"Wine!" gulped the major, whose excitable nerves had been frayed to madness. "Wine, by God! Faith, but it's the royal thirst I have on me! Who's got a knife?"
The Master thrust him back with such violence that he slipped on the wet floor and nearly fell.
"You'll get no knife, sir, and you'll drink no sacrificial wine!" he cried, with more of anger in his voice than any of the Legion had yet heard. "The jewels—yes, I gave you your fool's way, on those. But no wine!
"We of the Flying Legion are going to die, sober men! There'll be no debauchery—no tradition handed down among those Moslem swine that they butchered us, drunk. If any of you men want to die right now, broach one of those wine-sacks!"
His simitar balanced itself for action. The glint in his eye, by the wavering lamp-shine, meant stern business. Not a hand was extended toward the tautly distended sacks.
Bohannan's whispered curse was lost in a startled cry from Wallace.
"Here's something!" he exclaimed. "Look at this ring, will you?"
They turned to him, away from the wine-bags. Wallace had fallen to his knees and was scraping slime from the wet floor—the slime of ages of dust mingled with viscid moisture from the steam that, thinly blurring the dark air, had condensed on the walls and run down.
Emilio thrust down the lamp he held. There on the stone floor, they saw a huge, rust-red iron ring that lay in a circular groove cut in the black granite.
This ring was engaged in a metal staple let into the stone. And now, as they looked more closely, and as some Legionaries scraped the floor with eager hands, a crack became visible in the floor of the vault.