For a long minute, the eyes of the Master and of Bara Miyan met, in silence, with the torch-flare glinting strange lights from them.  Then the Olema spoke.

“Hast thou seen enough?” demanded he.

“Mine eyes are filled.”

“And dost thou still ask rewards of gold?”

“Nay, it is as I have already told thee; let the cut jewels of the Caliph el Walid suffice!”

“It is well spoken.  Let us descend.”

In silence, again, they left the gruesome gallery and went down the stairway with the Olema’s torch leaving vague, fantastic wreaths of odorous smoke curling up along the polished, dull-yellow slant of the pyramid.  Back on the floor again, the Master said to his men: 

“This pyramid is filled with skulls of men who have tried to carry gold from El Barr.  For the present, we must dismiss gold from our minds.  Common prudence dictates that we abandon all idea of gold, take whatever reward we can get, and leave this city at once.

“The gold is of no importance, whatever.  On the way back over the outer foothills of the Iron Mountains, many outcrops of gold exist. Nissr can poise above some of these; and a few hours’ labor will load her with all the gold we can carry.  There can be no sense in trying to get any here.  It would simply add to our peril.

“Everything is therefore quite satisfactory.  But watch every move.  If nothing breaks, in two hours from now we should be on our way.  Again I caution you all, keep silent and make no move without my orders.  The prize is at our very finger-tips.  So long as we shed no blood and as nothing happens to the Myzab and the Black Stone, we are safe.  But remember—­be careful!”

The Olema touched him on the elbow.

“Now,” the old man asked, “now, O Frank, wouldst thou see the cut jewels of the Caliph el Walid?”

“Even so!”

“Come, then!” And Bara Miyan gestured toward another door that led, at the left, out of the Chamber of the Pyramid.

Again the strange procession formed itself, as before, with the gorilla-like Maghrabi stranglers a rear guard.  A few minutes through still another passage in the gold brought them to a door of ebony, banded with silver.  No door of gold, it seemed, sufficed for this chamber they were about to enter.  Stronger materials were needed here.

This door, like the others, swung silently on its massive hinges.

“Come, O Master of the fighting-men of Feringistan!” exclaimed the Olema.  “In Allah’s name, take of the gifts that I have already offered thee, and then in peace depart!”

Before the Master could reply, a shuddering concussion shivered through the solid gold all about them.  The tremor of this shock, like that of an earthquake, trembled the cressets on the walls and made the huge ebony door, ajar into a dim-lighted hall, groan on its hinges.

Stupefied, Legionaries and Arabs alike, stared silently under the vague gleam of the torches.