'"'Bristol! Restrain that man!" the Master ordered. "If you can't handle him, get help!"
As a couple of Legionaries laid hands on the major, another voice spoke up. It was that of Ferrara, the Italian ace:
"The major is right, sir, in spite of all! Good wine in our throats would make death less bitter. 'We who are about to die, salute thee'—and ask wine!"
The Master peered sharply from beneath black brows. Discipline seemed crumbling. Now at what might be, perhaps, the last minute of his command, was the Master's word to be made light of? Were his orders to be gainsaid?
"No wine!" he flung at all of them, his voice tense as wire. "Who says we are about to die? Why, there may be a fighting chance, even yet! This underground river may come to light, somewhere. And if it does, it may bear us back to day, again.
"But the confusion of wine may just turn the scale against our getting through. No wine! We started on that basis. That's the basis we're going through on. No wine, I say—no wine!"
Murmurs answered him, but no man dared rebel. Discipline still gripped the Legionaries. The Master drove them to labor. "Come, quick now! Prepare a sack, apiece! I'll show you how!"
He set lips to the emptied skin, and with many lungfuls of strong breath inflated it. The leather thong tightly wrapped the neck. He doubled that neck over, and took more turns with the thong, then tied it in a tight square knot.
"Get to work, men!" he ordered. "To work!"
They obeyed. Even the major, brain-shaken as he was, fell in with the orders. The floor, all round the black pit, ran red with precious wine, a single cupful of which would have delighted the heart of the world's most Lucullian gourmet.