Instantly a confusion of savage cries came to our ears—cries fierce, shrill, blood-curdling as the war-shouts of embattled Apaches. "Down with Luma! Down with Luma! Down with Luma! Lynch him! Stab him! Massacre him!" I heard, mingled with yells of, "Back with Thuno Flâtum! Back with Thuno Flâtum! Long live Thuno Flâtum!" And, peering through the little slit in the wall, I witnessed a sight that made my heart give a ferocious leap and my hair prickle as if ready to stand on end.
Back and forth, through the gallery outside, an excited throng was parading. Hundreds deep, they moved with a swarming fury; their eyes showed fierce and bloodshot in the greenish-yellow light; their arms swung through the air with vehement gesticulations. Some brandished sticks and poles frenziedly; some held ropes coiled into nooses; some waved faggots ready for lighting, while all, as if possessed by demons, howled over and over again that bloodthirsty refrain, "Down with Luma! Down with Luma! Down with Luma! Kill the traitor! Murder him! Turn him over!"
At the same time, there came a tremendous battering sound from one corner of the wall—a sound as of a sledgehammer striking.
"They're pounding down the gates!" whispered the guard as he hastily shoved the slit of stone into place again. "Can't hold them back much longer!"
"Can't hold them back!" I moaned agreement, knowing that no wild beast was more to be feared than that mad rabble. And then, frantically turning to Clay, who stood watching with eyes half popping out of his head in horror, I screamed, "Come! There's no time to lose!"
At sprinting speed, we ran back through the gallery, then down a side-passage beneath the palace, where we paused long enough to secure provisions and disguise ourselves—Clay by assuming again the garb in which he had escaped from Zu, and I by smearing my face with white powder, exchanging my royal clothes for a plain black robe, and covering my eyes with dark glasses.
Already, from the palace above us, we could hear the screaming of the mob.
"They've broken in!" I muttered. "In a minute they'll be down here!"
"Let's be off!" he nodded; and while the howling of the multitude grew louder, we started off down a dark and winding tunnel sloping deep underground.