The Master, now all alone, stood waiting yet a moment. His face was bloodless. His lower lip was mangled, where his teeth had nearly met, through it.
Already, a confused murmur of sound was developing, from the black opening of the passage that had led the Legionaries down to this crypt of the wine-sacks and the pit.
He smiled, oddly.
"Many a corpse has been flung down this oubliette," said he. "I hate to go, without emptying my pistol into a few more of the Moslem swine, and dropping them down here to join my people. But—I must!"
He bent, gathered together the silver lamps left by his men, and threw them all into the abyss. Blackness, absolute, blotted the reeking chamber from his sight.
The faintest possible aura of light began to loom from the mouth of the passage. More distinctly, now, the murmur of Arab voices was becoming audible.
The Master leaped.
Far below, at the bottom of the pit, as the Arabs burst into the wine-vault, sounded a final impact of some heavy body striking swift water that swept it instantly away.
Then silence filled the black, rock-hewn chamber in the labyrinthine depths of Jannati Shahr.