. He was trying to realise the meaning of what Frobisher had just told him, and was finding it altogether too much for him.

At last Frobisher said, with a laugh: "Well, skipper, the money's here, sure enough; but so are we, and it remains to be seen whether or not we can get out."

"We'll get out all right, don't you trouble," returned Drake confidently; "but"--unable as yet to detach his mind from the subject of his suddenly-acquired fortune--"just now you mentioned the name of the gentleman who collected all this stuff--Jenkins Can, I think you said he was called. Who was he, and how did he come to pouch such a pile of loot? Was he one of those old buccaneers, like Morgan and Kidd, that we read about?"

"Well," replied Frobisher, "he was not exactly a buccaneer, for he was not a sailor, but a landsman; and he operated in a much larger way than either Morgan or Kidd. As a matter of fact he was a Tartar chief in his young days, many centuries ago, who gradually drilled and armed his own tribe, then other tribes, and still others, until he came, in course of time, to have an enormous army under him. The idea then occurred to him to make use of this vast army; and he determined upon no less a task than that of conquering Asia. He did it, too; there's hardly a square mile of this continent that has not echoed to the tread of his troops.

Everywhere he went he was victorious. He took and sacked cities, destroyed them, and sowed the ruins with salt; and it is said that, to this day, no gra.s.s will grow where Genghiz Khan's armies trod.

Naturally, in the course of time, he acc.u.mulated a vast booty from the cities he captured, and it finally became too large and c.u.mbersome for him to carry about with him, so he determined to alter his tactics for once, and, instead of destroying, to build a city for himself where he could bury his h.o.a.rd, and which he could make his head-quarters.

"It is well known that he actually did this--various records state it, but those records do not say exactly where. The city, it is said, was founded somewhere in northern China--on the banks of a mighty river, is the wording, I believe; but there are several rivers in China answering that description, so the place might be almost anywhere. Then, years afterward, this man determined to conquer j.a.pan. He fitted out a great armada and sailed for Nippon; but, as in the case of the famous Spanish Armada, a storm arose, and the entire fleet was wrecked. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese lost their lives, and j.a.pan was saved. From that time onward, Genghiz Khan and the records relating to his treasure disappeared; and the city he founded, as well as the treasure, gradually pa.s.sed into legend, the story being handed down from father to son by word of mouth. The man himself is supposed to have been cast ash.o.r.e in j.a.pan, where he adopted the dress and customs of the j.a.panese, in course of time becoming one of themselves, and winning great renown under another name--which I forget for the moment. But antiquarians insist that the name he a.s.sumed was but the j.a.panese rendering of his own former one of Genghiz Khan.

"At any rate, he never returned to China to recover his treasure; and legend has it that it still remained where it had been originally hidden. From time to time, expeditions have been formed for the purpose of searching for this legendary deserted city; but it has remained for us, Drake, to discover it, and to secure Genghiz Khan's millions. This must be the town, this must be the treasure; for not otherwise can such an enormous h.o.a.rd be accounted for. n.o.body but the conqueror of Asia could ever have ama.s.sed so much."

"That's very interesting, Mr Frobisher," said Drake, who had been listening intently; "and it's a very comforting thought that all this belongs to us, if we can only get out. I suppose, in any case, we had better fill our pockets, lest we should not be able to get back here?"

"It would not be at all a bad idea, skipper," returned Frobisher; and the two men slipped a few handfuls of the jewels into their pockets, as coolly as though they had been so many pebbles instead of gems worth several thousands of pounds.

"And now," said Frobisher, "we had better turn our attention to getting out of this. I shall not feel comfortable until I have satisfied myself that this place is not going to prove a living tomb for us."

They closed the lids of all the chests, and pa.s.sed through what Frobisher called "the door-way of swords", carefully closing the door behind them by means of a stick, lest the closing should again set the swords in motion. But it did not; the mechanism was evidently so arranged as only to operate upon the opening of the door.

"I do not think we need fear burglars here," said Drake with a smile, as the door clanged shut.

The two men then decided to explore the remainder of the corridors, for unless an exit from one of them could be found there was little doubt that the treasure would prove as useless to them as it had been to Genghiz Khan himself.

The first pa.s.sage they explored ended in a blank wall, as the three others had done; but in the next, to their great relief, they found another pa.s.sage branching away to the left. This they followed for some distance, until they reached a spot where it branched into two. As there was no knowing which, if either, was the right one, they took the one on the left, as the previous opening had been on the left of the corridor, and followed it for a considerable distance. But they were doomed to disappointment; the corridor led nowhere. It simply came to what seemed to be a dead end, like the others. Frobisher felt the drops of sweat forming on his forehead, for it was beginning to look remarkably as though there was but one entrance to the vault--that through which they had come--and that all these other pa.s.sages were either natural, or had been cut simply with the idea of mystifying and misleading possible intruders.

"Never say die" was, however, Frobisher's motto, and Drake's too, for that matter, so they tried back and entered the right-hand branch. But no better success attended them here, this ending in a blank wall also.

There was now only one corridor untried, and with sinking hearts they proceeded to explore it.

No exit of any sort rewarded them here either, and hardly daring to look each other in the face, from fear of what they might see there, they returned to the main chamber, into which Drake had fallen headlong in the first instance. Here they could still hear the distant shouts and trampling of the pirates, who were evidently moving about in the chamber directly overhead, continuing the search for their prey; but even the thought that they were safe from those barbarous savages was now hardly sufficient to cheer them. It would have been almost better to have met death in the open, fighting, than to be compelled to watch his slow approach in this dismal place, far below the level of the ground.

Unable to remain still, Frobisher again most carefully examined the inside of the secret door in search of a hidden spring, but no sign of it could he discover. It seemed evident that, unless the door were actually propped open by the person entering the vault, there was no getting back by that way; and Frobisher could not help thinking that surely some other exit must have been provided. The people accustomed to using the vault could not be expected always to remember to prop the door open when they entered; and it did not seem reasonable to suppose that the place had been so constructed that a mere lapse of memory would be tantamount to a person signing his own death-warrant. An emergency exit must have been made for use in case the main door became closed accidentally or otherwise; but the question was, where was it situated?

Drake suggested that there must undoubtedly be an opening somewhere, because the air in the vault was comparatively pure and fresh; at least it had not the dead, stale, stuffy smell of air confined in a hermetically-sealed chamber. But Frobisher pointed out that the door by which they had entered, although an excellent fit, did not b.u.t.t up against the jambs so closely as to exclude the air altogether; yet he acknowledged that the air in the vault certainly seemed sweeter than might have been expected, had the main door been the only channel through which it could filter in.

Under the stimulus of the new glimmer of hope thus caught, every corridor was once more explored, even more closely than before, but with no other result than that Frobisher completely satisfied himself that there was most certainly no exit from any of the pa.s.sages. Even a concealed door, opened by a spring, could hardly have evaded the close scrutiny of the two men; and it became more and more apparent that they had been caught in a trap from which there was no escape. Both were feeling famished for want of food, and were parched with thirst; and Frobisher could not help wondering how long the agony of death from starvation and thirst would be prolonged before blessed unconsciousness came to their relief.