"Right. Me an' Mr. Grant's quite ready now. On'y just get our kits an' rifles off the side o' the line first."
"'Ome, John!" added Bill facetiously.
Eustace advanced upon them and they closed their eyes involuntarily. As before, nothing seemed to happen to them; and yet, when they opened their eyes again they were standing on the carriage sweep before the front door of an imposing country-house built of gray stone, overgrown for the most part with ivy and Virginia creeper. The building seemed to them vast—immense. It was long and low, and covered a great deal of space. They gazed about them hurriedly, and received an impression of great trees and smooth-shaven lawns, ornamental waters and flagged paths.
Alf gazed about him in awe.
"What do we do next?" he asked in a whisper.
"Ring the bell," answered Bill. "It's yours."
Alf advanced timidly up the steps, but recoiled in alarm as the door opened unexpectedly. It disclosed an Eastern personage whose clothes were stiff with gold and dazzling with gems; bowing low, he took both Alf and Bill respectfully by the hand and led them through the doorway. Here the personage with another deep obeisance stood aside and motioned to them to precede him.
They crossed the vestibule towards the great hall which formed the center of the building, realizing that the whole house was one glittering mass of shifting barbaric color. In the hall itself stood slaves in ordered ranks, black and white, male and female, each attired with magnificence only one degree less than that of the personage who had received them. The whole crowd stood waiting, silent and motionless, for their new master to appear.
Bill came first. He sauntered easily into the hall with his hands in his pockets—that is, as easily as is possible on mosaic pavement to one wearing ammunition boots—and stood looking about him in a silence in which a pin's fall would have caused a reverberating crash; then Alf, who had been wrestling with a demon of shyness in the darkness of the vestibule, clattered sheepishly across the threshold.
In that instant the silence was shattered into a million pieces. Seven bands of weird and piercing oriental instruments came simultaneously into action in seven different keys and, so far as could be discerned above the frenzied beating of tambours, playing seven different tunes. Such of the gathering as had no instruments contributed to the joyful effect by shrieking and howling at the tops of their voices.