Though a score of brave men might recoil from an attempt to carry the place by storm, yet the Ghoojurs must have known that they had but to contain their souls in patience for only a brief while. The tempting fruit if left alone will fall to the ground in the fulness of time.
Since the Ghoojurs showed no disposition to make any immediate advance, the guide told his friends that if they wished they could take a survey of the interior, and he would call them when wanted. Thereupon Harkins and the surgeon passed through the gateway, and entered the large apartment.
"If we had several months' provisions and a well of water," observed the sportsman, "we wouldn't care for all the Ghoojurs that could be brought against us. They couldn't batter these walls down in a year, and we would pick them off at our leisure."
"Why speculate upon that which can never be?" asked the doctor, whose spirits were not so elastic as those of his companion; "there is no means of getting food or water, and I am oppressed with a sentiment that here we are to make a final stand."
"That for presentiments," replied Harkins, snapping his fingers; "they all depend on the state of your stomach. I am hungry, but am not bilious, and therefore haven't any presentiments."
"Who shall say whether our dear ones are yet alive?"
"No one, but there is hope," said Harkins, more sympathetically; "the outlook is bad, but no worse than it has been several times before."
"We have been favored in a marked degree, but we must not shut our eyes to what is before us. Hitherto we have had the liberty of movement, but we are now walled in."
"Didn't you hear Luchman say that we must keep them in check until night, when we would leave? What can that signify but that he has fixed upon some feasible scheme?"
"Common sense will not allow me to believe that. There is but one way out, and that is the one by which we entered; and the nights now are almost the same as day."