“Steal along the wall,” she cried to Page Lomax, “And leap from behind her upon her back at the same instant when I spring thither from in front.”
“But—”
“No buts about it, Fool! Do you want to be eaten alive? Go!”
As he obeyed, the maid plucked from her bodice the pipe of charm and began breathing from it the melody with which she had quelled the wrath of the cobra de capello. At its first tremulous notes, the grim executioner of the ninety and nine hesitated—stopped reeling out her cord—no longer was opening and closing her grappling-hooks—sheathed her dull-red jaws. One awful minute she hovered near, wriggling her eight great curving legs. Then, half asleep under the spell of those drowsily sweet sounds, she lowered herself to earth and spread herself out for slumber. Without ceasing to play, Zaidee inched forward. Close enough now, she sprang upon the immense spider. That same instant, Page Lomax was by her side.
“Lie down!” she screamed, suiting her own action to her advice to him. “Press your toes against the ridge of horn, back of her head! Seize that other, yonder, stretching across, just this side her spinneret, and hold on—do you hear?—hold on with all your might? She’s going to rise and she’ll toss us off, if she can!”
Even now the great creature was hauling in her cable. Up she darted violently. Whirling round and round, she threshed the air furiously with her legs. Finding out that she could not thus throw off her burden, she reared herself aloft into her web. With frenzied rage, she gripped the edges of her house and shook it with all her immense strength, until it shot back and forth with dizzying speed, at times almost perpendicular to its axis. But, with the desperate power of despair, her riders clung to her, until, tiring from her fruitless efforts to dislodge them, the spider became quiet. Gradually the silken orb slackened from its semi-vertical position to its normal horizontal. Its whirring lapsed into silence, as it slowly became still. Except for a horrible quivering, which was going on under the translucent shell of horn on which the two were lying, the huge spinner was at last crouching motionless. They sat up cautiously and looked around them. No roof hemmed them in. But, in order to keep his monster from fleeing to her native hills, Hosein had inserted one beam running from East to West, with three others above it contrariwise from North to South.
“Play again, Zaidee,” said the young man. “It’s my time now to work.”
As the girl’s lulling music once more soothed the spider, he set about digging out with his pocketknife that part of the nearest upper rafter, which had rotted at the wall. Soon he could slide this end out. Tugging the beam across the main girder, he heaved the extricated timber athwart the coping of the tower, whence, plunging down, it smote Hosein to the earth, at the same time striking Nakir, too, and felling him also. A screech of anguish burst from the Turk. Unable to rise unaided, he seized the honeysuckle, which was clambering aloft on the masonry, and dragged himself up, only to drop again with a frightful groan, as his back was broken. Two of the eunuch’s ribs had been fractured, too, but, as his master groaned that awful groan, he hastened to him and, lifting his head, wiped the bloody froth from Hosein’s lips. The Turk’s eyes, of which nothing except the whites had been showing, now rolled down and fixed their failing glance on the faithful slave.
“Bury me by Selim’s side, Nakir,” he whispered, “And—and don’t let the Giaour and his jade escape.”
His eyes rolled back again—he shivered—there was a deep sigh—then the jaw fell.