“If you are willing,” said Jepthah, “you shall all come. Shilluk and Shedrach already have prepared some of our comrades for sight of your party, and they will have spread the word. All will be eager to have your aid, and equally eager to aid your son if possible. We heartily detest the holding of the Sacrificial Games, which is a part of the detestable religious practices kept alive by the Oligarchs. Come, then, at once. Leave your equipment here.”
“Quick, Jack,” cried Frank.
His comrade nodded. They were first of the troop to mount, and soon were flying down the Great Road with the four Athensians, their camels moving at a pace that astonished the horsemen. Not far behind them came Mr. Hampton, Ali and the Arabs.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FIGHT FOR THE PASS.
When they emerged from the Great Road, the Great Desert lay shimmering before them. Under the sun, standing directly overhead in a cloudless sky, the irregular floor of sand stretching illimitably in three directions like gently-rolling waves of the sea arrested in motion, seemed radiating heat waves like the top of a stove.
In the fourth direction, at their backs, stretched away on either hand the Great Mountain Wall. For the first time by daylight they had a good look at it, and involuntarily both Jack and Frank drew in their breaths at the sight.
Steep, precipitous, verdureless, the mountains rose in great masses of rock directly out of the sand, just as the Pillars of Hercules, guarding the Strait of Gibraltar, rise out of the sea at the northwestern extremity of the African continent. The sand was like a sea dashing vainly against these gigantic masses of rock.
One mountain overlapped another, so that only narrow, unscalable clefts broke the face of this tremendous bulwark. Truly, it was a Mountain Wall. Ahead this wall stretched to the horizon, and, looking over their shoulders, the boys saw no end in sight behind them. A full two thousand feet towered the serrated summits, jagged and sawtoothed, forming grotesque shapes that resembled crumbling turrets and, in some instances, crouching animals of gigantic proportions.
The previous evening, before the light failed, and while they still were hours away, they had been able to see that beyond this wall lay a tumbled mass of mountain tops rising higher and higher to a lofty summit far to the south, which Mr. Hampton had estimated at 14,000 or 15,000 feet in height. Apparently, then, the mountain country was of considerable extent, with many interior valleys and plateaus.
Somewhere behind that Mountain Wall and in the heart of that great upland country lay mysterious Athensi, while through the rich valley and plateaus were scattered the dwellings of the peasants comprising the last of a prehistoric white race whence had sprung, if Professor Souchard was correct, all mankind.