"No way out of here!" Bohannan grumbled. "Sure, we're at the end o' nowhere. Now if we'd only taken another passage—"
Nobody paid him any heed. The major's exhibition of irrational greed had lost caste for him. Even Lebon, the orderly, curled a lip of scorn at him.
All eyes were eagerly searching for some exit from this ultimate pit. Panting, reeking with sweat, fouled with blood and dirt, the doomed men shuffled round the vault, blinking with bloodshot eyes.
No outlet was visible. The vault seemed empty. But all at once,
Bristol uttered a cry.
"Wine-sacks, by the living jingo!" he exclaimed.
"Wine-sacks—in a Moslem city?" demanded the Master. "Impossible!"
"What else are these, sir?" the Englishman asked, pointing.
The Master strode to the corner where he stood, and flared his lamp over a score of distended goat-hides.
"Well, by Allah!" he ejaculated.
"Sacrificial wine," put in Leclair, at his elbow. "See the red seals, with the imprint of the star and crescent, here and here?" He touched a seal with his finger. "Rare old wine, I'll wager!"