RUTTON'S DAUGHTER
In darkness the blacker for the sudden disappearance of the light, somebody stumbled over Amber—stumbled and swore in good English. The Virginian sat up, crying out as weakly as a child: "Labertouche!" A voice said: "Thank God!" He felt strong hands lift him to his feet. He clung to him who had helped him, swaying like a drunkard, wits a-swirl in the brain thus roughly awakened from semi-hypnosis.
"Here," said Labertouche's voice, "take my hand and follow. We're in for it now!"
He caught Amber's hand and dragged him, yielding and unquestioning, rapidly through a chaotic rush of unseen bodies.
The firing had electrified the tense-strung audience. With a pandemonium of shrieks, oaths, shouts, orders unheard and commands unheeded, a concerted rush was made from every quarter to the spot where the doomed man had been kneeling. Men running blundered into running men and cannoned off at direct angles to their original courses, without realising it. Disorder reigned rampant, and the cavern rang with a thousand echoes, while the Bell awoke and roared a raging tocsin, redoubling the din. No man could have said where he stood or whither he ran—save one, perhaps. That one was at Amber's side and had laid his course beforehand and knew that both their lives depended upon his sticking to it without deviation. To him a rush of a hundred feet in a direct line meant salvation, the least deviation from it, death. He plunged through the scurrying masses without regard for any hurt that might come either to him or to his charge.
A red glare of torches was breaking out over the heads of the mob before they gained their destination. Amber saw that they were making for a corner formed by the junction of one of the pedestals with a rocky wall. He was now recovering rapidly and able to appreciate that they stood a good chance of winning away; for the natives were all converging toward the centre of the cavern, and apparently none heeded them. Nevertheless Labertouche, releasing him, put a revolver in his hand.
"Don't hesitate to shoot if any one comes this way!" he said. "I've got to get this door open and…"
He broke off with an ejaculation of gratitude; for while he had been speaking, his fingers busily groping in the convolutions of the sculptured pedestal had encountered what he sought, and now he pulled out an iron bar two feet or so in length and as thick as a woman's wrist. Inserting this in a socket, as one familiar with the trick, he put his weight upon it; a carved sandstone slab slid back silently, disclosing a black cavernous opening.
"In with you," panted Labertouche, removing the lever. "Don't delay…."
Amber did not. He took with him a hazy impression of a vast, vaulted hall filled with a ruddy glare of torchlight, a raving rabble of gorgeously attired natives in its centre. Then the opening received him and he found himself in a black hole of an underground gallery—a place that reeked with the dank odours of the tomb.