We had ascended the western terrace of steps and were immediately beneath the western facade of the Capitol, still to all appearances empty, when a flying figure met us, and in another instant the arms of Ziliah were about Spruce Hopkins’ neck, and—my conclusion on the matter can scarcely be questioned—his were probably about hers. It certainly was a bad case of nerves. Ziliah was in a sort of hysteria, moaning and gasping with (so Hopkins called it) a “strangle hold” on his “wind-pipe,” that also quite robbed her lover of the power of utterance. I intervened. The incident might have terminated in their mutual suffocation—so it seemed to me.
The fair and stricken Ziliah told her story.
She had not gone to the Oblation. No; she did not like it. But then there was something else. “Spooce” was in danger, her own “Spooce”—and all of us, all. The governors did not like us; they were afraid of us, afraid we might bring more—her father was as bad as the rest of them. And they had found out something, she did not know what, something we had done. We were enemies of the Serpent, and—Ziliah’s agitation at this juncture quite robbed her narrative of coherency, but in a lucid interval I understood her—we were to be sacrificed; we would be fed to the Serpent!!!
“Zerubbabel and Heliopolis,” shouted Hopkins. “You don’t mean it? Does she say so? Well so help me—if we don’t blow the pack into kingdom come—and twice as far. How much powder have we got left?”
“The tubes,” I remonstrated.
Hopkins was silent; he remembered their power, and it was not so many hours since something of the same inscrutable influence had nearly brought us all to the verge of extinction.
Never, to the last day of my life, Mr. Link, will I comprehend what happened then. Was it the hand of God—or was it telepathy. WHAT? Ziliah repeated the words I had uttered—exactly. She loosened Hopkins’ embrace, she moved stealthily towards me, I saw her deep, sweet eyes raised to mine, her hands closed on my cheeks; the boreal dusk light that comes from the firmament even when clouded, made her whole face visible. In it shone a strange divination; she repeated the words, “the tubes,” and then sighed; seized with a sudden inspiration, I forced my mind upon hers; my brain contracted (it felt so), as with a fierce concentration of will I projected the sense of my words and all they implied upon, in, through, the spirit before me—the spirit that itself leaped to their comprehension.
She crouched slightly, moved away, but her soft fingers closed around my hand, and she drew me towards her.
We entered the broad hall of the Capitol, Ziliah holding me tightly and leading me. We turned into a passage-way. At its dark end we stumbled on a half raised arched tile. Ziliah raised it, and seemed sinking below me, as I felt her pull me down. I stooped and felt the edges of an opening. My wary foot detected a stairway. Together we descended and in a dozen or more steps reached the floor of a chamber whose walls seemed only a few feet off on every side of us. Ziliah led me to the corner of this room, pushed upon a wooden door and we entered what proved to be a much larger room. Then telling me to wait, my guide left me. Another instant and a soft radiance filled the place. It came from a radium lamp which Ziliah had uncovered. She pointed to a table in the center of this apartment. On it lay a metal box—a leaden trunk. Ziliah raised its lid. I leaped forward. I already knew what to expect.
In the bottom of the box lay, neatly aligned in rows, thirty leaden tubes, one probably for each of the governors. Here at last in our power, our possession, were the murderous little vials. But were they charged with their life-arresting power? And how to use them? I stood perplexed, and Ziliah remained motionless by me gazing at me with a mute happiness, as she realized she had attained my wishes. But it was plain that the dear creature knew nothing about them. No—the clever little doctors were not such fools as to popularize their peculiar knowledge, and the dark beauty, tears yet bepearling her long lashes, was just a child before them, as I was. But why had they left them here at all? They must have been deposited after the return, for the doctors indubitably had worn them in their girdles when we so inauspiciously dropped onto the road in the pine forest. Did they have a duplicate set? The thought unnerved me.