The fierce fanatics, with knives unsheathed, were at my heels, and, redoubling my speed, I tore along, stumbling over the rough floor and grazing both legs and arms in my wild flight. To strike me down the conspirators were straining every muscle, yet I managed to keep on, until, taking two sudden turns immediately after one another, I remembered that I was near the entrance to the secret chamber.
It was my only chance. If they were unaware of the existence of the charnel-house with its crumbling bones, then, perchance, I might escape. In the darkness I could distinguish nothing. What if I had passed the entrance, and came at last to a blank wall! The thought unnerved me. Voices behind me sounded harsh and deep, still I dashed onward until my feet caught in something, and, stumbling, I fell.
I knew the accident must result in my death. In a few moments the keen knives of the conspirators must reach my heart.
My hands came into contact with stone. Frantically I grasped it, realising with gratification that I had fallen over the great coffin-like drawer that gave entrance to my prison. In a second I recovered myself, and, entering the half-open trough, crawled through it, with the Crescent still in my hand.
Finding myself on the opposite side of the wall, I lost no time in grasping the iron ring, and, with the last strenuous effort of which I was capable, succeeded in dragging the drawer towards me. It was done on the impulse of the moment; then I waited, not daring to breathe.
Hurrying footsteps sounded outside, with shouts of “Death to the spy! He holdeth our secrets, and must not evade us! Kill him! His entrails shall be burned with the snakes!”
Nearer they came, as if searching for the secret entrance.
In pulling the drawer inside I had closed it, and, clinging on to the ring, determined that it should not be opened while strength was left to me.
For a second the footsteps, sounding dull and muffled in the dust, seemed to halt outside. Then joy filled my heart a moment later, when they hurried onward, and the angry cries receded in the distance.
Evidently, with the stone trough drawn inside, nothing remained in the subterranean passage to denote the whereabouts of a hidden entrance. Likewise it was apparent that they knew not the existence of the secret sepulchre.