Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: A science fiction novel in which a group of people from the U.S., a young boy along with a Chinese man and an old Russian, make a spiritual quest to a city of lost race in the Gobi Desert that is technologically advanced through a combination of theosophy and superscience.

THE ABYSS OF WONDERS

Perley Poore Sheehan

The Argosy Jan 1915

Polaris Press 1953

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25 | Chapter 26

Chapter 27 | Chapter 28

Chapter 29 | Chapter 30

Chapter 31 | Chapter 32

Chapter 33 | Chapter 34

Chapter 35

___________________

Chapter 1

“Shan Makaroff!”

HIS grandmother may have suspected that underneath the surface indications of John McGoff’s personality there was a hidden world. She was an old woman, stooped with years and experience and undemonstrative. But she had been a good mother to him— the only mother he had ever known— and, like many another old person, was observant as well as sympathetic.

It may have been for this reason that she did not object when the boy, still in dresses, showed such a predilection for the society of Charley Ling, the Chinese laundryman, and later on for Ivan, the mysterious old Russian cobbler.

For, in the top right-hand drawer of her dresser, there was a certain lacquered box which, in all the years of its association with her Sunday dress and shawl, had lost nothing of its aroma of sandalwood and mystery. Mrs. Sprague was no Orientalist. For her Asia was vaguely a place of idols and missionaries. But she knew that this box came originally from the East and that, in some way, it was connected with the history of her family.

“Abner’s folks”— as she always referred to the extinct or all but extinct family connections of her late husband— had included a number of “queer ones”— travelers, spiritualists, free-thinkers, and the like.

It was one of these who had brought home the box, likewise a motherless son. This motherless son was Abner’s uncle and grandfather of the child she had taken to raise. It was all very complicated.

Yet it bothered Mrs. Sprague not at all. She was a grandmother by nature, if not in fact, and she accepted the care of young John McGoff as single-heartedly as she accepted every other care in her simple, God-fearing life.

As for the box, which was red with a few gold Chinese characters painted on it and was about the size of a small cigar-box, there was a tradition that it had originally contained both gems and gold. But if such was the case these had disappeared. The box was now the receptacle of a few trinkets connected with Mrs. Sprague’s unromantic past— a pair of jet earrings, a gold locket containing a lock of somebody’s hair, a coral breast-pin. Of the traditional contents all that remained was a small ring.

This ring was in the form of an ordinary finger-ring, only somewhat larger— large enough, in fact, to fit Mrs. Sprague’s thumb. Apparently it was made of jet, for it was black and shiny except for a few marks or scratches on it which still showed traces of gilt.

Black ring and red box— these were the first material elements of John McGoff’s dual life, symbols of that hidden world of his, the presence of which his grandmother may have only suspected.

Otherwise there was nothing romantic about him, so far as any one could see.

His grandmother, who was poor, lived in a small cottage on the outskirts of Hambleton. And Hambleton itself was small and obscure, so far as ordinary conceptions went. It was one of those overgrown villages in the middle West— a place that smelled of fried potatoes at supper-time.

John ostensibly led the life of other boys. He made a little money for himself by carrying papers and running errands, was moderately well-behaved and diligent in school, went fishing, stole fruit, and learned to smoke.

In the mean time he was growing up into a rather slender, active youth. If it hadn’t been for the color that came readily enough into his cheeks his complexion might have been called sallow. His hair was black. His eyes were large, dark and brilliant. The girls— and their mothers, most likely— all considered him decidedly handsome; but he was so shy that he had little to do with them.

There were other good-looking boys in Hambleton, both dark and fair— some of clean-living parents, offspring of substantial families.

Among these John had his friends and, from time to time, some one particular chum. But, one and all, these failed to fathom him. They only knew that in some way or other he was different.

In just what direction this difference lay was indicated, to some extent, one day by a little incident that befell in high school when John was sixteen or seventeen years old. With the purpose of explaining the Chinese system of writing Professor Talbot, the principal, had brought to the class-room a red laundry check of the sort that Charley Ling and his sort use everywhere.

“John McGoff!” Professor Talbot exclaimed with sudden severity, “what are you laughing at?”

“Aw, I was just smiling a little!” John answered.

“What at?” the professor demanded. He was still holding aloft the red check.

“I was laughing at what was written on that paper,” said John uneasily.

“On this paper?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you mean to have me understand that you can read these Chinese characters?”

The professor was stern, not to say outraged. The boy’s answer left him speechless for a moment or two.

“I can read those.”

The girls hopped about in their seats from sheer excitement. The boys looked and listened spellbound.

Professor Talbot got a little red in the face. Was the boy making a mock of him?

“Very well, sir. What do they say?”

“They say ‘Lame Rabbit,’ ” young McGoff translated.

“Where did you— learn— to read such characters?” asked the professor, catching his breath.

John squirmed and hung his head. That was a part of his secret life. Perhaps until then he had never precisely known that it was secret. It had grown up with him. It was a part of him.

And so, while it became known that day that Johnny McGoff had some knowledge of Chinese pictographs, no one guessed the full extent of his knowledge.

As a matter of fact he had been absorbing this knowledge almost ever since he was big enough to cross the street from his grandmother’s cottage to Charley Ling’s laundry just opposite. For Charley was a gentleman and a scholar— likewise lonely. And there was something about this little American boy, Charley didn’t know just what— until that day when John showed him the red box and the black ring. But that came later.

It was that way with the old Russian cobbler, Ivan, who lived in the same street. He told his young American visitor stories of Russia, Siberia, and a certain great sea of sand called Gobi. Often he forgot himself and wandered off into Russian; then, on reflection, he would know that the boy had understood him, anyway.

After all this wasn’t very surprising, seeing that young McGoff had visited the Russian, as he had the Chinaman, almost daily, for upward of a dozen years. Nevertheless, the Russian often pondered over this as he hammered away at the boots and shoes with which Hambleton entrusted him. That is, he pondered over it until it occurred to him that he didn’t know the boy’s name.

“No, not John McGoff,” said Ivan, with a peculiar light in his eye when John answered his question the next time he called. “Not John McGoff, but Shan Makaroff!”

The boy looked at him— unsmilingly, as was a way of his.

“Listen!” said Ivan, showing more excitement than he had ever shown before— more even than when telling of his march as one of a chain-gang into Siberia; more even than when telling of his escape. “There was a great shaman in Siberia named Shan Makaroff. A shaman— he’s a miracle-maker. Shan Makaroff went into the Gobi. You look like him. Who knows? Perhaps—”

Ivan bent his shaggy gray head and shaggy gray whiskers closer to the upturned shoe he held between his knees and began to hammer as if to make up lost time.

After this that secret world of John McGoff became more personal than ever, for now he had a name in it.

He was Shan Makaroff— a shaman or miracle-maker; he spoke Russian and Chinese; he made magic trips into the sky, which served admirably in lieu of the vast Mongolian desert. Here he had certain weird and breathtaking adventures, chiefly in quest of a certain girl.

There is always a strong strain of prophecy in such imaginings as these. All dreams come true, so they say.

But before showing how utterly prophetic were these early dreams of John McGoff, alias Shan Makaroff, there are still matters of importance in Hambleton requiring to be set down.

Chapter 2

The Sons of the Blue Wolf.

MENTION has been made of the red box— likewise of a certain girl. The two were closely related; had always been related. As far back as he could remember, every time that he had caught a whiff of the subtle perfume that emanated from the thing, and every time that his eyes rested on its beautiful shade of rich, dragon’s-blood red, he was conscious of another presence— hers!

He was fourteen or fifteen when he first saw her, in his mind’s eye. That impression of her had since deepened and freshened and taken on detail until it was the living portrait of some one who was as much alive as his grandmother.

She had gold hair. She had a gold complexion. Her eyes were a golden brown, slightly almond-shaped and overarched by brows that were a little darker than her hair, which, in turn, was darker than her translucent, lustrous skin.

A most wonderful creature. A girl like her never was— in Hambleton, at least.

The only girl in Hambleton who even suggested her, ever so vaguely, was Frances Talbot, the principal’s daughter, who was in the same class at school. And at times immersed in reverie, John or Shan would sit looking at Frances until she seemed to feel his big dark eyes upon her, and she would glance at him and blush and fidget; and this, more likely than not, would set him to doing the same thing.

She little suspected where his thoughts really were, poor thing!

A year before he might have graduated from the local high school young McGoff dropped out and got a job in a local machine-shop. His grandmother didn’t object. She came from a stock which professed predestination in the affairs of men, and perhaps she sensed the predestination in the dawning career of her adopted grandson.

You can never tell what they know and what they don’t know— these stooped and silent old women, who have lived so much, who have had their part in creation.

As for John or Shan, he knew that he wasn’t leaving school merely that he might earn money to pay his board. He was doing it at the bidding of his secret self— of Shan Makaroff, the shaman, the miracle-maker. Before long, after he had been promoted from the carrying of tools to the running of a lathe, he began to see that even here he was in a way learning a magic craft.

It appealed to his imagination, this turning of pig iron into educated steel. A real shaman could certainly do wonders in a field like this. So he told himself, as he watched the steel shavings from his lathe curl up and drop.

There is hardly a small town in America— in the world, perhaps— without its unsounded depths of mystery and romance. Behind his calico curtain, ironing, ironing, never stopping, is a direct descendant, possibly, of Genghis Khan. There is almost always some exile or other who has risked his life magnificently, again and again, on some single throw.

And the old captains, the old majors, the old colonels! The old women!

And even if it were not for these human enigmas there always would remain the unpenetrated earth beneath and the infinite sky overhead.

So Shan Makaroff reflected.

But the only persons in Hambleton to whom he spoke of these reflections were Charley Ling, the laundryman, and Ivan, the Russian cobbler. Perhaps his grandmother was a party to them also, only she didn’t need to be told.

More likely than not she could discover more about John McGoff, alias Shan Makaroff, and his secret life while he was eating his supper, and later as he helped her do the dishes, than could have been found out in a month by a congress of lawyers and surgeons.

It was prophetic also, that deepening friendship of his with Ivan and Charley Ling. It might have been called surprising at the time— only nothing is surprising when seen in the light of reflection. Then it is seen that everything has been a natural development, like the bloom of the rose, the fruit on a tree.

What was this odd, exotic tree that was growing up in the grass-grown, unkempt precincts of Hambleton?

The town council met and put through its measures. The county commissioners had their names cast in imperishable iron, to adorn the new bridge. Local society held nightly revels at “linen showers” and “progressive euchers.” Sundays came and went, with churchly mornings followed by gorged and drowsy afternoons.

Now and then there was a death or birth or a marriage or a fire or a removal.

And all the time Shan Makaroff was preparing for that haunting, heart-shaking, soul-awakening adventure of his. It attracted no attention, perhaps, because there are Shan Makaroffs in every town.

For his relations with the Chinaman and the Russian were passing beyond the friendship stage. They were assuming more the nature of those that exist between the head of a cult and his first disciples. This phase of the situation came into existence about the time when John McGoff showed Charley Ling the red-lacquer box.

It was the close of a mild day in June. With the grime of the machine-shop washed off as much as possible, yet with hints of it still lingering about eyes and cars, John had lit his after-supper pipe and strolled across to Charley’s with the box under his arm.

Charley, strangely enough, had also stopped work for the day. He sat on a chair outside his door, his legs crossed tightly, one of his elbows held as tightly by a nervous hand, as if his thin cotton clothing of faded blue were a trifle cool in the evening air. He wore grass slippers.

He likewise was smoking— a pipe with a long bamboo stem and a tiny metal bowl. From time to time he knocked out the powdered ash and refilled the bowl with mosslike tobacco.

The Chinaman smiled as his American friend came up and took the extra chair that Charley had prepared for him. They greeted each other in Chinese.

Said McGoff, “See, I have brought you my magic box.”

The old Chinaman stared at the lacquered box through the gathering dusk. There was a touch of awe in his voice as he asked: “You have read what is written on it?”

“It is indeed, as you believed, inscribed with the sacred name of the Sons of the Blue Wolf.”

“And the ring?”

“Its characters I have been unable to read.”

As he said this he opened the box and took from it the black ring. Even in the failing light it was clearly visible— black and shiny, with a suggestion of gold tracery.

“Black jade.” said Charley Ling.

He had not offered to touch either object. As for John McGoff— or Shan Makaroff, as he preferred to consider himself in his interviews with both Charley Ling and Ivan— as he opened the lacquered box there again floated before his vision a vivid semblance of his Golden Girl— her bushy, yellow hair afloat, her yellowish-brown eyes burning slumberously.

And there came to him, with a catching of his breath, the thought that some day, somehow, he would slip this ring on the girl’s tapering finger.

“The books say that there is no such thing as black jade, my friend,” said Shan.

“Books are made to deceive,” said Charley Ling, as if he were quoting a proverb. “China is the mother of books, and where is she to-day? The real books are written on the upper air, whither thoughts go and whence they come. Only the miracle-makers can read the real books.”

“There is one,” said John McGoff softly, “who says that I may be a miracle-maker— a shaman.”

It was strange to see him sitting there, a typical American mechanic— albeit he was rather dark— talking to the aged Chinaman about such childish things, and all in that heathen dialect.

What the Chinaman said following that was stranger still.

“I also knew of a shaman. It was when I went to Pau-tu, in Mongolia. He was a powerful man, and he went into the Gobi. His name—”

“Yes! What was his name?” asked the American.

“His name was Shan Makaroff.”

They heard a third voice— one that spoke in a dialect that included both Russian and Chinese, but which they both understood.

“And where only three are gathered together—”

They turned and made out the bushy contour of Ivan, the cobbler.

That night Ivan, Charley Ling, and John McGoff— to be known to them hereafter as Shan Makaroff, the shaman— formed such a secret brotherhood as even Hambleton had never known, although Hambleton was a stronghold of secret brotherhoods. They called themselves the Sons of the Blue Wolf.

There may be magic in such associations, as so many people have always maintained. You never can tell.

Chapter 3

The Man in Green.

BACK of Charley Ling’s laundry-shop there were two rooms. The first of these, having no windows and being too dark for any other purpose, was used by Charley as a bedroom. It was his home— where he kept his pipes, his accounts, and an idol or two. The second room was comparatively open and airy, with a loosely hinged door giving on a squalid back yard.

It was the hospitality of this second room that Charley offered his fellow members of the lodge.

There were three chairs there, of the sort commonly called kitchen chairs. Along one wall stood a battery of wash-tubs, most of them generally full of water and soaking linen. But the old Chinaman invariably lit a joss-stick or two before his friends arrived, and the place, though decrepit, was scrupulously clean.

But even had the place been still less attractive according to ordinary standards, it isn’t likely that it would have made much difference.

They were Sons of the Blue Wolf.

“Which is but another way of saying,” Ivan explained, “that we are the Sons of the Unknown.”

“And that we dare look the Blue Wolf in the eye,” said Shan.

“And to read the books written in the upper air,” the old Chinaman added with solemnity.

Their three chairs were placed at the points of an imaginary triangle. That first evening they did nothing but smoke and talk. It was a surprising acquaintance, that of the old Russian and the Chinaman. They had come from the uttermost regions of the earth to meet like this in Hambleton. But Shan rounded out the group.

For Ling, born in Peking, had early passed north of the Great Wall into the grass country lying outside. There he had learned not only Mongolian, but the myths and legends of the great seat of sand, the Gobi, lying just beyond.

As for Ivan, he had looked on the Gobi from the north and knew more of the weird traditions of the vast desert than even did Charley Ling. For in his tortuous escape from his land of exile Ivan had tarried long at Urga, and, when he had been tracked there, had fled along the northern edge of the desert with a clan of wandering Mongols, until by some chance he never explained in detail he came into possession of the papers of a certain minor official, as well as of certain funds, and thus reached Europe and America.

In many of the stories that they told there were numerous points of agreement.

Ling’s remarks, put out chiefly in broken English, with a large admixture of Chinese, Mongolian, and even a little Russian; and Ivan’s, likewise in broken English, with even more of Russian and Mongolian in it, although he also boasted of a small fraction of Pekingese, may both be rendered into current English for the sake of convenience.

Said Ling:

“The thing is beyond doubt. The Gobi was once upon a time a sea, and in it was an island, and this island was the lost Kingdom of Tuholo. China was wiser in the old days than she is at present. That is certain. Gunpowder, the art of printing— these things she got from Tuholo. For Tuholo was the home of wise men— Sons of the Blue Wolf, like us.”

He added the last two words with a Chinese smile.

Said Ivan:

“It was in a magic island in the midst of this dried-up sea that they buried the great Mongolian conqueror, Genghis Khan. After his death twenty thousand people were murdered to keep the secret of his tomb from getting abroad. For the wealth of this tomb is greater than that of Peru. Not only that, but Genghis Khan still lies there as natural as in life, awaiting his next incarnation when he will again go out to conquer the world.”

Said Ling:

“It is well known that Tuholo was the home of magicians who had power over spirits. Thus, even to-day the spirits are active in keeping travelers out of the forbidden parts of the desert or in leading them astray until they drop down dead. I knew a man once, who went into the Sha-mo— as we call the Gobi— and who returned with a handful of gold; but he had lost his wits.”

Said Ivan:

“When I was traveling along the northern edge of the desert we often heard, in the great stillness of the night, the sound of drums beating in the distance, and a murmur and hum such as are made by a great caravan when marching in the night. But if a caravan had passed, it was one that left no trace in the sand.”

They had been telling stories like this one evening about a fortnight after their droll, triangular lodge was formed, when John McGoff asked a question that had been on the tip of his tongue, so to speak, from the start.

“And how about this shaman, Shan Makaroff, you have told me about?” he asked. “He went into the Gobi.”

“You have named him,” whispered the Chinaman.

“You have called him,” said old Ivan in soft, fatalistic tones.

There fell a silence on the meeting— a silence so intense that they could hear the gas flicker in the front room of the laundry when a moth came too close. In the room where they sat— in comparative darkness as usual— a single drop of water fell into a tub with a resounding thud.

Ling was the first to speak again.

“I have no doubt, my friend, that vou are of the blood of the shaman. I believed it the first time that I ever looked at you, and you weren’t very big then, you will remember.”

“The first time I saw him in my shop door, standing there in his little calico dress,” said Ivan without lifting his shaggy head, “I likewise said that there was one who had shaman blood in him.”

“How can you tell?” asked the American gravely, as was his way.

“There are different ways,” said Ivan, still with the tone and attitude of one who speaks of things not to be mentioned lightly. “It may be by the light in their eye; again by the trembly, friendly feeling about your own heart as you look at them.”

“There is still that other and better way,” said Charley Ling, gazing out into the starlight of the squalid little back yard with the expression of one who greatly desires to see something that has not yet appeared.

“Yes, that is right,” said the old Russian cobbler, still with bowed head. “There is still that other and better way.”

“And what is that?” asked John McGoff.

“All shaman,” said Charley Ling softly as he gazed out of the darkness of the room into the starlight outside— “all shaman are bound by blood and spirit. One shaman can call another. Can they not, Russian?”

“They can, either in blood or in spirit,” Ivan whispered.

“Dead or alive,” said Charley Ling.

“Then I’ll call him now,” said John McGoff stoutly, but in accents equally subdued.

Again they could hear the single gas-jet in the front room flare and flicker. Once more a drop of water thudded into an empty tub with an impact that might have been that made by a falling brick.

But none of the three Sons of the Blue Wolf either stirred or spoke. Through the American’s mind there fleeted a memory of those words of his on the night when he and his two friends had first assembled like this— that they wouldn’t be afraid to look the Blue Wolf in the eye.

Was it to turn out to be an empty boast? Not so far as he was concerned, he told himself.

Suddenly he was conscious that for some time— maybe only a fraction of a second, maybe several seconds, for there are occasions when one loses count of time in ordinary terms— he had been gazing, as Charley Ling had gazed, at the empty starlight of the little yard, while a queer sense of expectancy was fingering his heart and brain.

He threw a breathless glance at Ivan. The Russian also was expecting it, whatever it was— had turned his head sidewise without lifting it, and likewise was gazing through the door.

Then, deftly, it was there.

They saw the figure of a tall man, black-bearded, clad in a long green cloak, standing just outside the door. He was tremendously, palpitantly real— agile, quick, distinguished, refined. And yet he was unreal, ghostly. For as he paused at the open door, blocking it entirely, he cast no shadow. The room was as full of reflected starlight as ever.

“You called me,” he said briefly in English that bore the trace of a slight foreign accent. “But it was as I wished.”

Eyes brilliant, teeth gleaming white from the midst of his jet-black beard, he smiled at the mechanic.

“And you, Shan Makaroff!” he demanded. “Are you ready?”

Chapter 4

Gold— or Something.

INSTEAD of making it darker, it was as if the stranger brought into the little room with him something of the outer radiance. The three Sons of the Blue Wolf sat there looking up at him. It is certain that the room was lighter than it had been before, or else their vision had been sharpened. For they compared notes on this point afterward, and all agreed it was so.

Before he came the only light was the vague, reflected blue translucence of the little yard, an even fainter glimmer from the one gas-jet burning in the front room, and the red tips of the three joss-sticks which Charley Ling had thrust into a cranny of the wall.

But now, as John McGoff— and the others, too, as it developed later— looked up at the uncanny visitor who had just addressed him by that secret name of his, he could see with the utmost clearness every detail of the make-up of the Man in Green— cap, cloak, and bearded face.

It was a handsome face, in which there were both mockery and sadness— the expression of an ambitious man who has met defeat and is trying to laugh it down. The cap and cloak, trimmed with sable, were apparently of heavy silk, dark-green. Oriental— not Chinese precisely, yet suggestive of China. The boots were thin-soled and pointed, of fine, soft, black leather, tanned to a velvet surface like a lady’s purse.

John took in these details in one sweeping glance. At the same time he was aware that he wasn’t frightened.

“I’m ready for anything that comes along,” he said at last, answering the stranger’s question and meeting his eyes squarely with his own.

The visitor smiled at the Chinaman, then at the Russian.

“You have done your work well,” he said in the Mongolian tongue. “You’ve helped educate a shaman. You have prepared him for the work that he has to do. The Blue Wolf lives in the Gobi, but he knows what his children are doing, wherever they are.”

John McGoff waited a moment, then spoke:

“You are Shan Makaroff who went into the Gobi.”

The stranger looked at John McGoff with a return of sadness and mockery in his smile.

“There have been many Shan Makaroffs,” he answered, “and they have all gone into the Gobi. Some of them went up from China. Some went down from Siberia. Others went into the desert from Turkestan. Not all of them, however, reached their goal. The desert is covered with the bones of men and beasts. Caravans have gone into it and have never been heard of again.”

“What happened to them?” asked John McGoff.

“They made mistakes and died.”

“And those who didn’t?”

“Those who didn’t die on the way— or go mad— reached the Forbidden Country— the Island— the Lodge of the Blue Wolf.”

“And the tomb of Genghis Khan!”

“That is only one of the things that are there— only a fraction of the wealth. Wealth unlimited— gems and gold, halls and caverns filled with diamonds, emeralds, pearls!”

“I’ve never been crazy about such things,” said John McGoff thickly.

“Are you sure?”

Charley Ling and Ivan were both listening, open-mouthed. John felt, rather than saw, how they looked, for his whole attention was absorbed by the figure in front of him. None the less he felt that he was completely master of himself. That rather flippant remark of his had been uttered more as a proof of the fact than as an expression of his views.

“Are you sure?” the stranger asked again.

“And if I shouldn’t care to go?”

Once more John McGoff listened to the sound of his own voice. It was real enough. His senses were awake. He felt the hard wood of the chair in which he was sitting. He smelled the mingled odor of joss-sticks and wet tubs. He heard the repeated thud of dripping water. His hearing roamed even farther— brought back to him the song of crickets in Hambleton’s back yards, then the mournful quaver of a locomotive-whistle very far off in the night.

This was his every-day world. Across the street his grandmother was asleep in her cottage. His own bed awaited him there. By and by he would also turn in— to awaken sleepily, never long enough afterward, at the sound of the factory-whistle.

The man in green was looking at him steadily, thoughtfully.

“You’ll go.” he answered with finality. “You are Shan Makaroff. You are the next in line.”

“I can’t leave my grandmother.”

“She’ll be cared for.”

“How long will it take?”

“That will depend on yourself.”

“But how am I to go? I have no money— no—”

“Ling and Ivan are going with you. They will get the money and the necessary papers. But they will be under your orders. You have the ring. Guard it carefully. That is to be your passport through the Forbidden Land. And, once there, it will give you the right to choose— all the gold you want, or something else. Are you ready?”

Even before the stranger had finished speaking John McGoff knew that he was listening to the whisper of predestination; that he would make his way into the Gobi Desert, as inevitably as he added inches to his stature during his life in Hambleton. It wasn’t a matter of his will at all. His will was an influence, but it was not a cause.

“All the gold you want, or something else.” Not even a lure like that was necessary.

It was something greater than any mere earthly promise that was urging him on. It was something more, even, than the call of the unknown, which had always had such a large part in his life. The atmosphere an inch or so above a growing plant is mystery to the up-reaching leaf; but it isn’t the mystery nor any other charm that leads it higher. It is growth.

And thus it was with John McGoff, so he told himself.

“I am ready,” he said.

“You understand that the risks are great?”

“I’m not afraid. When is the trip likely to begin?”

“You may prepare to leave Hambleton a week from to-night.”

“Shall I take the red-lacquer box?”

“Take only the ring. Hang it about your neck so that you will be sure not to lose it.”

“But how—”

Said the stranger:

“It is never wise, my son, to ask ‘How?’ too often. Know what you have to do. Begin to do it. Let the hows be answered as they arrive, one by one, by the inner light.”

“The inner light!”

Those were the last words that the man or fantom in the green coat spoke to them. In a way the words were to become a symbol— a sort of formula for the reduction of all sorts of questions and difficulties that were to come up later on.

Quite suddenly the Russian threw back his head and stared about him.

Charley Ling, with a look of patient awe on his old face, let fall a startled exclamation that was almost a prayer.

And John McGoff found himself staring into empty air where the man in the green coat had stood but a moment before. He was familiar with much of the literature of spiritualism, for he had always read all that he could find on the subject, and he knew now that there had been what spiritualists call a “materialization.”

But to what extent had it been real or illusory?

His memory brought him fragments of what had just been said. He knew that not a word had been lost. He knew, moreover, that for him, at least, the incident marked an epoch in his life.

Charley Ling spoke to the air around him.

“We have seen an ambassador from the Blue Wolf. We believe.”

“We believe,” echoed Ivan.

“We believe,” said John McGoff.

“And we’ll not speak of this to those who do not believe,” said Ling, still speaking to the air rather than to the other members of the lodge.

“No, or it would lose its potency,” said Ivan.

“That’s right,” John McGoff agreed. “We’ll keep this thing to ourselves until further orders.”

There had been spiritualistic séances before in Hambleton— if, indeed, this was a spiritualistic séance. But certainly no such meeting had ever been stranger. Certainly none was ever attended by stranger results.

For before a week had elapsed there was abundant evidence that what had reached these Sons of the Blue Wolf through the mouth of their strange visitant was no mere figment of disordered imaginations.

Chapter 5

From Unknown Hands.

A PRINCIPLE, tenet of a certain primitive sect in Europe was an utter disregard for money. The members of the sect literally and absolutely gave no thought to the morrow. So it happened pretty often that they were down to the last penny, with starvation staring them in the face. But always at the critical moment some one would appear— generally a complete stranger— and place whatever sum was needed on the communal table.

No mere legend, nor confined to any one locality! The same thing must be happening everywhere pretty much all the time.

Even in a town like Hambleton there were a good many hundreds who thus lived, year after year, on the ragged edge, yet never starved. Always somehow, from somewhere, at the critical moment the funds would appear.

This brief digression is merely to show that what followed that remarkable séance of the Sons of the Blue Wolf was not so astonishing, after all.

John McGoff got up on the following morning at the usual hour and ate the usual hearty breakfast that his grandmother had prepared for him. He even took an interest in his grandmother’s debate as to whether she should put into his lunch-pail the quarter of a pie or the half— which she finally adjudged in favor of the half, “so as to be on the safe side.”

But as he paused for a second or two at the front gate on his way to work, he caught his breath a little at the prospect of the miraculous thing that was in store for him.

This feeling wasn’t dispelled even when he saw Charley Ling trot forward to his sheet-covered table with a hot iron; nor when, from down the street, there came to him the flat staccato of Ivan’s hammer on stiff leather.

The balmy air seemed to caress him with affectionate familiarity. He wasn’t merely John McGoff, a mechanic. He was Shan Makaroff, miracle-maker, and over there, on the other side of the world, like a kingdom that awaited him, was the haunted Gobi. Then a little wave of color showed itself through his natural pallor as he felt once more, against his breast, where it hung suspended from his neck, the ring he had taken that morning from the lacquer box.

This feeling of imminent adventure increased throughout the day to such an extent that he couldn’t eat his pie at all, but was glad to pass it over to a friend.

It increased to such an extent that when he was on his way home, after his day’s work, and grimy as he was, Frances Talbot saw something in his face, as she met him accidentally, that made her blush and smile and look again; and once more set her heart to loping five hours later as she snuggled into her virginal bed.

Quite unconscious, Frances, of the dreams that she herself had started to quavering and flashing across the thoughts of John McGoff!

But when Frances had looked at him like that John had immediately beheld a fresh vision of his Golden Girl again.

Was she to be in the Gobi, too?

He was glad that he hadn’t asked. He was glad that the Man in Green hadn’t spoken of it. There are things that one would withhold from even the ambassador of the Blue Wolf.

There may have been a vague feeling, not so much of disappointment as of wonder, when he stood again at the gate of his grandmother’s yard and looked across the street at Charley Ling’s shop. Through the open door he could see the old Chinaman ironing with concentrated passion. He didn’t pause. He didn’t look up.

John listened, knowing this time what to expect.

From down the grass-grown, dust-padded street he could hear the tap of Ivan’s hammer.

Yet he knew— knew as he had never known anything else before in all his life— that he had not been the victim of a delusion; that these two men, Russian and Chinese, had likewise seen the Man in Green, had heard what he had to say.

His grandmother, who met him at the door, smiled slightly as he kissed the top of her head.

“Johnny,” she said, “Cousin Cary’s folks are anxious for me to come to them for a long visit. What do you think? Shall I go?”

McGoff thought of what the Man in Green had said about his grandmother being provided for. Was this confirmation of everything else he had said?

“Go, of course, dear little old grandmother,” he said. And then: “I was thinking of going on a long visit myself— far away. Shall I go?”

She looked up at him for a moment or two with the mystic smile of the old.

“Chains couldn’t hold you,” she said.

Out on the kitchen-porch John washed himself in the tin basin with the usual noisy enjoyment, and wiped himself elaborately on the roller-towel, thus giving both himself and his grandmother time to think. For the old lady he felt an immense tenderness, and it wasn’t going to be easy to leave her, perhaps forever.

As they sat down at last, opposite each other at the supper-table, she didn’t question him. It wasn’t her way to ask questions. Perhaps she had learned from her long experience with Abner’s folk that questions were not always wise.

But suddenly, without premeditation, merely obedient to an impulse born of love and something curiously like guilt, he was telling her everything— everything absolutely, even to the shadowy figure of the Golden Girl— “who looked something like Frances Talbot.”

She heard him through, breathlessly almost, her faded old eyes moist behind their spectacles.

And when he finished she spoke in a way that he had never heard her speak before— she who had always been so undemonstrative, so silent.

“Go?” she quavered softly. “Oh, of course you’ll go! Listen! When you were speaking just now it was as though I heard Abner— Abner young again. I laughed at his dreams then. I wouldn’t laugh at them now.”

Her face twisted slightly. It was a second or two before she could go on. She was smiling through her tears, although it was easy to see that some old wound was open.

“I knew this was coming,” she went on, a little more calmly, “when you were given to me to bring up. I was surer of it than ever when I saw you hobnobbing with old Charley Ling, and then with the Russian Ivan. For a woman can’t live forty years with a man like Abner Sprague and not get something of his queer ideas!”

“Dear little old grandmother,” said John.

“Poor Abner dreamed his dream to the last,” said Mrs. Sprague. “But at last he knew that this thing you speak about wasn’t intended for him. Perhaps that’s why the good Lord let him marry me!”

“He was lucky in that, anyway, little old lady.”

“But he had the papers— always near him. I know now that they were meant for you.”

“What papers?”

For answer Mrs. Sprague got up from her chair and limped stoop-shouldered into her bedroom. John heard her open and close a trunk. When she reappeared she carried in her hand a large envelope, yellow with age.

On it was written, in an angular, foreign hand:

For the Next Shan Makaroff

“He always said this came to him from an unknown hand,” said Mrs. Sprague. “But he always was full of queer ideas; had queer ways of expressing himself. But he never got the signal or whatever it was he was waiting for.”

“It’s for me, grandmother,” said John McGoff. “But stop! Before we open it I’ll call the other Sons of the Blue Wolf.”

As John hurried out of the room into the deepening dusk Mrs Sprague did a peculiar thing. She seized the envelope, found a corner where the flap was not pasted tight, and widened this aperture with the handle of a spoon. Then she shifted a rather big old clock that was standing on the kitchen shelf, and from underneath it drew out a flat pad of folded bills. She glanced at these a moment then thrust them into the envelope.

“I’ll get along somehow,” she murmured; “and I won’t see his dreams spoiled as Abner’s were.”

Chapter 6

Hambleton, Farewell!

IT cannot be said that the disappearance of the promising young mechanic, scholar and genius named John McGoff, made very much difference to Hambleton— not so far as it was aware. Nor was the going of Charley Ling and the taciturn old cobbler, Ivan, occasion for visible mourning.

None of these had ever taken any part in the social life of the place— not in a way to get their names in the one local paper.

Besides, were they not to return?

John McGoff had merely told his foreman that he had decided to go away for a while, and that he might be around trying to get his job back again, “one of these days.”

“Good for you, John,” said the foreman. “When I was a young feller like you I went ’way out to Omaha and back, working in different shops. Traveling is good for a feller. You’ll get your job back if I have to bounce a man to make room for you!”

John thanked him, rolled up his overalls, and drew his pay. He was grateful to the foreman. He liked him. He liked the shop. Some day— who could tell?— he might return again. He had never lost that idea that it was a task worthy a real miracle-maker to take dumb pig iron and so shape it, train it, and inform it with his own purpose that it would do things to surprise the world.

On his way home from the shop he encountered Frances Talbot.

What was it about her, he wondered, that made her always remind him of that so different Golden Girl of his hidden world? Her hair was more or less golden, it is true; but her skin was pink and white, and her eyes were blue instead of golden brown. But perhaps it was her eyes, after all— that look, infinitely deeper than any mere physical characteristic, which, at times, can make the eyes of all girls look alike, whatever the color might be.

He looked at her so intensely, and yet with such abstraction, that Frances colored, smiled, stood still.

So did McGoff, hardly knowing what he did.

No poet or painter would ever have picked such a place for the setting of romance— there in a dusty, treeless section of a small town street; on one side dismal cottages built in a row; on the other— on the side where John and Frances were— a billboard, to which there clung the tatters of old circus-posters, vulgar and mendacious.

Yet, such is the magic of youth that ever afterward in the memory of both of them this was as a haunted woodland, shadowy, fragrant, with fairies skipping about to elfin music.

“Oh!” said John. “How do you do? I’m— going away. Good-by, Frances!”

His darkling face also showed heightened color. It was almost as if he were speaking to the Golden Girl herself, sure enough.

Whatever Frances may have felt or thought she disguised it by saying, “I hope you’ll have a good time.”

For an interval they looked at each other in silence. This culminated in more color for John and a swooning smile from Frances.

“Good-by!” he said huskily, in spite of himself, and to his panic-stricken surprise.

“Good-by!” she whispered, a little frightened, she didn’t know why.

And that was all.

AS FOR Charley Ling, he merely paid his landlord six months’ rent in advance, delivered all laundry on hand, and hung up a sign:

Gone—  Mebby come back

And as for Ivan, he dumped his unfinished work on Hufnagel, the German cobbler in the next street— to that gentleman’s delight— and hung up no sign at all.

Ivan came from a race which shrugs its shoulders and says, “Nichévo”— meaning, “I should worry!”— whatever befalls, even Siberia, even death.

For the mysterious envelope which Mrs. Sprague had brought from its long seclusion in her trunk contained ultimate evidence that the Man in Green was a true emissary from the Blue Wolf.

Some of this evidence can be mentioned in detail; some of it cannot.

For example, there was a thin and time-yellowed piece of paper in it demanding that Shan Makaroff proceed to Samarcand— “to the Tomb of Tamerlane”— “when it would come into his heart what he should further do.”

The instructions to the Russian were of somewhat similar purport— only he was to proceed to the city of Urga, in northern Mongolia, and there receive certain instructions and so on from “the Grand Lama, the Living Buddha, who makes that place his home.”

The message addressed to Charley Ling— or, as the Chinese writing on the wrapping on the thing had it, “To the Elder Brother”— was entirely different. It was a long, slender bit of bamboo with a bit of gold-foil twisted about one end of it, and on this gold-foil were other characters that Charley could read.

Charley, with his nervous, delicate yet powerful fingers, had already extracted from the outer envelope the little pad of bills which Mrs. Sprague had put there. By the light of the lamp the old lady herself, Shan and Ivan sat watching the Chinaman, absorbed. Charley read what was written on the gold-foil. The watchers saw his hand tremble as he picked up the bamboo switch.

“Go, brother, and bring the red box!” the Chinaman said to Shan.

Then, when the American had brought the box and put it on the table, the old Chinaman gathered up the bills and put them into it, closed the lid, and tapped the box three times with the bamboo. While he was doing this he read in a peculiar, lilting, almost frightened voice what was further written on the gold-foil.

The Russian cobbler looked on reverently, expectant. On the face of old Mrs. Sprague there was a slight smile— a little wistful, for all this reminded her of things she had seen while Abner was still alive. Shan watched breathlessly.

There are numerous explanations of what followed. There always are— good, sound, logical theories, at any rate.

For example, take the numerous recorded instances of Indian and Mongolian magic, reported by creditable witnesses from the days of Marco Polo on down to the present. You can put them down to sleight-of-hand, group-hypnotism, illusion of one sort or another, mechanical contrivances— what you will.

There is an authentic account of the palace of an Eastern potentate where the guests were served with goblets filled with wine by so-called magical means— the goblets floating apparently right through the air from the table to the guest’s hand. There are authentic accounts enough of tables and chairs being lifted— apparently— by the same sort of ethereal power.

But putting magic of this sort to one side, along with the usual explanations of such phenomena, there still remains that other sort of magic which every one knows about and has seen.

It is the case of the funds that come from “an unseen hand” to the folks that need it, even in a town like Hambleton.

Instances will occur to everybody. They’re so common, in fact, that they never strike one as being strange. How many boys have gone through college— “and the Lord knows how!”— on a little money supplied by the narrow shoulders and expanded heart of some loving old woman— or around the world, for that matter, or from obscurity right to the pinnacle of fame!

A little love, a little money, a little of the faith in things unseen—

Charley Ling touched the red box with his bamboo wand, and there was something so inexpressibly potent and suggestive about it all— old Chinese laundryman, nervous and intense; shaggy old Russian, fatalistic, devout; a spectacled American grandmother at the side of her kitchen-table, the lamplight playing on her gold-rimmed spectacles; and there, in front of them all, a red box inscribed with the insignia of the Blue Wolf, the unknown— that Shan, for one, felt his heart arrested, felt the perspiration leap to his forehead.

Charley Ling opened the box. They saw that the money that they had placed there was increased. There was twenty-eight hundred dollars.

Was it mere sleight-of-hand on Charley Ling’s part? Perhaps! In one way or another such things can always be explained.

They divided this sum into four parts— seven hundred dollars apiece. It was enough to take Shan to Samarcand; enough to take Ivan to Urga; enough to take Charley Ling to his native Peking, whither the writing on the gold-foil instructed him to go.

There occurred an odd little incident not without its touch of humor.

Mrs. Sprague protested, softly but vehemently, against taking any of the money herself. She was going to visit Cousin Cary’s folks. She didn’t need it.

Charley Ling said something rapidly to Shan.

“He says,” Shan interpreted, “that you put the original money in the envelope yourself.”

Old Mrs. Sprague’s withered cheek was suffused with a flush of almost girlish color. She couldn’t lie. She couldn’t tell even a little fib. She tried to evade.

“Why, what makes Charley say that?” she wanted to know. Charley permitted himself a quiet, wise, respectful smile.

“Every time bill come to me,” he explained in English; and speaking to Mrs. Sprague direct, “me make mark on corner. You, me, close-by neighbors. Me change big bill for you, you keep little bills me mark. Now, you all same Brother of Blue Wolf!”

“So be it!” said Ivan with guttural reverence.

“Little old grandmother of the Blue Wolf!” cried Shan softly as he kissed her. “I’ll do something great— for you— for—”

Even while he was speaking there floated across his mental vision the semblance of a younger woman— far younger; a mere girl, with tawny hair and golden-brown eyes.

Chapter 7

The Tomb of Tamerlane.

THAT vision was his almost constant companion in the weeks that followed— that, and the growing conviction that this errand of his, however vague its end, was along the main highway of his own particular destiny. For there is such a highway marked out in the horoscope of every man— so he told himself; and some find it young and stick to it and travel far; while others flounder around, finding it only now and then or not at all.

He was much alone and so had plenty of time to think— all the time that he was crossing the Atlantic— second-class, where he felt more at home— and going through the Mediterranean; and later, while going by train to Teheran.

And every now and then, during the long days and evenings, the girl’s face would come shimmering up before his mental vision, always startling him a little, quickening his pulse. She was real— only sometimes her fancied resemblance to Frances Talbot was greater than ever; and he would awaken from dream or reverie half-wondering if it hadn’t been Frances, after all.

But there was never any doubt about it at all that he was on his destined highway.

Talk about magic!

Where is a greater magic than that we find at our very doors— the sort of magic that brought Napoleon up from Corsica, Lincoln out of the backwoods of Illinois! Only, nothing is magical when seen in retrospect.

John McGoff wanted riches; he wanted fame; he wanted power. So he told himself. And then he wanted— her!

If he attracted any attention with his dark eyes and meditative air Shan Makaroff didn’t notice it. He had too much to think about. Where was Charley Ling? Where was Ivan? How and when would he get instructions to proceed? Would it be from the apparition of the Man in Green? Or would it be by a more or less distinct flare-up of that inner light referred to?

But he took it as a sign— in some way propitious— when, in the dusty car of the Central Asian Railway that was to carry him to Samarcand he made the acquaintance of an educated Persian who was going to the same place.

For the Persian was going to the old city to buy the carpets of the Kirghiz— a hill-nation— and, from talking of the Kirghiz, he began to talk of the region lying to the east of their country. This was the great Takla-Makan Desert.

“A very dreadful place, this desert,” said the Persian. “In truth, it is but the western end of the desert that stretches across all Asia, almost to the Yellow Sea. You have heard about this greater desert. They call it the Gobi.”

“Yes,” Shan answered tremulously; “the Gobi!”

“Ha! I see that the name means something to you,” the Persian remarked. “It’s a place of ghosts and wild camels— to-day of wild camels and ghosts; but it wasn’t always like that. There isn’t a place in the world about which hover so many traditions. The desert was once a sea, and in the midst of this sea was an island— the most beautiful island that ever was in the world, and the richest.”

“And now all desert?”

“They say that the island still exists as an oasis, guarded by the endless sands and the ghosts; and that there are people living in this oasis still— the last remnant of the great world-race begun by Adam and his wife He-va, or, as you would call it, Eve.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” asked Shan.

The Persian looked at him smilingly at first, to see whether the question had been asked as a joke. Shan looked back at him in the same unsmiling way as he had always looked at old Ivan and at Charley Ling. The Persian— dark-faced, sober-eyed, Oriental for all his European clothing— was somehow suggestive of both these old friends.

“Is there any one in the world who doesn’t believe in ghosts?” he asked soberly. “Listen! Ghosts have been caught. These Gobi ghosts themselves have been caught. Several of them were captured just a few years ago by a man I knew. At any rate he called them ghosts for want of a better name. They were less than human, more than animal. They had human form, but they were covered with brown hair; and when you looked into their eyes you saw nothing there but a sort of reflection. All ordinary eyes are deep— very deep. Theirs had no depth.”

“What became of them?”

“At first they uttered fierce cries and fought and tried to escape. When they found that escape was impossible they became silent and moody. They wouldn’t give any sign when spoken to. They paid no attention to food. Not long after their capture, although my friend treated them with all possible kindness, they died.”

“I’ve heard of ghosts,” said Shan respectfully.

“I’ve not only heard of them,” said the Persian, more earnestly still, “but I have heard them. We were crossing a part of the Gobi. I had strayed a little way from our camp. It was silent. There is only one place in the world where it is silent and that is in the midst of the silent desert— ah, the silence of the grave; the silence of the stars!

“Then out of this silence a voice came. It pronounced my name. Can you imagine anything to beat that for impressiveness? The silence and solitude of the desert-night— a voice— your name! Would you have been frightened?”

Shan took thought; then answered with the one word—

“No.”

It was a way of his.

The Persian looked at him half-quizzically, half-admiringly.

“Our wise men say that fear is merely another name for doubt or ignorance— the contrary of knowledge,” said the Persian. “You are sure of yourself. You know.”

“I know that nothing will hurt me,” said Shan, “if—  if—”

He had said enough. But not long after that they were to recall this conversation under certain unforgettable circumstances. Who knows but when we meet some one— man or woman— he or she is to return again in judgment?

Shan had his one trunk and his dress-suit case taken to a small hotel in the Russian part of the town— a region of boulevards and bearded Cossacks, of modern buildings and cleanliness. But even then, in the gathering dusk, his heart and mind were galloping off to the older part of town. He followed them as soon as he had swallowed a hasty dinner— crept off and away, uneasy lest he be questioned or followed.

He entered the native quarter— a labyrinth of narrow, squalid streets— came to a wide square surrounded by massive old buildings which he guessed to be one of the famous old colleges he had heard about— came into a wider thoroughfare beyond.

He had been following this for some time, in a tremor of excitement and growing elation. Then just ahead of him in the hum and dusk of the deepening night there was a sudden crash and babble of sound. It was a fight of some sort, there was no question of that. He started forward at a run.

Hazily he saw a turmoil of dust and writhing forms. There were Cossacks in it and natives in queer sheepskin cloaks.

Suddenly out of the general confusion a single detail detached itself. It was that of a burly Cossack at grips with a white-bearded old man. The old man had no chance at all.

In a moment Shan had forgotten all about the mission that brought him there— about the risks of mixing in a quarrel like that.

Prompt action was necessary; the Cossack had got his aged adversary by the throat.

Shan seized the Cossack by the throat in turn and dragged him over backward with impulsive strength. While the others in the mêlée swirled and trampled and booted around them, he and the Cossack and the old man went down together— Shan on the bottom and the two others on top of him.

He cast his eyes upward. There against the darkening sky he saw the silhouette of a building which he had dreamed about. He had got pictures of it and studied it in his cabin on the steamships; on the train going up to Teheran; just a little while before at the Russian hotel.

It was the Tomb of Tamerlane.

A huge old chapel with a round dome; a wall in which there was a lofty arch, about which darkness closed in like a physical symbol of its enshrouding mystery!

Something hard and heavy struck him on the head. He saw a flash of light.

“The Tomb of Tamerlane— the inner light!”

This reflection, and he was unconscious.

Chapter 8

On the Shores of Silence.

THERE must have been a strong strain of Oriental fatalism in Shan Makaroff’s moral constitution. Or perhaps it was merely a strong strain of that sort of predestination that his grandmother professed.

For during the long interval of reviving consciousness and afterward, when he had got his wits back altogether, he had an abiding conviction that what had happened was right, that this was what he had come so far to undergo.

The first he knew— and that dazedly— was that he was being carried through a sort of tunnel, which later turned out to have been a hallway in an ancient house; and that he was in the midst of a crowd of men, all of whom were wearing sheepskin cloaks save one, who somehow was known to him.

Then they were in a dim, huge stable where there were many horses and long-haired oxen— which latter, it developed, were yaks; as he would have known then were he fully awake.

After that there was a stealthy flight, which for Shan was filled with much pain and more unconsciousness. The manifold and exotic stenches of the city yielded to pure, sweet air. There was a halt. He slept.

When he awoke again his brain was clear. His head was bandaged, and it hurt when he touched it. But otherwise he was free from pain and feeling fit.

He was lying in a tent of some sort, low but roomy, and covered with felt. He was lying on a woolly sheepskin robe and a similar robe was over him. This much had he noticed when he heard a movement at his side. He turned his eyes and saw the old man to whose aid he had come.

There was just time for a smile. Then the old man quavered something in an access of joy, leaped to his feet and gave a cry from the door of the tent. While Shan himself was getting to his feet a third person appeared at the door of the tent— the educated Persian with whom he had talked on the train. The Persian greeted him with joy.

“What’s it all about?” asked Shan. “What happened?”

He felt a little giddy, now that he was standing. The old man and the Persian each seized him by an arm and led him into the outer air. While other natives crowded around they made a pile of sheepskins for him, and brought him a bowl of steaming broth in which there floated succulent morsels of stewed meat. For drink there was a milklike liquid— pungent, fragrant, refreshing.

The story was soon told.

These were Kirghiz who had gone to Samarcand on one of their annual trading-expeditions. They had already sold many of their horses, sheep and yak, which they had bred in their distant hills, and were beginning their trade with the Persian, who was well known to them, when they were set upon by a party of drunken Cossacks, inspired no doubt by greed for loot as well as by vodka.

It was in the midst of this, when one of the Cossacks was by way of killing the aged chief of the tribe, that Shan had made his appearance and saved the old man’s life.

“But if this is the case,” asked Shan, “why run away?”

He looked about him at an empty prospect of valley and towering mountains. They were in the cleft at the side of a mighty valley, covered with great boulders and thin grass. Apart from the encampment in which he found himself, including not more than half a dozen felt tents like the one in which he had slept, and the men and animals around them, there was not a soul in sight. Samarcand evidently they had left far behind them in that hazily remembered ride.

The Persian looked at him with a smile and offered him a cigarette.

“There were casualties,” he replied. “It would have been dangerous to remain.”

“Killed?”

“Three of the Cossacks— perhaps more. My friends the Kirghiz— and they are your friends, as well— are not used to being trifled with.”

“But I— why did they bring me along?”

“You took our side.”

“And even so?”

“Your Cossack— it may not have been you who killed him; but— it would have been hard for you to explain. I take it that it wasn’t for that you went to Samarcand— to lose a year, to lose more than that perhaps, in the toils of Russian law.”

“No, it wasn’t for that,” said Shan as he gazed out straight ahead of him.

It was as if he were gazing straight into the heart of Asia. He began to comprehend. He was still on his highway. These men who surrounded him were unconsciously his guides.

It was late morning— the second day since the fight occurred, Shan learned to his surprise. The sun was high. It shone down on a landscape of immeasurable, tenebrous space. Mighty mountain succeeded mighty mountain in solemn, awe-inspiring procession into the blue distance. The wide valley flowed between like some silent, oceanic river.

“I don’t want to intrude,” said the Persian. “It’s none of my business. I have traveled much and I have often found men who were sailing skillfully for an unknown port.”

“I am one of those,” said Shan.

“Then with a clear conscience,” the Persian answered. “I can leave you with old Carcol and his people—”

“ That sounds like charcoal; I can remember that.”

“Stay with them as long as you please; for by saving his life you have rendered them answerable for your own. And when you are ready to leave them they will put you safely on your way.”

Safely on his way? He was already safely on his way, Shan reflected. Nothing that happened could stop him. Anything that occurred— like that fight back in Samarcand, under the walls of Tamerlane’s tomb— merely marked a station on his road.

Had he been Carcol’s own son he couldn’t have received kinder treatment. In the clear, germless air of the mountains the wound on his head was rapidly healed. The Persian, with a couple of guides, had left them; and Shan, though liking the man, watched him go without the least misgiving.

He was on the flanks of the Himalaya with a half-savage tribe whose language he could not speak, save for a score of words or so. Around his waist was a belt in which was his entire remaining fortune— four hundred and forty dollars in gold. Yet he felt the spirit of the breath of life within him, as the ancient Hebrew prophets put it.

At last they mounted the wall of the valley and crossed a lofty pass. Beyond that there was another valley, which was Carcol’s home.

It was a home of tents, of limitless pastures in which grazed sheep and horses and yaks and a half-dozen camels or so. There were many women and children; and the women, the unmarried girls especially, some of whom were comely in a Mongolian sort of way, paid the stranger great attention.

But as none of them had golden hair— although the skin of some was gold— and none of them had blue eyes, either, such as Frances Talbot had, Shan accepted their attentions with dignified aloofness.

There was one girl particularly— lithe, graceful enough, despite her disguising homespun dress, and with skin so fair that it showed color when the wind was on her face or when Shan looked at her. One night quite by accident they met outside of old Carcol’s tent. In that eery light hardly anything was distinctly visible, except her eyes, in which Shan saw an expression that made him gasp. It was the expression he had seen in the eyes of his Golden Girl.

Did this girl misunderstand?

In a moment she had seized Shan by the shoulders— was looking up at him. He put his arms about her— held her close.

His heart was wild and troubled.

The stars flamed white and majestic. The air was marvelously clear— a blue translucence. They were all alone. The rest of the camp appeared to be asleep.

Oh, why should such things be! A girl who says, “This— this is all I ask of life,” a man who looks back at her and thinks in his heart: “It can’t be! I haven’t time! I’ve something else to do!”

Shan held the girl close against his breast for a little while. He kissed her face. She had never been kissed before. She didn’t know the meaning of the thing most likely, but the light in her eyes glowed softer and more mystic still. Shan shook his head, while his heart went immensely sad. He kissed her again— then escaped into old Carcol’s tent.

Before dawn on the following morning he was up. He had planned his going before, and he knew now that the time had come.

He pressed a present of gold on his host. Then with four ponies— two of which were loaded with supplies, and on one of which was Carcol’s son, a stalwart youth named Yassoob— he rode away while the Carcol family wept.

Over there to the east lay the Shores of Silence— the shores of the great desert. The Carcols had seen others go that way, and they had never returned.

Chapter 9

Into the Sea of Sand.

“THOSE who steer skillfully for an unknown port have to look out— look out for things like that,” said Shan to himself, trying to allay the pain in his heart. And, by the bye, the pain subsided to become at last, no doubt, merely a soft spot in his character— which is the way of such pains.

Yassoob was untroubled, joyful even; for he was a mighty hunter, and there was a chance of big game ahead. He carried a long, heavy flintlock, the barrel of which looked as if it might have been made of tin. Close to the muzzle was a pair of antelope horns, which would serve as a rest.

Yet it was with this gun, three days later, that Yassoob brought down a great wild yak, a magnificent animal with long, black hair.

One more day and Yassoob had brought his friend safe to the encampment of another Kirghiz tribe. There, being anxious to get home again in safety with his precious yakskin. Yassoob bade him an affectionate but light-hearted good-by.

The inner light was now growing stronger.

They were close to the Shores of Silence. For two thousand miles there stretched away ahead of them the spirit-haunted sea of sand.

All the time that Shan was with this second Kirghiz tribe he was obsessed by a crinkling, illusive, will-o’-the-wisp premonition that the next stage of his great journey was about to begin.

Perhaps it was the nearness of the desert itself; for even more than when on that first morning he had opened his eyes in Carcol’s tent he found himself in a country of illimitable and empty space— of sky-valleys and Himalayas, cosmic winds and stellar widths.

Perhaps it was the people. They were less Turkish than Carcol’s people; more Mongolian. Moreover, they were camel-breeders, more given to hunting, more nomadic. Their very animals were wild.

There was one camel especially, named Kal-kee. They said that he had been sired in the desert, and that his ancestors were of the sort that had never known service to man. He looked the part— built for power and speed, but never yet ridden. His lip hadn’t even been pierced for the driving-thong.

And the first time that Shan looked at Kal-kee he experienced the premonition again. It continued to be like that for the two weeks that he was with these people, drifting eastward along the northern edge of the great Tarim Basin, which is the western end of the Gobi.

It was as if he and Kal-kee were both strangers to the nomad tribe; as if they knew it; as if they had something in common.

And this despite the fact that by now Shan had come to look a good deal like a nomadic Kirghiz himself. For he had begun to trade off his civilized dress even while he was still with old Carcol.

He wore a sheepskin cloak and cap, the latter shaped like a fez; yakskin boots and leggings, and a woolen shirt of native make, dyed a beautiful heliotrope, a nightshirt for length, but held up by a crimson sash.

Moreover, his hair was getting long, for he hadn’t had it cut since leaving America. His beard, what there was of it, had grown out soft, curly and black,

A prince of nomads! What would Hambleton have said to see him looking like that? Yet even fat, staid, substantial citizens have a Shan Makaroff in them— all of them, so they say; and it comes out at lodges, masked balls, and such occasions.

But this was no masquerade with Shan. Covertly he watched the camel. He knew that the camel recognized him. He became so sure of this, was so increasingly obsessed with that premonition of his as they advanced along the Shores of Silence that at last he offered the head man of the tribe all the gold that remained to him for Kal-kee, and the exchange was made.

That night— it may have been in his sleep— Shan thought that he heard a sound of distant drums. He said nothing, for no one else mentioned the fact. Possibly he took it as a sign meant for no one but himself. For that premonition of his had now become a chronic sense of expectancy.

They were now making their way toward a certain lake well out in the desert— one of those shifting, reedy oases which are common in certain parts of the Gobi— where there was to be a meeting with another tribe for the purposes of trade and courtship. It was in the course of this journey that the thing befell— the thing that he had been expecting.

It may have been atmospheric, for the period of sandstorms was approaching. Indeed, several times in the past few days the atmosphere had gone, first heavy and stifling, and had then been filled with a singing cadence as the light of the sun grew dim under a speeding cloud, and the air about them billowed and tossed like worried water.

It may have been mental, psychological, like so many phenomena that men notice, or think they notice, in the world around them.

But in this latter case how did it come that Kal-kee noticed it, too?

Once more Shan had heard the beating of distant drums— louder this time, and, he would have sworn to it, the murmur of many voices. But when he had crept out of the tent in which he slept with the chief of the tribe and the chief’s sons, the camp was undisturbed. Even the dogs were asleep.

But on the night that the thing happened—

He had meditated long before going to sleep on what he had done thus far. In his mood there was a certain degree of exaltation— that curious mingling of excitement and peace which all men experience at times. He had thought of Charlie Ling and Ivan. He had thought of his grandmother; of the Kirghiz girl back there in the mountain camp of Carcol; of Frances Talbot; of the Golden Girl— and he saw her, weirdly real, near.

The camp settled down to silence, even a sick child who had been piping his scanty breath away for an hour or so. A snore, the stirring scamper of some night-prowling lizard, a whimper from a sleeping dog, the moan of a camel— then silence, absolute.

What was the meaning of it all? Why were men born? Why did they travel little or far? Why were ambition and love?

There came back to him the words of a stanza he had learned in school:

’Tis all a checker-board of nights and days,

Where destiny with men for pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one— back in the closet lays.

Then he heard it very distinctly— heard it out of the wide, deep silence— his name.

“Shan Makaroff!”

He heard it so distinctly that he sat up with every nerve alert, the perspiration starting on his forehead, the arm on which he leaned shaking like a reed.

Yet he wasn’t frightened. It was merely all that expectancy and excitement of the past week or so rushing in on him to announce that this was the time he had been waiting for. Stealthily he got to his knees. No one else was awake. The other men were gorged with meat, and were heavy sleepers anyway.

He got out of the tent as silently as if he had been a shadow, his super-sensitive, overstrained nerves helping him to do it as he could never have done it otherwise.

The night was velvet black. Very fine and distant he heard a sound as of cymbals and fifes played to dance-time, and a tinkling burst of laughter. It grew louder still. There was a movement in the direction of the camels— tethered, for there were wild camels about and this was the mating-season, when they were likely to stampede— and Shan thought of Kal-kee.

As he ran gropingly in that direction through the darkness, following blind instinct more than his eyes, he saw Kal-kee’s black silhouette in motion just in front of him. The camel was getting to its feet.

“Sook! Sook!” he whispered hoarsely. It was the camel-word of the Kirghiz, meaning, “Kneel!”

But Kal-kee didn’t kneel. In a moment he had floundered to his feet. Was he also hearing that infernal music, inaudible to all the rest of the camp?

“Sook!” Shan commanded again desperately, yet suddenly aware that the command would never be obeyed.

Kal-kee had thrown up his head— a head recognizable even in the dark— lighter, more deerlike, modeled on the head of his wild sire. Shan recognized not only the head, but the movement.

With a surge of nervous energy he leaped at the camel’s side just as the great brute snapped his tether-thong as if it had been thread. Shan had caught the long hair of Kal-kee’s forward hump; clung there; got a hold with his other hand. Then, as the great beast lurched forward, he was jerked, sprawling, to Kal-kee’s back.

It had all happened in a second or two to the accompaniment of the weird music, while Shan heard his name called again.

He was on Kal-kee’s back. No one had ever been on Kal-kee’s back before. He felt the great beast quiver, then hurl his huge, young strength into flight.

Dogs barked. Camels squealed. There was a brief, wild outbreak of curses and shouts as the camp sprang from sleep.

But scarcely had he realized this than the camp and the sounds of it had been whirled off into the night like a leaf on a gale of wind. Faster and faster Kal-kee went— a fantom camel hurtling through the desert night, fantom music overhead, Shan clinging to his back— straight out into the sea of sand.

Chapter 10

“Behold the Ghost!”

ORDINARILY there is nothing romantic about a camel. He is dull-witted, unsympathetic. He loves wild onions, and his breath proclaims the fact. Offend him and he will sneeze at you with coarse insolence.

But with Kal-kee just then it was different. He was the camel inspired. It was just as if an invisible hand had reached down out of the night and touched some secret spring at the root of his being. Things like that do happen to unromantic creatures at times, both man and beast.

He was the box car running wild down a railroad-grade; irresponsible machinery spun into speed by unknowable dynamics. Perhaps it was the man on his back. Never before had he been ridden.

Perhaps Shan would have been frightened at this thing he had done if it hadn’t been for his excitement, the hum and fine shrillings of the music over his head, the basic conviction that this was a part of the work that had been written into the tale of his life.

He was on a wild young camel which was skittering at full speed straight into the desert. He was clad only in his woolen shirt. He had no water, no provisions of any kind, no weapon, not even a halter to guide or stop the beast that carried him.

“And yet,” he cried aloud, with a touch of hysteria perhaps— “and yet here I am!”

A comforting remark even then, as if it passed the responsibility of the situation on up to some higher power.

At first he was tortured physically, for he had to put a terrific strain on the muscles of arms, back, and legs to keep from being thrown off into the swift, shadowy recession of bush and sand. He thought of that— knew that if he did permit himself to be thrown the chances were he would escape unhurt; but his response to it was merely to grip Kal-kee the harder.

Finally he noticed with surprise that he had been riding for an interval with no thought of physical discomfort at all. He had found the secret of Kal-kee’s gait.

A rolling, sliding gait— a boat towed through a choppy sea by an invisible cable. The world all but invisible above and below.

They left poplar and tamarisk behind and swung more swiftly still, it seemed, across a vast interval of pebbly level.

It was midnight, just about, when he had left the tent— so Shan reckoned it. He had a peculiarly keen sense for time; indeed, he had never carried a watch, for he had never needed one. An hour they had been riding like that.

Once he roared at Kal-kee at the top of his lungs to halt. It wasn’t even an experiment. He knew in advance what the result would be. There was the suggestion of a nervous thrill through the giant frame under him as muscles were compelled to greater speed.

None of Kal-kee’s race had ever smoked; had ever touched alcohol; had ever known disease. He was bred in the open; had never known a roof. Day after day through all his magnificent young life he had breathed in the untainted oxygen of the wilderness, eaten his fill of unadulterated food.

“Then speed on!” shouted Shan— shouted it in English there in the Mongolian desert. And he added with a laugh:

“Speed on— toward her— daughter of the Blue Wolf— my golden one!”

There was a din of flying air, a zimming shriek from the upper atmosphere, where sand-clouds doubtless were whirling along in a dance of their own.

Shan shut his eyes and let his consciousness roam where it would.

And part of the time he was seeing Frances Talbot as the Golden Girl, and part of the time he was seeing the Golden Girl as Frances; and again— for such is the deft skill of youth— he was thinking of the girl he had kissed at the side of Carcol’s tent and imagining that she was herself and Frances and the Blue Wolf’s daughter all at one and the same time.

Hazy consciousness of paralyzed muscles and sunless miles, while the tossing ship of the desert sped on and on and on!

Then, as if it were all a part of his drama, he heard a gibbering cry in a strange dialect— Kirghiz, Mongolian, Russian, or Pekingese he was never to know. But he understood it.

“Behold the ghost!”

It came in tones of panic— a howl— followed by vocal discord.

But where was the ghost? Or was this a ghost that had spoken? Never had he heard voices just like these.

Suddenly his roving consciousness was home again. He was looking about him, alert, wide awake.

Kal-kee had stopped and was reaching out his muzzle toward something on the ground. In the first blue-black translucence of breaking day Shan saw the shape of a small, mean tent of reeds and felt. A camp— an oasis! What else?

He let out a hail.

There was no answer; only in the distance, beyond a clump of stunted poplar, he seemed to catch a glimpse of fleeing forms.

But where was the ghost? What was the meaning of the cry? Then he comprehended. He himself was the ghost— a white man, half naked, riding a wild camel halterless, like that, out of the night. No wonder they were frightened, whoever they were.

Wondering, he unlocked his aching muscles and managed to half crawl, half fall from Kal-kee’s back.

Chapter 11

Kal-kee Feels the Spur.

IT was a squalid little camp— one long occupied, he could see— but such a camp as he had never seen before, it stood near the edge of a reedy little lake, or sink-hole, in the midst of a thicket of tamarisk, poplar, and willow. Kal-kee drank the water with gurgling, bubbling gusto. Shan tried it and found it brackish.

He brought his attention back to the hut or tent.

There was no doubt about it. The inhabitants, taken by surprise, had fled.

Early as it was, there had been the beginning of a breakfast— an iron pot of what might have been meant for tea. There was but little tea in it, but much fat and flour and salt. Shan put his finger into it and, finding it not too hot, lowered his face to it and drank.

His circulation and his mind were rapidly getting back to normal. He went for a little way in the direction which the fugitives had taken, repeatedly calling out the one word, “Friend!” But there was no sign that he was heard, or, if heard, that his profession was taken in good part.

What he saw about him told him that this was a one-family camp. Shepherds, most likely— the slaves or serfs of some rich lord living at a distance, who came out annually with their master’s flocks to graze over the scant, free pastures of the occasional oases.

As he had lost his crimson sash, he appropriated a rawhide thong he found near the lire and tied it around his middle by way of a belt. Otherwise it was awkward walking in that long shirt of his. He found a knife— of Tibetan make, so it seemed, with a long blade and brass-bound handle— and he appropriated this as well; for he suddenly recollected that he was unarmed, and that it might not be amiss to take some precaution.

He had stuck his head into the tent. It was empty, and the atmosphere there was not inviting.

Near the camp-fire he noticed a primitive flint and steel. He picked this up, also, and put it into his belt.

“I don’t want to steal these things,” he communed with himself; “but should it so happen that I be forced to carry them away without payment of any kind, then I charge it to the account of Him who keeps the ledger of such debts.”

The whiff of meditation, his accumulated fatigue, his watching of the fire, the food he had consumed — all of these things conduced to drowsiness.

He gave a final look around him.

Kal-kee had filled his internal reservoir with brackish water and eaten what he wanted to eat; but it was the mating season, when camels show but little interest in food. He was lying in the sunshine of an open space, looking straight ahead of him through half-closed eyes.

He was the animate locomotive come to a temporary halt, but still on the same track, still headed for the distant, unknown terminus.

Shan stood there listening for a while. There was no sound.

How far had Kal-kee already come? A camel like that could cover ten miles an hour— could reel off a hundred miles a day, week after week. How far would he go?

But sleep was billowing in upon him with soft insistence.

He stretched himself on the tepid earth in Kal-kee’s shade, so close to the shaggy hide that the animal’s slightest move would give him warning.

But the warning didn’t come from Kal-kee.

It was as if he had dreamed again of the spirit-music he had heard in the upper air during the night— eery shrieks and the pulse of drums. Suddenly he was awake— had leaped to his feet.

His first impression was that he and Kal-kee both had turned around; then he knew that, instead of this, is was the sun that had changed, that it had already swung far from the east to far over in the west. He was cooked and dazed with heat. It must have been this that caused his incipient nightmare.

Then clamor broke out again— unmistakably human.

He looked back in the direction of the camp and caught a fleeting impression of many men, savagely dressed, bellicose yet frightened. There was much shouting. There was a throb of drums, the ear-splitting whoop of a native horn.

He realized now what had happened. The campers had fled for reenforcements. They were returning now to drive the evil spirit away.

He lifted a hand and again shouted, “Friend!”

But if the word had any effect at all it merely increased the excitement of the frightened raiders.

Shan saw a man in a grotesque mask stringing a great bow. He flung himself down just in time. A feathered arrow zipped past him.

Now Shan lost no time. Without another look at the enemy he leaped for Kal-kee’s back.

There was an exploding report that made itself heard over the rest of the din. A bullet sped through Shan’s shirt.

“Kal-kee, go!” he shouted.

Another bullet zimmed close. The marauders must have been frightened, or they would never have missed like that. One bullet for a man or yak or camel— that’s the rule in those regions where lead and powder are priceless.

“Kal-kee!”

A spasm of electric energy shot through the camel’s frame.

He flung himself forward.

Just south of east— that was the direction Kal-kee took, as Shan could see by the sun. At intervals that night he confirmed this reckoning by the stars; and he remembered it later. But otherwise Shan was entering on a period when impressions were vague; and the memory of occurrences came to him afterward in blurred, fantastic memories.

The desert was like a sea. There were times when in the distance he saw high, sharp sand-dunes that might have been ships. Frequently there was thunder— or was it merely those infernal drums?— but there was no rain.

At times he saw the sun, blood red, through a devilish veil, and his face was cut by sand that was whirled against him like devastating hail.

Day followed night, and night day, when he neither drank nor ate. and when he dreamed but did not sleep.

Shan must have imbibed something of Kal-kee’s desert-bred endurance to have stuck it out at all; Kal-kee must have imbibed something of human fidelity not to have rid himself of the swaying, mysterious cargo on his back.

Then they were in the midst of a ghostly city— houses and streets, but no one there. They had reached it in the middle of the night. Some instinct of Kal-kee had caused him to kneel at the side of a stunted tamarisk. It was the same sort of an instinct, no doubt, that caused Shan to kneel in the sand and scrape and claw at the yielding sand.

Was he digging for treasure? He didn’t know. But he did know that hidden down there was something that he had to have. Then suddenly he knew that the earth was moist. The very suggestion of dampness brought his scattered senses back— brought back, also, whatever he had of scattered strength!

It was water!

His pulse had been weak, his tongue hard, his lips rigid. It was life that he was absorbing as he lay there with his face in the wet earth.

Then, as soon as he recovered a little, he dug still deeper with the knife he had stolen and pushed back the sand as best he could so that Kal-kee could drink. Then he himself was at the water again. He drank and drank and drank. Every-drop of it was fresh life, new blood, delicious happiness, and strength.

When he could drink no more he reveled in the luxury of ladling up handfuls of it to his parched and thirsty skin.

Then he remembered that ghostly town. Was it a mere figment of his recent delirium? He crawled up from the hollow he had made and looked about him in the blue, mysterious starlight. There were houses. There was no doubt of it. There was the semblance of a street straight ahead of him. There was another to his right.

He understood. He had found one of the lost cities of the Gobi. He was still searching through it as the dawn came up. In many of the houses there were rooms that may have been sanctuaries— or again they may have been treasure-chambers, or both— in which the walls still standing were incrusted with beaten gold, in which there were gold statues, gold ornaments, gold-incrusted furniture even.

At all of this Shan looked with kindling interest. But this interest was subordinate to another; he was hungry. He was so hungry that now, when his condition was normal so far as water was concerned, he could have sworn that hunger was even worse torture than thirst— this, even when the mere thought of thirst would carry him back to his well again to assure himself that he had plenty of water by taking another swallow or two.

Back through the empty, haunted streets he went again, penetrating this time farther than before. He came to the ruins of a vast building— a temple or a palace— with wood-and-plaster walls set high on a stone foundation. The plaster walls were painted with figures of men and women— or were they gods and goddesses?— and the colors were as fresh as they were the day they were put there.

He was standing there in the midst of what must have once been the porch of the great building. Before him was a quadrangular court, surrounded on the other three sides by the silent, watchful ruins— a large court, an acre or so in extent, and once evidently the converging-place of four of the principal streets.

Even in the midst of his sickening hunger loneliness assailed him. To think of all the strong men and fair women who had walked through here— who had loved, struggled, died!

Suddenly he was struck by a strange apparition. He thought it was nothing but an apparition at first; but as he looked and looked he knew that the thing was real. Through a gap in the farthest corner of the great court a herd of camels had appeared. Wild camels, he knew instinctively.

Before he had time for further thought he heard from another corner of the court a bubbling, snorting roar. He turned and saw Kal-kee standing there, head up, challenging, wild.

Even while he looked Kal-kee shambled mightily forward a score of paces, reared up his head again, and let out his challenge.

From the wild herd there had come a challenge in reply. Shan saw another camel, Kal-kee’s equal in every way, lunge forward and also stop, head up.

The rivals rushed and stopped again, roaring defiance, their short tails lashing, their mighty muscles in thigh and neck swelling in readiness for the first clash. Just that moment’s pause and then they had rushed each other, had met in the center of the court, had reared and struck like wrestlers trying for a hold.

With a startled cry Shan started forward on a run. He had no idea of what he might do, save possibly a vague hope that he could drive the strange camel off.

He might as well have tried to stop a sand-storm. It was a storm— as primitive, as elemental. This must have been the rendezvous that Kal-kee had come so far to keep.

Both camels were fencing with heads and hoofs, with speed incredible for such awkward bulk— desperation in their eyes, their yellow teeth bared, their necks writhing like hairy snakes.

There was a flash of Kal-kee’s head, a roar, ending in a squeal, a spurt of blood. With a quivering burst of exultation Shan saw that it was Kal-kee who had given the blow. But he saw no more just then. His attention had been drawn to the rest of the herd, and the attention of the herd to him.

It had begun milling slowly around, like cattle ready to stampede, and then the stampede came.

There must have been a dozen animals in the herd. Shan may have had some vague idea of penning them up in some way within these walls where lords and ladies once paraded. But before he was half-way across the court the animals were off down one of the haunted boulevards,

As he turned he was momentarily stricken sicker than ever by what he saw. The battle had been short and swift.

One of the foemen was just yielding over sidewise slowly, like a tree cut through at the roots. He was still lighting, but he was doomed. The other camel held him by the throat.

Shan’s head swam. It was all too incredible. This was a palace. There must be a swarming population about— just there— out of sight. Why did no one come? Where was every one?

Down went the stricken beast in a lake of blood. There was a gurgling, savage, grunting roar of triumph as the victor reared his head up, eyes flaming.

It was Kal-kee. Shan saw him pass him like a fantom in pursuit of the rest of the herd.

He swayed, then brought himself up with a jerk, as men will at some crisis in their lives, themselves the tamed beast obedient to the spirit in the saddle.

Meat! He had prayed for meat, and there it was.

Chapter 12

The Dead City.

JUST how many days and nights Shan remained in the haunted city he was never afterward able to calculate. He was strong. He was in full possession of all his faculties. Only over all that he saw and experienced and did there was a veil-like glamour of unreality.

He had found his flint and steel where he had dropped them at the side of his well, and with these made a fire, which he kept constantly burning. There was something so human and sociable about the flame that he couldn’t bear to let it go out.

He had drawn and skinned the camel as best he could— a gigantic labor, but necessary; for while he was still engaged on that first meal of his the ravens had flocked in from the four quarters of the wilderness.

He found a room in the temple or palace which was still ceiled in, and this he made his storeroom. In that germless air the meat dried almost instantly and remained sweet.

And there he made his home— quartered in a palace. He ate from a gold table and sat in a gold chair. He did his primitive cooking in vessels for which the museums of Europe or America would have paid a fortune. He boiled his shirt in a copper bowl covered with rare enamels.

At first he started out to bring as much of the treasure as possible into one place. Some day, he told himself, he would return to this place, and he might as well have things ready. But presently he desisted. There was too much of it. There was gold everywhere.

Finally the only thing he kept was an elaborate gold necklace, so fine and delicate that it somehow touched his heart— it reminded him of Frances, of the Kirghiz maiden, of his Golden Girl, he put this about his neck; and as it was light he forgot about it, along with the black-jade ring he had brought from home.

For this necklace, like so many of the other objects about him— like the city itself— possessed a human quality that almost frightened him at times— that convinced him that some one had just been there; that this or that was still warm from human contact; that hall or room still echoed with friendly footfalls ami vibrated with the breath of human speech.

It must have been his subconscious intellect that was getting the upper place in his daily life. He didn’t need logic. He needed the larger understanding— the touch of poetry and prophecy that solitude brings.

Logically he was condemned to death, he was a thousand miles from nowhere, so to speak— in a lost city in the midst of a tenantless desert. No one ever passed that way, that was certain, or all this gold would not have remained there undisturbed. His food-supply was dwindling. He had no means of replenishing it. He had no means of transport.

But instead of becoming panicky, or even discouraged, Shan was preparing himself for the next stage of the journey.

From the skin of the camel he had made a sort of a sack with a drawstring through the edge of it. This was big enough to carry several days’ supply of provender. About the neck of the largest gold vase he could find he had fitted another thong. In this he could carry over a gallon of water.

Shan wasn’t even unhappy.

He found a sort of primitive ocarina of clay. After he had blown the dust from it he found that it could still be played. Throughout the silent ages it had kept its mellow flute-tone. One whole day he practiced on it. Shan liked it; it increased that human feeling about the place.

Shan was comfortable— comfortable even when one of those swift and appalling sand-storms came up out of the east one day, threatening to bury the city for another age-long sleep, and him along with it. Such a catastrophe, perhaps, explained the present state of the place.

In the middle of the day the sun suddenly went red; then redder still; then went out almost entirely. Suddenly the shining, crystal atmosphere responded by turning sickly yellow. Dun twilight fell as out of the east there came a surging, bellowing roar. An army of shrieking demons now began to whirl past overhead In hysterical retreat from the pursuing enemy.

And no wonder!

The enemy was purple-dense, whirled forward with such a force as makes the earth go round.

Gone sun! Gone silence! Gone sound, almost; for sound was something else than that huge vibration.

In the black night of his storeroom Shan shouted at the top of his lungs just by way of experiment. He could no more hear his voice than he could have heard the court-house bell in Hambleton.

Oh, works of man— so Shan meditated— to have stood through centuries of storms like this!

And then as suddenly as it had come up the storm was gone. It had been a charge. This wasn’t the selected battle-field.

The sun came out— a little ashamed, it seemed, for having hidden itself. Gradually the sand-swept air came sparkling back to crystalline brilliance. With a peaceful heart Shan dug out his well again and returned to his ocarina.

He was playing a new piece, when he stopped in the middle of a note and stared out across the court. For the first time in all these solitary days his heart began to strain and leap.

He had known it all along. But how— and why? And, since he had known it, why should a cry like this leap to his lips and tears to his eyes?

It was Kal-kee. Kal-kee had come back.

He had entered the courtyard there as unruffled, as philosophical, as if he had never run away.

“Oh, Kal-kee!” cried Shan, dashing forward. “Oh, Kal-kee! Sook! Sook!”

Kal-kee knelt and waited.

Chapter 13

Where Three Meet Together.

A BEAUTIFUL thing about one hope realized is that it brings all other hopes leaping to their feet. At least that is the way it was with Shan. Before Kal-kee appeared— he recognized it now— he was merely hanging on, refusing to permit himself to think; and hence refusing to let himself worry. He was passive then. Now he was dynamic.

Not only was he surer than ever that he was going to get through this whole adventure alive; he saw sparkling into prophetic vision once more all that he had ever dared dream— about his waiting empire, about magic accomplishment there, about his Golden Girl.

He was Shan Makaroff— shaman, indeed— miracle-worker. What he had done thus far any man might do. Similarly men had suffered what he had suffered and worse.

No; it wasn’t anything that he had done or undergone. That wasn’t the test of a shaman, he told himself.

He had kept his faith; he hadn’t let the inner light go out; and that was the test, he said.

Still alone, but no longer lonely, he had plenty of time for these cogitations. Under his knees was Kal-kee, embodiment of all the physical strength of the world; and before his eyes, alluring, sweet, was the vision of the golden one, embodiment perhaps— who knows?— of all the spiritual strength in the world.

He drove now, and Kal-kee obeyed— straight toward that point, however, that Kal-kee had originally selected, a little to the south of east.

For if it was unreasoning instinct that started the camel off in that direction in the first place, it was likewise instinct that caused Shan Makaroff to persist. It was his highway, twice proven to be such— once at the camp of the shepherds; again at the haunted city of the past. And the third station would be—

Two days out from the last stopping-place and the sun going down. Shan watched the shadow of camel and man undulating out ahead of him over the barren ground— chasing a shadow, never catching it.

But just as this cynical rejection drifted across his brain some movement of the camel brought up his mind and his sight to the far horizon stretched out dimly in front of him. It had got so that he could almost read Kal-kee’s thoughts— real thoughts— like those of some men, all occupied with food and drink and that recent breakaway of his into his native wilderness.

But this time it was some other sort of a reflection that had found lodgment in Kal-kee’s primitive brain. Shan studied Kal-kee’s head— gazed out again at the blue depth where sky met sand. Then he uttered a low exclamation.

There was a wagon there— just that and nothing more.

Had he come from a deserted city to find now the remnant of a deserted wagon?

He urged Kal-kee to greater speed. But Shan could see that his four-footed friend had some other impression still stored in that primitive brain of his.

Instead of keeping straight on toward the wagon, indifferent to everything else, which would have been the natural course for him to pursue on an occasion like this, Kal-kee was mildly interested in something farther to the south.

Shan reflected. He could keep the wagon in view and still modify his route somewhat.

Kal-kee, never ceasing in his undulating pace, had responded ever so little to the touch of Shan’s home-made halter. He bore over toward a succession of low sand-dunes which were the foot-hills of higher, crescent-shaped dunes which lay beyond.

Then as Shan lifted his eyes from his camel’s head he saw appear over the rim of one of these dunes a familiar figure. He recognized it from afar— the figure of Charley Ling.

The Chinaman fell, got up again, stumbled on. He couldn’t look into the eye of the sun, or he would have seen the travelers before. He was far gone— and all alone. In his own way he had come thus far to keep his rendezvous of faith.

Shan tried to shout. He would have laughed. He would have sung. He did none of these things. He couldn’t. It was as if a gentle but suffocating hand had settled about his throat and taken his breath away. His heart had gone big with love and gratitude. After all these days— and there was Ling!

There was still water in his golden vase. He poured what there was of it into Ling’s parched lips and called him in gentle tones.

“You!” cried Ling in his familiar Pekingese. “You! Tell me that this isn’t a ghost— that it is you!”

“I, Charley! I, myself!”

Then Shan thought of the wagon he had seen. Now he knew.

“Quick, old friend!” he cried. “The third brother waits.”

He had brought the amiable Kal-kee to his knees and was helping Charley Ling to the place he himself had so long occupied on the camel’s back.

Five minutes later they heard a shout as they came around the last of the dunes. There was the wagon, and there, standing in front of it, was the man they knew would be there. It was Ivan.

They had gone their several ways half around the world, and they had met again.

Said Ling:

“Until two days ago I was with a caravan which instinct had told me to follow out beyond the Great Wall. But while in Peking I had been entrusted with a map, showing the position of Yekeh-Kuruk— the lair of the Blue Wolf. I was a man with a secret. The others found this out. So when a sand-storm came up they took it as an opportunity for getting even with me. They went their way and left me to die. Here I am.”

Ivan and Shan clapped him on the back.

“The man with a secret is always picked out to suffer,” said Shan, quoting something he seemed to have read somewhere.

Said Ivan:

“At Urga I was received by the Bogda— the living Buddha— and he saw that I was equipped with a caravan, ‘to get certain information,’ as he put it, ‘that the nations needed.’ A most wretched caravan it was. The men deserted. The beasts died. But here I am.”

Shan quickly told his story.

Ivan spoke again.

“Brothers,” he said. “it isn’t necessary for us to take an oath, but we know now that the Blue Wolf has put us to the test. We shall see him.”

“We’ll go on to Yekeh-Kuruk,” said Shan, recalling the name that Charley Ling had mentioned.

“To Yekeh-Kuruk,” supplemented Charley Ling, “and even on into the Khanoola itself— which is the Abyss of Wonders!”

The Khanoola— the Abyss of Wonders!

There are certain magic words, they say, merely the sound of which will have a strange effect on certain persons who hear them— call up strange fantasies, stir up unexpected vibrations of heart and brain.

That was the effect those words had on Shan— on the others, too, perhaps.

It was as if that weird, elfin music of the skies had started up again; as if there had been a sudden stirring of all the ghosts for which the desert was famous; that there were invisible watchers there, scrutinizing them— pitifully, perhaps.

There had been other men who had declared their purposes like that. And where were they now?

Chapter 14

Into Forbidden Territory.

THERE is often an odd triangulation in the affairs of men and women. Three friends meet in some out-of-the-way corner of the world after long wandering over diverse routes, and they say: “Isn’t it strange that we should meet like that?” But, as real sons of the Blue Wolf, Charley Ling, Ivan and Shan didn’t consider it so strange. It had happened that way. It would have been stranger yet had they themselves planned that it happen so. That night they made their plans, such as they were.

Ivan’s desert wagon, or tarantass, was stocked with provisions that, with careful management, would last the three of them for at least a fortnight— and this was a grim joke— longer if they failed to find water, for unless they could drink they couldn’t eat.

But Shan, who had become an expert as a water-finder, with the aid of Kal-kee, discovered a promising spot not a hundred yards from the wagon. Digging there, with Ivan to help him, he found water less than six feet down.

Like so many deserts, the Gobi also had its water-supply, only so woefully hidden at times that unless one were lucky and still strong enough to dig he would be very likely indeed to die of thirst.

It was decided to hitch Kal-kee to the wagon.

But in which direction should they go? Ever the same— a little south of east, just as the invisible hand of fate had directed Kal-kee in the first place, and Shan afterward.

They decided on this direction, not merely through faith or guess-work, however, but by a comparative study of the directions and distances that each of them had come; and this, having given them a fair idea of where they were, enabled them to use to better advantage the map that Charley Ling had brought.

It was a strange map— like no other map that any one of them had ever seen before; more like a puzzle-picture than a sample of graphic geography.

But after they had studied it a little while they found that it was quite plain.

It dated from the days of Genghis Khan, so Charley said. Indeed, there was reason to believe that it was one of the maps prepared at the time of, or immediately following, the funeral of the great Mongol leader. For Genghis had been carried for burial to Yekeh-Kuruk, a spot which ever since then had been held rigidly taboo.

And in the midst of Yekeh-Kuruk— so it was indicated on the map— was the sacred mount of Khanoola. which Charley had called the Abyss of Wonders.

There were some peculiar notes attached to Ling’s map. One of these was an extract from the great Chinese historian, Matwanlin, which may be translated thus:

While passing through this wilderness you hear sounds, sometimes of singing, sometimes of wailing; and it has often happened that travelers, going aside to hear what those sounds might be, have strayed from their course and been entirely lost; for they were the voices of spirits and goblins.

“I have heard such,” said Shan.

“And I,” said Charley Ling.

“ ’Twas for that my men deserted me,” said Ivan.

Yekeh-Kuruk was represented on the map as an island. At the side of it was the peculiar statement:

This was the sacred island guarded by ghouls, and there was no communication with it over the face of the waters.

“If there was no communication with it over the face of the waters,” asked Ivan, “how then could any one come and go?”

“Perhaps,” suggested Shan, “they passed under the water— as trains leave and enter New York.”

On the back of the map was this curious notation:

From the holy island which lay beyond the sun a new race came, and they still live in the midst of the Shamo (the Gobi) although not now so many as they once were. Nor is their domain so great.

In the sea of heaven there is the zodiac. This race placed a zodiac on earth, choosing therefor twelve islands in the inner sea, which thus became the sea of knowledge. This sea lasted until the last great shifting of the earth, when the waters were cast to the south and the west. Of the abode of the Sun People only one island remained, since called the Abyss of Wonders.

Scattered over the face of the map itself, suggestive of the sea-monsters and mermaids on old European maps, were peculiar little warnings, such as:

“Beware of ghouls!”

“Land of the Black Spirits!”

“Region of the Singing Goblins.”

If they kept right on, as they intended to do, what would the ghouls and goblins do, if, as the evidence seemed to have it, there really were such things?

When the conversation died down, and the silence of the desert closed in upon them, they found themselves listening— listening intensely. For what? Not one of them could have told.

Yet to Charley Ling it seemed as if he heard a ripple of mocking laughter. A singing-girl had laughed at him like that years and years ago, when he was young, and he had never forgotten.

Ivan gave a little start and looked over his shoulder. Was that a patter of bare feet? he asked himself.

And very faintly there came to Shan, lying on his back with the starlight in his eyes, a strain of minor music, so odd, so poignant, that all of a sudden his heart was tripping as it had done that day when Kal-kee came back to the haunted city.

Imagination? Perhaps.

Only it is supposed that Kal-kee had no imagination; and just then he had lifted his head, stared out into the purple darkness, and moaned a quavering complaint.

Chapter 15

Voices in the Night.

THERE is nothing supernatural, of course. Men just keep pushing back the frontier of nature, that is all; push out their line a little farther, and then a little farther still, on the maps of thought and experience.

The three Sons of the Blue Wolf had harnessed up Kal-kee, after a fashion, to the desert wagon that Ivan had brought thus far from Urga. There were no arms in it— nothing but tea and canned goods bearing-Russian and Chinese labels, and not too much of these. The wagon itself was like an old-fashioned one-horse shay, only sprawled out, with wider-rimmed wheels on longer axles.

But the familiar hood was there.

A tarantass, in the heart of the Gobi, dragged along by a two-humped camel, tamed the Lord only knows how; and yet it looked like an antiquated carriage that might draw up in front of any little white church out in the country on Sunday morning.

Shan drove. On the seat beside him under the hood sat the two old men. They were in a region of surpassing desolation— far from the desolate old caravan-routes even, as they could see by the absence of bones.

It was the Shamo, sure enough— the sea of sand, coarse sand, with distant, nebulous shores of treeless hills, al! empty, sterile, as if this part of the earth had done the work assigned to it in the beginning and was now dead, waiting until what was green and living should likewise wither.

Still, there was variety of a kind.

Now and then there would be a fleeting, swift, and somehow breath-taking change of atmosphere when the measureless blue would turn to yellow and from yellow to dun; then slowly the mood would pass and it would all be shimmering blue again.

It was an almost personal element— as if there were a mighty presence there, watchful, jealous, not yet convinced that this crawling microbe of a tarantass should be permitted to survive.

Again the measureless emptiness to north or south would be subtly peopled by a dancing army— a gesticulating, whirling host— and they would hear faint laughter, hoots, and howls, and the attenuated squeal of clarinets.

At such manifestations Kal-kee would prick up his small ears and look just a little excited but unafraid, as if to say: “Sand-demons!”

Finally off to the northeast Shan saw that another fantom army of whirling sand-pillars had appeared: but these were different from any others.

Instinctively he cast his eyes at Kal-kee. The camel also had noticed a difference apparently, for added to the mild excitement he had always shown there was this time a manifest touch of fear.

Shan looked again toward the disturbance in the sand. His eyes were troubled by the long and continuous glare, the shimmering, unearthly pageant of the things he had already seen. But he felt that he had not been deceived.

Among the shifting sand-forms there had appeared more substantial shapes. Had this been Africa he would have sworn that there were black natives out there, furtive, shifty, watchful, eager to remain unseen, yet themselves prey to overmastering curiosity.

Without encouragement from Shan, Kal-kee quickened his pace, looking from left to right as if eager to escape.

“Kal-kee!” Shan cried in English as he pulled on the single rein. “Don’t be a fool!”

But as Ivan and Ling called out, each in his own way, for courage and calm, there was a swirling rush of hot wind and a shower of stones.

Shan felt a sear of pain across his forehead and a trickle of heat which he knew was blood.

Almost blinded, tossed from left to right on the seat of the swaying, bouncing tarantass, pulling with desperate strength on the driving-rein, he cast another look in the direction of the fantom horde.

Fantom no longer!

The swirling sand was closer, pulled upward and cast about by some huge and torturing force. There was a deafening groan, shot through with thrill, triumphant shrieks. They were lunging through the vortex of an atmospheric crater filled with sand and stones.

But in the midst of it all Shan saw one thing that he was never to forget— a whirling phalanx of black men, black faces, flashing shapes covered with what looked like black wool. They seemed to be borne on the whirlwind. They seemed to be as much at home in that twisting churn of destruction as fish in a pool.

Run, Kal-kee, with all your speed! Hold together, old tarantass, with all your strength!

The camel was answering voice and lash— but the voice was the voice of the hurricane and the lash was that of the wind-driven rocks.

The old carriage skidded and rolled, but it must have been built for emergencies like this. The man who designed it had been thinking perhaps of Siberian wolves. And it was an even worse pack that was following now.

It was Charley Ling that gave warning of the fact.

Shan heard his cry of “The strangers, the strangers!” in Pekingese. Then there was a guttural shout from Ivan. These reached him amid the chaos of sound. He turned.

Kal-kee went down. The tarantass, jerked around like the head of a hammer, as suddenly came to a stop.

They were there all together in the confusion and dropping darkness; but as Shan struggled to free himself from the confusion he knew that there were not merely three of them, but four.

At Charley Ling’s cry Ivan also had turned. Like many an old man who has lived by the toil of his hands for the better part of his life, he had a gift of quick movement and hickory strength. These accounted for the capture he had made.

He had seen the pack that had glimpsed past Shan’s vision and that then had been sighted by Charley Ling.

It was a pack of creatures in human form, light and swift of movement. The foremost of these had put a hand on the swaying tarantass. Him Ivan had seized— still held.

He still held him through the cataclysmic crisis that followed, when he and his captive, Charley Ling and Shan were all there together in the front of the vehicle where its sudden stoppage had hurled them.

There were as many as half a dozen seconds, perhaps, while the worst of the confusion lasted— while they themselves were tangled up, while the sudden storm was spending its fury, while Kal-kee, thrown and partially bound by his amateur harness, was floundering and squalling in an effort to free himself.

This, and they were gasping for air like mice in an air-pump as the tornado went whirling up and over them into the higher atmosphere.

Followed a calm!

The huge dissonance likewise was gone— had been hurled away— like the noise of a Cyclopean express. Gone also was the subhuman pack, leaving their fellow behind them.

They looked at him in the yellow light— Charley Ling, Ivan, who still clutched the creature by the wrist, and Shan. Man or animal, or neither of these, they couldn’t tell.

The semblance of a black man, sure enough, not much more than five feet tall, singularly slim and light of build, unarmed, unclad save for a covering of his own hair, which was coarse and black, about an inch in length. The hair of his head was likewise coarse and black and but little longer. His nose and his mouth were well formed, but his chin and his forehead were alike retreating.

His eyes, though, were what commanded the most attention— so lackluster, so uncomprehending; the eyes of certain creatures far down in the scale, like carp or katydids.

He had quickly ceased to struggle. It was almost as if the spirit had been withdrawn, if not life itself.

Shan thought of the Gobi ghosts that the Persian had described. Was this one of them?

After Kal-kee had been righted, and while the light was coming up again, they held a brief council of war on the fate of their prisoner.

“I have often heard of such,” said Charley Ling. “They are used to defend the forbidden land. Like soldiers in other lands, they are not supposed to have any spirit of their own— are supposed merely to do the will of others.”

Ivan had lived long in the region of myths and legends concerning such creatures.

“You, Shan Makaroff,” he said, “come from the race of the shaman. Who knows but some day you will send your own spirit out in a shape like this? All shaman do— though some use wolves and others dogs and still others birds—”

Said Shan to himself:

“That’s true. Who knows what spirit we might not be offending if we hurt even a creature like this?”

Aloud he said:

“Let him go.”

While they were talking the man or ghost or whatever it was stood there passive, making no sound. His baffling eyes turned from left to right, but they seemed to be the eyes of a blind man— unseeing, expressionless.

But as Shan said “Let him go,” spoken in English though the command was, a slight tremor seemed to pass through his nerveless frame.

The creature did not run when Ivan let go of him. He just stood there, albeit with increasing animation.

He was still standing there when they finally clambered into the rearranged tarantass.

Several times that afternoon, as they still moved on through the approaching night in search of a likely place to dig a well, Shan was conscious that Kal-kee was disregarding his driving-rein. It was as if Kal-kee were seeking to follow some course of his own or were following the directions of some one else.

They would have to find water. All that they had brought with them had been spilled during the storm and runaway.

There was no hope of retracing their course to the well they had left. All the tracks they had made would have been obliterated.

Being good deal of a shaman at heart, whatever he may have been by way of descent, Shan decided to let Kal-kee follow that invisible guide of his. Once he himself thought that he saw a glinting black form just ahead through the deepening shadows. But he said nothing.

Night came on, and with it a change of phenomena. There was no mirage now; but every now and then, here and there, arose pale, shimmering forms— phosphorescence, perhaps, from the ancient deposits of animal or vegetable matter that had accumulated here when this was the bed of the sea.

Darkness became all but absolute. No stars were visible— they were hidden most likely by high-flying sand-clouds. Apart from those shifty, quavering, uncertain, appearing and vanishing columns of phosphorescence, there was hardly any light at all.

Then out of the darkness, from no one direction so much as from all around them, there came a billowy murmur, as if a million small voices were raised in protest— voices that cried “No, no,” and “Turn back,” and “ Ruin! Ruin!” in Russian, in English, in Pekingese.

Chapter 16

The Mountain of Jade.

THEY all heard it; although, on discussion afterward, they were not so sure— as no one can be so sure of anything— that the voices came from around them or were emanations from their own hearts and brains.

This much, however, is certain— through that rising storm of protest and intimidation, wherever it came from, they kept right on. Two or three hours after nightfall they had entered a kottek or dead forest. There, by lantern-light, Shan and Ivan found sweet water a little more than six feet down.

The next night, with every possible receptacle filled with water, they started forward through the ghostly kottek into the still more ghostly desert beyond.

It was far from dark, for the air had gone marvelously clear, and the thin moon and the great stars flamed with the white refulgence of distant arc-lamps. The whole night was an electric, shimmering blue.

Just beyond the dead forest was a range of crescent-shaped sand-dunes, the nearest ones only a few feet in height, but rising in succeeding tiers, as far as the eye could see, like the empty seats in the parterre of some cosmic theater.

It was this silent desert brigade that had slain the forest, doubtless, and which was moving on now, in its stately, fateful course, to other conquests still.

There were no other cities to overcome— save one. Were they to find that one also swept of life, like the one to which Kal-kee had already carried Shan?

Kal-kee traveled all that night with scarcely a stop, guided now, as formerly, by that all but invisible way-shower.

It was a haunted night. The electric blue light of the stars and the moon took on a gradual intensity until it seemed at times to be squirming and alive with half-seen shapes.

Perhaps it was because they dreamed— dreamed even when they were not asleep. For when they did sleep they carried with them the same weird atmosphere of solitude shot through and through with nameless vitality. And there was no difference between the forms that flashed into visibility, whether their eyes were open or shut.

The tarantass squeaked and rattled at times as they went over hard ground. Again, for measureless stretches the wheels were grinding with an all but inaudible sibilance through shallow sand.

It was uncanny, although perfectly natural, the effect that these sounds had on their supersensitive brains, making them certain that they were hearing voices that laughed and sang and shrieked and called their names, hissed insults, or flattered them with siren promises.

When Shan awoke, shivering, the night had gone from blue to lavender. The whole world was lavender— sand, sky, and air. Then, over in the east, almost straight ahead, there was a swiftly mounting glow of pink, a flash of red.

He uttered a cry that awoke both Ivan and Ling from their light, uneasy sleep.

There, lifting its slopes on the horizon, almost in the eye of the rising sun, was a conical mountain that flashed and shimmered in the new light like a mighty jewel.

“The Khanoola!” cried Charley Ling. “The Mountain of Jade!”

So far as they could determine, the mountain was not more than twenty or twenty-five miles away. But this estimate was little more than mere guesswork.

So this was the Khanoola— the fabled Shamballah which had lured so many men, princely caravans, armies even, to death!

The mountain was shimmering green, shading to pink where the sunlight played on it, shading to purple on the shadowed side. Almost translucent it seemed. No wonder it had been called the Mountain of Jade.

They halted where they were until they had made tea and prepared warm food, got their blood into circulation again and their cramped muscles limbered up, and the last of the night’s phantasmagoria driven from the nooks and corners of their brains.

Each knew in his own heart that they were preparing themselves for the last crucial struggle of their odd campaign.

Wealth, knowledge, power— everything that their hearts had ever yearned for and more, too; things that they had been too ignorant even to imagine, no doubt— all lay over there, almost within their grasp.

In contrast to the hope that was now strong within them, and in contrast to that shimmering gem of a mountain on the horizon, the desert stretched its vast extent around them, more savage, desolate, and forbidding, if that were possible, than ever.

The sea of sand-waves stretched off mournfully to the south and west. Back of them, in the direction whence they had come, was a region of barren soil, flat, rock-strewn, devoid of vegetation. Thence around to the north and northeast lay a yellow wilderness, across which other tenebrous continents of drifting sand lifted unstable peaks and sent out their fleets of yellow sail.

An empty world; an empty sky; three microscopic, animated dots, and these were men—  who hoped and tried for greatness!

They even refused to voice discouragement or secret fears when the mountain that had so inspired them gradually faded out of sight.

Had it been a mere mirage, like the others they had seen?

“It will appear again,” said Charley Ling. “We have come into one of those blind spaces which are known to exist, not only in the Shamo, but elsewhere.”

“Nichévo! We shall find thee again, little Mountain of Jade!” murmured Ivan in Russian.

“Another sand-storm’s coming up.” said Shan as he urged the camel to a swifter pace.

There was little doubt of it. The whirling dervishes were again beginning their satanic dance; and over the face of the morning there spread one of those sickly sallowings, as if the presiding genius of the desert had frowned.

Kal-kee strode on; but the going was hard. The ungreased wheels of the tarantass gritted and squealed unceasing protest. Not only that, but there was a changing quality of the atmosphere, which at times made even Kal-kee stagger and gasp.

There were moments when it was as if the air were a thing of oppressing weight— condensed, stifling to heart and lungs; this, and once more there had been an upward rush that left them panting, without air enough— when the heart fluttered and the lungs leaped to inflation with tearing panic.

In an hour or so the air lost all its brilliance, passing from yellow to dun and from dun to an odd and terrifying olive-green. Then, while thunder followed thunder and succeeding cavalry charges passed overhead, the sand dervishes on the ground multiplied and whirled.

There was no terror now from imaginary things. There was no fear lest their hopes be left unfulfilled. There was no dismay of any kind. They had passed beyond all that. There was nothing left but solemnity and pain.

It was life at the last gasp, the anodyne touch of stilled consciousness.

Another one of those mountains of condensed air had crushed, whirling, down upon them, and then, lifting, the succeeding vacuum had tossed the tarantass into the air, sent its leather hood glancing off into space like a frightened bird, and brought Kal-kee to a spraddling halt.

“Hold fast!” Shan tried to shout.

But the breath for the words was snatched from his lungs.

There was one last spasm of perception as a vast, invisible hand swept camel, tarantass, and those who were in it circling into space.

Chapter 17

At the Tunnel’s Mouth.

WHEN Shan awoke it was to a feeling of stifling pain, of sorrow and solitude. Vaguely he recognized the fact that he had been through a cyclone. He lay there where he was, half buried in sand, and thought about this, not questioning yet whether this was life or death— nor caring very much.

He remembered that last look that he had had of Kal-kee, standing spraddle-legged. Then suddenly he thought of Ivan and Charley Ling.

He listened. There was nothing but silence.

He was submerged in bitter grief. All this was his doing.

Then he heard something that smote his ears as grandly revitalizing as the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet. It was the sneeze of a camel, no less. Kal-kee! Who could doubt it?

Stiffly he clambered from his bed of sand. It was that which had saved his life, no doubt— sand newly sifted and piled high. He found that he was on the crest of a sand-dune— a lofty, crescent-shaped ridge. As he staggered toward the concave edge he saw what he expected to see— Kal-kee, poking about in the narrow valley below, between this dune and the next, searching for wild onions or whatever he might find.

The camel took a step. He was dragging one of his legs, but it was obvious from the appearance of him that he was not seriously injured.

And if Kal-kee, why not the others?

Shan made his way along the ridge of the dune, taking note of all things as he did so. It must have been late afternoon, for the sun was dimly visible through murky atmosphere some thirty degrees or so above the horizon.

It was calm where he was, but he could see streaks of wind-driven sand to the south. West and north were still obliterated by shaking black curtains. To the east and all around him was the haze of sand— hanging there, funereal, like the smoke of a battle just past.

He was too thirsty to shout.

There was nothing at the foot of this dune. He slid down the sharp slope on its concave side, where Kal-kee was. The camel was innocent of harness, but Shan was willing to take no chances. With prompt decision he tore off the hem of his shirt and, tying this about Kal-kee’s neck, used it to lead him by.

In and out among the dunes they zigzagged. Then Shan’s heart stood still as he saw something black in the sand but a little way ahead.

It was Ivan, with a flutter of life still in him. Shan knelt over him, brushed the sand from his face, sought to awaken him. But Ivan lay there, his eyes closed, with only the barest flutter of a pulse, only the barest flutter of breath.

Water! He would have to have water!

There was no thought-out plan in Shan’s action; just desperation or— who knows?— inspiration as he clambered to Kal-kee’s back and kicked him with bare heels.

Straight back the camel went to their starting-point. There he paused and made as if he would begin that aimless, browsing quest of his again.

Shan asked himself what was the meaning of this thing. A moment later he had slid to the earth, and was pawing into the sand just where he had seen an irregularity in the otherwise smooth, geometrical perfection of the wind-graven sand.

It was the tarantass, completely buried.

Shan dug with all that remained to him of strength. His brain was still further cleared as he came upon one can after another— the cargo of the tarantass still intact.

He seized one of these cans— string-beans, put up in France! Ah, blessed hands that had prepared them, sealed them up in their precious fluid, sent out this package to the end of the world!

Shan had broken off— he didn’t know how— the iron step of the carriage; perhaps it had been cracked, anyway. With can and iron he rushed back along the trail to where Ivan lay.

There he knelt. Gouging a hole in the top of the can, he poured the reviving, fragrant fluid into Ivan’s weakly moving lips.

It was as if the can had contained the essence of life rather than just mere ordinary vegetables— and those of no specially prized mark, most likely; for scarcely had the first few drops trickled into his throat than Ivan’s eyes fluttered open. By the time that the can had ceased to flow Ivan was sitting up.

Shan helped him to his feet. Although the old man was full of pain and very weak, he was not otherwise injured.

And now, where was Charley Ling?

Slowly and painfully for Ivan, with a steadily sinking heart for Shan, they made their way hack to Kal-kee and the tarantass. They could at least make a fire which would be a signal.

As quickly as they could— although Ivan was too broken to do very much, and Shan was beginning to suffocate for thirst— they dug out what remained of the tarantass. The old carriage would never turn wheel again. They found matches, and used what they could of the tarantass for fuel.

Shan was sorely tempted to break open a can of vegetables on his own account, as he had done for Ivan. But he put the thought out of his mind. There was no telling in what condition they might not find Charley Ling— if they found him, indeed, at all.

The smoke from the fire went quavering upward; but in that sand-fogged atmosphere the signal could not be visible very far, even to eyes that were young and clear.

Ivan was left to keep the fire going, while once more Shan climbed to Kal-kee’s patient back. This time he followed the crest of the dunes, where the sand was firmer, turning from time to time to make sure that he was keeping the smoke of Ivan’s fire in range.

Then in one of the narrow valleys between two dunes he saw a trampled space, as if many men and animals had been there but a little while before. He sent Kal-kee sliding down the slope.

The trail was large through the soft sand, although too blurred for detail. Trembling with the expectancy of all sorts of things, he pressed Kal-kee forward.

They had almost emerged from the last of the dunes when Shan uttered an inarticulate gasp.

The trail led straight on toward a sunken, rocky ledge and there entered a gaping hole— not the mouth of a cave, but the mouth of a tunnel, carved and decorated like a palace gate!

Chapter 18

Wild-grape and Locust.

IT was about an hour later when Shan entered that disconcerting portal of mystery. He and Ivan had brought up all that they could of the tarantass and the remaining stores. They had also found the lantern, which was still serviceable. At the mouth of the tunnel they made a camp where Ivan could be comfortable, while Shan went to find whatever lay beyond that curtain of darkness.

If a man has anything of the shaman in him at all, it will come out on occasions like this.

In spite of his thirst, in spite of his fatigue, in spite of everything that he had been through thus far and that he was likely to encounter hereafter in that inscrutable hole of a tunnel, Shan was exalted.

“Keep your fire going, Ivan,” he said, “for, of course, it is always possible that Charley didn’t go through here, and he’ll need whatever guidance you can give him.”

“Yes,” said the old man. “And listen, Shan! If there is something that you must know— expect me when you— sleep.”

They looked each other in the eye with mutual understanding.

Besides his lantern, Shan carried another can of vegetables with a hole punched in the top of it. He had permitted himself but the merest sip, saving the rest of it against the possibility that he might find Charley Ling in a condition that would make Charley’s need of refreshment even greater than his own. His lantern would continue to burn for three hours or so at the most.

A fragile thread of equipment upon which to swing the weight of human life! But Shan did not hesitate.

The gate of the tunnel— or underground palace, or prison, or empire, or whatever it was— was fully ten feet wide, and even higher, had the drifting sand been cleared away. Indeed, the fact that the carvings were all fresh and sharp indicated that the place had been completely buried until recently— until it had been laid bare by the last great storm of a day ago perhaps.

As in the ancient tombs and temples of India, there were pilasters cut from the rock. There was also a rock-cut border, suggestive of writing, but the characters were such as Shan had never seen. The tunnel continued, broad, high, and square, apart from the drifts of sand, straight ahead, but declined on a gentle gradient.

“If it is all like this,” said Shan to himself as he gradually mastered his straining nerves, “I won’t need the lantern at all.”

The tunnel descended lower and lower, ever at that same gentle gradient. What labor, what engineering!

Then suddenly his lantern was flashing on a mass of stone that apparently blocked his way. He studied it. The nature of it was clear. Once this had been a gate. He saw that to one side of it there was still room for him to squeeze through.

It was ten feet thick. He felt a tremor of excitement as he thought how it would feel if that ancient gate should suddenly decide to slide shut altogether.

On the other side of it he turned and looked back, It was as if he had bidden farewell to the world at last.

He swung his lantern close to the floor and studied what he saw there— prints of large bare feet, then a single imprint of a smaller foot shod in an unheeled Chinese shoe of the sort that Charley Ling had worn.

There was nothing but darkness ahead. The tunnel still slanted down— solemn, spacious, silent. To think that there had been men here to command the building of such a thing, people enough to carry the work through!

Walls cut from the rock! A rock-cut floor!

And no life!

That was the thing that kept recurring to Shan. But suddenly, as the thought came back to him again, he remembered the Mountain of Jade, the Khanoola, the Yekeh-Kuruk which was to have been their journey’s end.

This was the entrance to it!

He paused and meditated this conviction as it sank into every fiber of his being, possessed him utterly. For a time he was on the point of turning back, to get Ivan and bring him along.

But Ivan would be safe for a while— long enough.

With fresh strength— thirst, fear, and anxiety for a time gone out of him entirely in the face of this overwhelming truth— he began to run cautiously but with increasing eagerness.

For a long time he ran. And then, before his enthusiasm had time to subside, the tunnel debouched into a vaulted chamber. He heard the sound of trickling water, and felt a breath of moist air that went to his head like wine.

At one side of the chamber he found a carved basin, into which a little stream trickled. Shan laughed aloud— if that discordant, crazy guffaw of his could be called by any such merry a name as laugh. Water! And all he wanted of it!

The echo of his laugh came back to him— a curious echo, like some word whispered over and over again.

It gave him an instant’s shock. Then he was hearing nothing but the music of water again. He plunged his face into the basin, which was cut in the rock at a convenient height, like the drinking fountain in a public building.

He drank and absorbed— absorbed and drank. Luxuriously he washed his face and his arms. Not even when he had drunk of his own well— far, far back there in the desert at the side of the haunted city— had he reveled like this.

The water was so pure, so sweet! There was something intoxicating about it— something that suggested musk-scented wine, if there is such a thing.

He straightened up. He was feeling sleepy and infinitely well, as if he had never suffered, could never suffer, again.

He reached down for his lantern. It eluded his grasp. The solid rock on which he had been standing seemed suddenly to tilt and writhe. He knelt to steady himself. He slipped over on to one shoulder and fell prone.

He must have been poisoned, he told himself. It must be that this was the way he was going to die. Poor Ivan! Poor Kal-kee! Poor Charley Ling!

He made another desperate effort to revive himself— the last slipping effort of his will. His heart and his mind framed an ultimate invocation to the Golden Girl, he wondered if it was an association of ideas— that sensation that vibrant young arms had slipped around him, that he had caught the breath of the wild-grape and locust-bloom in Hambleton which, in former times, had brought a dream like this.

He ceased to struggle, even with his will.

Chapter 19

Ai-Yaruk, the Golden One.

THAT smell of wild-grape and locust-flowers was still with him as consciousness came struggling back. For a long time he lay there very still, his eyes closed. He was seeing nothing, hearing nothing. But that delicate, spring-time perfume was thrilling him as no voice had ever thrilled him. nor music, nor anything that he had ever seen with his eyes.

First of all, it was translating him to the back yard of his grandmother’s home, where he had dreamed and aspired; then it was carrying him back even farther, to days of courtship which, in this present life, most certainly he had not known at all.

Even unimaginative people are likely to be stirred by certain smells— the tang of wood-smoke, the perfume of certain flowers, the disquieting aroma of salt marshes on a foggy night.

Shan opened his eyes.

Once, when he was out in a little public park of Hambleton, he had seen a little girl playing mother to her baby brother sleeping in his perambulator. The little girl was leaning over the infant, looking down at it with such a look of transcendent love and holiness that he had never forgotten it.

As he opened his eyes he surprised a look like that in a pair of eyes just above his own— eyes that were golden-brown.

He looked up at them, afraid to look-away, as a slow tumult of fearful joy began to throb in his breast. He tried to speak. But no words came.

Golden, crinkly hair cascaded down about him— it was this that had filled the air with perfume. He had a general impression of light-gold skin, wonderfully smooth and lustrous, suffused now with a subtone of delicate shell-pink.

She had been leaning over him, bridging him with lithe, bare arms.

But suddenly she had straightened up.

He saw that her hair was circled by a finely wrought ribbon of gold wire. Her throat and shoulders, like her face, were bare, smooth, lustrous and beautiful. She seemed to be wearing but a single garment, a close-fitting sheath of what looked like yellow silk, held in place by a yellow ceinture, or girdle, which fitted her high up under her armpits and above her breast.

She was all grace and strength.

“Oh!” exclaimed Shan with a rising inflection. “Oh!”

He tried to rise, but he suddenly discovered that all strength had gone out of him, and it didn’t need the touch of even one of the girl’s hands on his shoulder to restrain him.

“What happened to me?” he asked.

The girl spoke to him softly and rapidly in a strange language; then, seeing that he could not understand, she translated for him with swift, graceful gestures which he could have watched forever, so he told himself.

She intimated that he had drunk of wicked waters that had mounted to his head and made him fall down, and then that some one— who could it have been but she?— had found him, had brought him here, had given him something to make him well again.

She showed him a small bottle that might have been cut from a single topaz. He put out his hand for it, but took her hand instead, and pressed it to his lips.

Again that subtone of shell-pink was creeping up her throat.

With an exquisite sense of doubt and yearning he wondered if she had dreamed and thought of him as he had dreamed and thought of her. She was letting him keep her hand; was looking back at him with a smile of heavenly indulgence.

He put his free hand on his heart and told her that his name was Shan— repeating it several times until she repeated it after him.

Oh, the first time that she opened her lips and he saw her red tongue against her small white teeth in the act of forming that syllable, he thought that this was the greatest event in his life— which, perhaps, it was!

“Shan!” she said.

“And you, my angel, what is your name?” he asked in English.

She seemed to get pleasure out of the question, so he asked it again; but this time he supplemented by pointing at her.

She imitated his gesture, put her hand on her heart and gave her name:

“Ai-Yaruk!”

That was the way that Shan came to spell it afterward when he could speak a little of her language— a double name which meant this: The moon as it appears to lovers just after it comes over the horizon on a summer night.

Suddenly there was the tinkling of a bell off in the distance. Into the girl’s mobile, expressive face there came a look of sharp attention, tinged with alarm. In a moment she was on her feet and had stepped lightly over to a door that Shan had not previously noticed; indeed, until that moment he had noticed nothing at all except the girl.

Now looking about him he found himself in a grottolike room, apparently carved from the rock. The rock was of crystalline brilliancy and smoothly etched like the rock-crystal vases of ancient China.

There was a silken rug or carpet on the floor— in color a rich orange. He was lying on a wadded silk divan of the same color, only of a deeper shade.

Through the door where the girl stood he caught a vista of blue sky and the upper branches of a gnarled pine.

She stood there for a moment looking out— a dream come true— absorbing him, brain and heart. She wore gold sandals on her otherwise bare feet. Her gold hair, responsive to every movement of the perfumed air, played about her, long and light.

She turned back to where he lay watching her. She was troubled, yet eager and confident. She knelt beside him, told him softly and rapidly something that he couldn’t understand, then made as if to leave.

With a quick movement Shan detached the gold necklace that he had worn ever since leaving the dead city in the desert, and while she smiled at him slipped it about her neck.

His arms tarried there. He had always been so timid, where women were concerned. Then, almost swooning from happiness, he drew her face to his.

“Say ‘sweetheart’ before you go!” said Shan, intoxicated.

He had to repeat it several times before she would make the attempt. Then she tried, while he watched with exquisite delight the mighty effort.

It sounded like “swt-hawr-ut,” with the accent on the second syllable.

Too hard! As a substitute she gave him a word of her own language— loa, the first word that Shan ever learned in the language of the Golden Race apart from the girl’s name.

He combined the two— “Loa. Ai-Yaruk!”

“Loa, ya, Shan!” she whispered.

He kissed her again.

She stepped to the door, gave him a farewell smile and a little wave from a supple arm, and then, with his necklace still about her throat, stepped outside and disappeared.

IT WAS EVIDENT that, apart from the partial paralysis of his muscular system, the water that he had drunk in the tunnel was having but little effect on him. But even so, his escape from worse effects, as well as from capture or possibly death, must have been owing to the prompt action of Ai-Yaruk.

He reflected on this after the girl had left him, and it increased his love and gratitude— if anything could have increased them. But even so he was beginning to think of other things— of the possible fate of Charley Ling and Ivan, of the necessity for doing something in their behalf.

By a tremendous effort of his will he found that he was able to move about a little. Just a little while before he had been paralyzed from the shoulders down. But now the paralysis was slowly receding.

He worked himself off of the divan and over toward the door, he saw more sky, the tops of other trees— ornamental, picturesque, like the trees painted on Chinese plates and screens.

He had got that far when there was a shadow athwart the door and an old woman appeared— a messenger, Shan knew instinctively, from the girl.

The old woman wore a kimonolike dress of the same sort of silken texture as that of the girl— both thick and light; only this was a dark purple, almost black, overcast with a maze of intricate, yellow embroidery. Wonderful artists these strangers must be, Shan reflected.

At sight of Shan, half-way between divan and door, the old woman uttered a purling little ejaculation, put down a closely woven bamboo hamper she carried, and brought Shan back to the divan again— he helping her all he could, feeling a good deal like a child caught in the act of doing some mischief.

From her hamper the old woman took dried leaves, in both appearance and aroma resembling tea and the utensils for its preparation.

Goldware, it appeared to be— a gold teapot, and a little gold lamp. Then the old woman removed a metal cap from the lamp and there was the flame already burning— “the oiliness of gold,” which will burn indefinitely like radium.

As he drank the tea he could tell how the hot and fragrant infusion was driving away the last effects of the drugged water he had reveled in down below. He drank from a little gold bowl or cup that had no handle— this must be a land of gold— and was raising this again to his lips when he made a discovery. The edge of his cup was garnished with letters like some that he had seen before.

He drew the black-jade ring from his breast. It needed but a glance to see that the writing was identical. He pointed out this identity to the old woman; but she merely nodded her head, as if this was but confirmation of something that she already knew. And then Shan, even more interested in the prospect of a bath, showed that he was able to get to his feet.

Just outside the crystal chamber there was a narrow path screened with flowering shrubs and leading, apparently, down into some sort of a park. They were on a hillside— so Shan could see— but the shrubs and glossy-green heads of the pines prevented him from seeing much else.

Even the path they were on seemed to have been cut from rock-crystal, smoothly polished. Was this the Mountain of Jade they had seen from a distance?

His guide led him to a delicious little grotto with water dripping into a crystal pool. Here she left him and returned to the chamber. In a trice Shan had plunged into the water. The last of his recent weakness was gone. He was so exhilarated that he could have shouted for joy.

When the dowager appeared again it was with two folded cloths in her hand. From the depths of the pool Shan seized them. With one he started to wipe his head and face, but the dowager protested laughingly— she had a sense of humor that was unusual in old ladies. Then Shan sought how he could pull the other thing over his head and discovered that this was the towel. The first cloth which the old lady had brought was a kimono or long ample shirt, with a sash attached so that it could have been made to fit a fat man as well as a lean.

It was of a spongy, silken fabric, like that which Ai-Yaruk and the old woman wore, marvelously light and comforting to the touch. It exuded a pleasant perfume, like that of locust and wild-grape. It also was yellow.

When he had dressed the old lady reappeared and conducted him back again to the crystal chamber and, pointing out certain fruits and nuts she had taken from her hamper, left him there with what was manifestly meant as a warning that he lie low and await developments.

As time passed Shan rapidly became more and more restless. To his concern for his two old friends he began to add concern for the girl. He began to guess that in some way she had interfered with plans of State in bringing him here. Perhaps she had placed herself in jeopardy. With this thought further inaction became intolerable.

With cautious determination he started down the path and past the grotto where he had bathed.

Chapter 20

Into the Judgment-hall.

WHETHER it was morning or afternoon he couldn’t tell. Nor did he know what day it was. It quickened his anxiety to think that possibly several days had elapsed since he had left Ivan out there, waiting for him at the tunnel-mouth.

His surroundings were of a sort to make judgment difficult, to spread over his thought and perception a certain glamour of unreality. It was all very beautiful. Everything that he saw and experienced was deepening that first impression of his that he was within the limits of some well kept park.

The path, thickly set about with fragrant, screening shrubbery, was of that polished, unbroken crystal, smoothly corrugated, whether by art or Nature he did not stop to investigate. It descended the flank of a low hill. At the bottom there was a pretty little arched bridge over a pool in which gold-fish with long tails and picturesque, pointed fins were happily fanning the pellucid water.

So far he had not seen a soul.

The fragrant air was mild and warm. The sun slanted down through green shadows. There was a sylvan silence, unbroken except by the occasional twitter and warble of birds.

Shan paused on the bridge to fortify himself with the peace and beauty of it all. If this was the empire that he had seen in his dreams it surely was worth fighting for. And his queen had passed this way.

Beyond the bridge the path doubled through a lush maze of blooming iris and a tunnel of flowering bushes like the syringa he had known at home— like it, but better, for it was not so woody, and was more highly cultivated, like everything he was seeing around him— more refined.

Suddenly he was looking out across a narrow meadow or lawn less than a quarter of a mile wide. Scattered over the meadow itself were two or three score of creatures like those they had seen in the desert— the black sub-humans. As Shan gave them a first breathless, comprehensive glance he got an insight into the exquisite cultivation of this domain— as much as he had seen of it. For, with the nervous, minute application of birds, the black people were evidently at work cultivating the very grass. They plucked and prodded and pruned, moved forward on hands and knees for a foot or so and began again.

But it was what lay beyond the meadow that absorbed Shan’s attention almost immediately and held him spellbound.

There began the flank of a noble mountain. Even from where he stood, screened from view and not daring to show himself just yet, he saw enough to tell him that this was the Mountain of Jade. A poetical name most likely, for little if any of the mountain itself was visible, it was so covered and festooned and wound about by glossy foliage, fountains, terraced roads.

Here and there through the trees shrines and temples were visible, and bungalows with wide eaves and splashed about by flowers.

It wasn’t a high mountain, as mountains go— only a couple of thousand feet or so, a conical hill with sides at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

But just across from where Shan stood and at the base of the hill was a group of buildings more important than any others in sight— only one story high, but extensive, and looking as if they were constructed entirely of greenish-hued, glimmering gold.

Shan took thought.

It was impossible for him to hesitate. Fate had brought him through safely thus far. He would trust her now.

He was feeling strong and fit at any rate. He could afford to precipitate matters. Only even now he felt that he had nothing to fear from those busy cultivators at work on the grass.

He strode out from his hiding-place. The grass under his bare feet was as soft as silken carpet.

He stood there in full view. Not one of the black men raised a head or seemed aware of his presence. He coughed. He summoned his breath and shouted. “Hello!”

Were they all deaf? Not one of the silent, intent workers gave the slightest indication of having heard him.

Shan looked around again. He wondered where all the people were. Instinct, as well as what he had already learned from having seen Ai-Yaruk and the old woman, convinced him that these servile wretches were not the masters of this domain.

The thought brought him a comforting sense of his own domination as well. He was of the superior race to which Ai-Yaruk belonged.

With greater confidence than ever he walked on into the midst of the toilers. They kept on at their work. He leaned over and gently caught one of them by the shoulders— man or woman, he couldn’t tell. The creature was obedient to his hand, but did not so much as lift its salamander eyes. He removed his hand; like a machine the thing dropped back to its work again, pulling up microscopic vegetation invisible to ordinary eyes, pinching off blades of grass that were too long, cultivating the roots.

Shan looked at the other workers, baffled, pitiful, touched with a slight, vague pang of disgust.

Servility! No will of their own! Trained apes!

He was still standing there when he caught sight of other inhabitants of the place— a flutter of humanity, dressed in various shades of yellow for the most part, as he could see even at that distance. There must have been a dozen or so— men and women he guessed, and a number of children, suddenly appearing just outside the golden building ahead of him.

Then he saw others, singly, in couples, and in small groups appearing from different directions, all converging at the palace or temple or whatever it was over there.

He had attracted no attention as yet, owing doubtless to the clothing that the old woman had brought him. And he could see enough to know that he wasn’t very different from these strangers, even so far as his face and other physical features were concerned.

He saw the last of those who entered the golden house pause and look in his direction— at the most with mild surprise, taking him most likely for a tardy friend.

The neighborhood of the temple, or palace, was deserted as he approached it. He wondered if this was a local Sabbath. To render the illusion complete there was a burst of solemn music in a minor key, and filled with odd quarter-tones that reminded him of the time that he had heard old Charley Ling singing in his sleep.

Charley Ling! And Ivan!

As if he were a citizen of the place and had a perfect right to be there he strode forward to the door of the golden house.

He stood there at gaze. He was looking into a temple indeed, but a temple of justice— of Uncreated Justice was the proper way of putting it, as he afterward learned. It was filled with a congregation— men, women and children, young men and young women— almost all of whom were dressed in gold, although there was a considerable number, like the old lady he had seen, who wore purple merely embroidered with the universal yellow. There must have been a thousand of them altogether, for the auditorium was very large, and they were crowded close together.

The music, or recitative, throbbed on. At the other end of the hall Shan saw a man who appeared to be the king just taking his place on a dais. Then he saw something else.

Just in front of the dais, their hands bound behind them, were the familiar figures of Charley Ling and old Ivan. In the midst of all this magnificence they looked so old and pitiful, so neglected, weak and poor, that Shan felt a surge of anger and shame.

He forgot all else— forgot danger, caution; forgot the adjurations of Ai-Yaruk and the old woman; forgot everything except that these two old men were friends of his, that he had led them here, and that he would not desert them now.

Swiftly he was passing up the central aisle of the place, through the sea of kneeling, yellow-clad forms.

He had a passing glimpse of startled faces— faces of men, faces of girls who looked like Ai-Yaruk, although not so beautiful; and then of the startled, questioning face of the man on the dais.

“Charley! Ivan!” he cried. “I’m here!”

Chapter 21

Ai-Yaruk Speaks Out.

ALMOST before he knew it he was standing there between them with a hand on a shoulder of each. They were seated on low chairs of gold and black enamel. Each had looked up at him with an air of desperate gratitude and speechless joy; and it fired Shan all the more to know that they were grateful and joyful not because of any help that he might bring them, but simply because he was safe.

A hush had fallen over the assemblage. The man on the dais, who had just seated himself in a gold throne-like armchair, was again on his feet looking down at them.

He was almost Caucasian as to face, although there was a slight obliquity about his dark-brown eyes, just as there was about the eyes of Ai-Yaruk; but it strengthened Shan’s courage, if he needed any encouragement, to feel that he was in the presence of white men with a white man as judge.

“These are friends of mine,” said Shan, speaking in English, although he knew that it wouldn’t be understood.

The mail on the dais spoke a few words, saying perhaps that he didn’t understand.

“Didn’t the Bogda— the Buddha— back in Urga give you a paper, Ivan?” Shan asked. “Where is it?”

“You’ll find it in the right-hand pocket of my vest, unless they have stolen it,” said Ivan.

Shan found the paper and brought it out.

“And your map, Charley?”

“In the pocket of my belt, friend,” Charley answered.

Shan held up the two documents and again spoke in English with a clear, loud voice. It might he just as well, he decided, to impress the others there.

“These are our passports,” he proclaimed. “We have come from far away. We didn’t come here as enemies. We also are civilized. Give us time to learn your language at least, and we can tell you all sorts of interesting things.”

There was a murmur that sounded like protest from the distant parts of the hall.

Shan pinned his faith on the man by the throne. Perhaps he was Ai-Yaruk’s father. There was a sort of resemblance between them.

“Here!” he cried. “Take these things and show the people out there what they are. Tell them.”

The throne man examined the two documents.

He smiled as he looked at the writing which the Bogda had given Ivan, and regarded Shan with the trace of a smile.

There were cries from the congregation— queries evidently. When the head man answered there was at first a ripple of laughter, then more murmurs.

Shan looked behind him. Here and there an elder was getting to his feet, evidently preparing for speech.

“I think that the fellow up there is on our side,” said Shan. “We’ll crowd up to him if trouble breaks loose. In the mean time—”

Without haste he leaned over and began to untie the silk cord with which Charley was bound. There was a mounting wave of protest at that, but disregarding it and working as fast as possible he untied Ivan’s hands as well.

Suddenly there was a swift and shadowy movement up the aisle, and Shan found himself, Ivan, and Charley in the midst of a small group of the black creatures he had seen at work on the lawn.

It was a critical moment. Several of the men who had risen from the congregation were coming forward. There was a babble of confused speech. But the man on the dais showed that he was no mere figurehead. He commanded silence. At a motion of his hand the black serviles knelt, quivering, against the floor.

Again he spoke, calmly, dispassionately, with a certain nobility. He indicated the auditorium. This was a temple, he seemed to say; not a place for haste or passion. He indicated the three strangers with something of sympathetic protest.

One of the older men who had come forward from the congregation was given the floor. He spoke slowly, with great conviction, and no doubt according to the book. Shan had seen old men talk like that at home— conservative, distrustful of anything new, advising a strict accordance with the ways of the fathers.

Another spoke, and still another— all to the same end. It wasn’t necessary to understand the language to know that.

And then in the lull the man on the dais put a question.

There was a ringing response.

He put another question.

There was protest, but not so ringing.

The man on the dais looked sad. He bowed his head. As if by magic the black men leaped from their positions and seized Shan, Ivan, and Ling.

A breathless moment; then a girl had leaped forward from somewhere back of the throne, looked, saw what was happening, and uttered a soft cry, She uttered a few words to the chairman or whatever he was, and spoke to the congregation in the swift silence that surged over the place. There was another sort of cheer with more of a quiver and a flourish to it. Shan profited by the occasion.

“Ai-Yaruk,” he cried. “Loa Ai-Yaruk!”

It was just as well perhaps that Shan’s pronunciation was faulty; for it was either on that account or because in the reigning hubbub that his cry was not particularly noticed except by Ai-Yaruk herself and the man on the dais at her side. Over the man’s face as he threw a quick glance at Shan there flashed an expression half-humorous, half-shocked, as if to say, “So soon!”

As for Ai-Yaruk she also looked at Shan. She stumbled in what she was saying. Her eyes flickered. She blushed.

It was almost disaster.

Before she could recover herself a short and stocky man with a bullet head had thrust himself forward and begun to speak, not to the congregation so much as to Ai-Yaruk and the man at her side.

His attitude was insolent. He seemed to be enjoying himself more and more. Now and then he turned somewhat to make sure that he had plenty of people on his side; then he would be haranguing again more insolently than ever.

Up to the present, even in the midst of all the growing excitement, Shan could not quite get rid of the idea that this was some sort of a church meeting. Now there flashed through his mind the thought that even if this was a church meeting of a sort he was a stranger and not supposed to know it. It was sufficient spring for his impulse.

Suddenly he brushed the black guardians aside and clambered to the rostrum.

The short and stocky brother, sweating by this time and shouting at the top of his voice, certain in his own mind obviously that the majority of the congregation was with him, was haranguing Ai-Yaruk and the chairman with clenched fists and swelling neck.

Like almost every one else there he was wearing a sort of yellow kimono; and under this, looped fairly tight about his breast and throat, was a kind of strong silk undershirt.

All of a sudden Shan had dipped his fingers into the neck-opening of the undershirt and got a good grip. He pulled back. Taken by surprise, the orator came with delightful ease. Then as the speaker began to struggle Shan lost control of himself to some extent. All his recent inactivity and his recent desert training rushed together like chemical affinities forming a high explosive, and he shook and shook.

The recent orator had a certain measure of weight and strength; but this was something that he hadn’t bargained for.

His kimono twisted. His legs waved. His arms went around like a windmill.

There was pandemonium.

Then Shan, with enough presence of mind left to guess that it might not be a good thing to press his advantage too far, kept his grip on the stocky one’s neck with one hand while with the other he took another good grip on what under other circumstances would have been the seat of the speaker’s trousers, walked him— on air chiefly— to the edge of the rostrum and pushed him over.

After that he didn’t dare turn to look at Ai-Yaruk and the chairman of the meeting.

He had the floor again, and he determined to keep it. He raised a hand and shouted for order, as he had seen a local Congressman do once at a political meeting out in Hambleton.

Perhaps the congregation was curious to hear what was going to be said by the interloper. At any rate a good many there were all shouting the same word, which seemed to mean “Order!” for by slow degrees the confusion dropped. Even the stocky brother he had chastised was reduced to comparative calm, merely throwing up at him grieved and murderous looks.

“Show them the ring!” came the voice of Ivan.

Shan pulled it from its place against his breast, slipped the string over his head, and handed it to the chairman.

“Tell them your name, friend,” came the voice of Charley Ling.

Shan raised his own voice.

“I am Shan Makaroff.”

Two or three of the old men let out a wavering cry and repeated the name among themselves. Shan heard Ai-Yaruk repeat the first part of the name, crying it from where she stood among a group of women and girls who had drawn around her. The chairman also took up the name.

The elder, who was the first to speak, faced Shan, and himself repeated the name distinctly, with an air of long familiarity, then turned and addressed his fellows.

This time the effect was instant. All those on the dais began returning the way they had come. The women and girls around Ai-Yaruk also left, taking her with them. She passed very close to Shan, gave him one glance of her kindling eyes and moved her lips as if to whisper encouragement. Presently no one was left on the dais except the chairman and Shan himself.

“Call the Man in Green,” came the thin, excited treble of Charley Ling.

Silence, absolute, fell over the place.

From where he stood Shan looked out over the congregation. Almost every one there was seated in the kneeling fashion common throughout the East. The light was dim— yellowish, with purple shadows. There were dim gold walls and gilded rafters overhead. The tepid air was permeated with a subtle perfume — something like that which used to emanate from the red-lacquer box at home.

“I do call him— as one shaman to another,” said Shan.

Chapter 22

Moonlight Serenade.

IT always remained a mystery to Shan afterward. Over the faces of the congregation he saw a certain shadowy wave of concentration.

He looked at Ivan. He looked at Charley Ling. They were seated again on their low chairs, surrounded by the prostrate black slaves who looked in that dim light like so many hairy cushions. But neither Ivan nor Charley returned his glance. Like every one else there they were gazing raptly at a point above Shan’s head and back of him.

All for a breathless half-dozen seconds or so. Then the silence of the temple was informed by a soft, plaintive minor slur. The music-master of the temple had started his musicians to quavering and sobbing some mystic old hymn.

The vision that the congregation had expected had appeared.

Shan never so much as saw it. There would have been no lessening of the mystery, perhaps, if he had.

But afterward, when he questioned Charley Ling and Ivan about it, they both told him that the vision did not resemble in the slightest, that other apparition that had come to them in the back room of Charley’s laundry.

The vision was that of a man; but instead of being dressed in the green boyar costume of the original specter or “materialization,” this spiritual visitor was dressed a good deal like any native there.

The man of the throne— he was the high-priest, D’lak, Ai-Yaruk’s uncle, so Shan soon learned—  raised his arms. The congregation rose, still singing.

Shan had been standing there, nerves taut, knowing that the tide had turned in favor of himself and his friends, wondering what was going to happen next as he looked first at the throne-man and then at the misty congregation.

The music ceased.

D’lak solemnly spoke a few words; he bowed to Shan and took him by the arm. Two elders had taken their places at the side of Ling and Ivan and followed D’lak’s example. The six of them headed a procession down through the congregation, other elders falling in behind. So they passed out of the temple, crossed a fragrant, open porch, likewise covered with soft, dull gold, and entered a smaller but equally ornate building just opposite.

Much of what followed was lost on Shan and his two companions, because they couldn’t understand what was said. But it was obvious that they were being put through some form of initiation — citizenship, it turned out later. They were being made citizens of the oldest republic in the world.

Everything was carried through with the utmost decorum— with the utmost solemnity, for there were men present who had never seen such a rite and had never expected to see it; while others had a dim memory of having seen such a thing in the days of their youth, when another Shan Makaroff had been taken into their lives.

There were anointing with oil, the reciting of ritual, a turning to the east, the west, the south, the north.

There was an oath administered on the fabled Book of Dzyan, which was written before this old earth even began, so they say— containing, as it does, the wisdom that was brought here by the first creatures who visited this planet from the planet Venus.

Then Shan, Ivan, and Charley were given to understand that that was all for the present; but that later on, after they had learned the language and otherwise qualified for the next degree, there would be more of it.

Imagine a mountain of rock-crystal two thousand feet high or so: conical, with gentle slopes, and these slopes graven deep with winding paths, with niches wherein blossomed and throve a marvelous and varied flora, from delicate little orchids to gnarled pines; all this bathed in tempered sunshine and fragrant air set in motion by plunging waterfalls.

That was the dominating impression they were getting then of Yekeh-Kuruk— only Yekeh-Kuruk was not the real name of it. That was merely, and still is, the name of the lost country given to it by outsiders. It served its purpose in the days of Genghis Khan; it has served its purpose since then. Let it remain.

Up the crystal mountain-slope they made their way to a group of broad-eved cottages. Chinese in their general lines, standing on a broad terrace commanding a delightful view of the tame valley below and occasionally of the measureless desert beyond.

In one of these cottages Charley Ling was installed. Another was given to Ivan. The third and largest, which stood nearest of all to the one-storied palace in which Shan was given to understand D’lak, the high-priest, resided, was put at the disposition of Shan.

Shan found himself alone in his cottage— alone save for the shadowy, silent comings and goings of his subhuman servants. These seemed to give no heed to him, and, after a space, he gave no heed to them.

A gold interior! This must be the land of gold— inhabited, as it was, by the Golden Race— the ancient Sin of Chinese annals.

The cottage was a suite of airy rooms, partitioned and walled by folded screens. On the floor there was a yellow carpet of fine silk apparently, like that which had covered the floor of the chamber in which he had waked to find Ai-Yaruk leaning over him.

Ai-Yaruk, where are you now?

He turned his eyes in the direction of the high-priest’s palace. He had kept his eyes open for her after his initiation, but had not seen her.

Like shadows obedient to his will the sub-human slaves brought food and tea— fragrant, tempting— to where he sat on the porch of his new cottage.

Evening dropped about him. Out of the dusk there came the sound of music, something like that which he had heard in the temple, only sweeter, more human, more pleading and tender.

There seemed to be a number of persons playing guitars or related string-instruments; only, instead of picking them and fingering them in the ordinary way, they were sliding their lingers along the strings with heart-melting skill and feeling.

“Oh, Ai-Yaruk!” Shan thrilled into the twilight.

There was an all but inaudible step behind him. He turned. It was she.

Many odd and moving things to see, and many wonderful experiences were to come in Shan Makaroff’s life; but then and thereafter nothing ever seemed to him odder nor more moving and wonderful than the advent of Ai-Yaruk just then— out of the twilight, in an atmosphere of perfume and perfect peace, to the sound of music.

That first time he had seen her he was still dazed. That second time it was in the stress of circumstances full of peril.

This time it was so different!

They were mighty civilized, those dwellers in Yekeh-Kuruk— girls and women moving about with the same liberty as men, and no one seeing any special harm in it.

She dropped down beside him on the silken carpet before he had time to rise to his feet; and as he drank her in thirstily with his eyes, in lieu of all the things he would have liked to say, but wasn’t able to, except in English, she put up a hand and stroked his cheek.

Shan’s heart went leaping.

“Loa!” he murmured. “loa!”

Ai-Yaruk laughed softly. She gave him several other words to say— on the same order, most likely. He repeated them all dutifully.

Suddenly Ai-Yaruk let go of Shan’s hands, took from her neck the gold ornament that he had placed there back in the chamber of his awakening and handed it to him.

At first he refused to take it. But she insisted. Then when Shan, a little discomfited, was about to put the thing back around his own neck, Ai-Yaruk shook her head and cried out to him softly in her deep, rich voice. Once more he clasped the necklace into place about Ai-Yaruk’s slender, vibrant throat and drew her face to his.

Ah, Ai-Yaruk, to have lived your eighteen or nineteen years, and to think that a necklace was the necessary part of such a ritual!

What hours they kept in Yekeh-Kuruk! Any hours and all hours—  just as any one pleased.

There was no need for regularity. No one worked except the slaves. All citizens, of any age or either sex, were free to sleep and get up and go and come as they willed.

He learned all this with remarkable celerity, even before he had mastered the language— which he also accomplished in an extraordinarily brief time.

Ai-Yaruk, a young girl, often went to that semi-secret retreat of hers over on the outer rim of the valley to sleep, but oftener still merely to dream awake. It was there that she had developed a sort of secret life, just as Shan had done on the other side of the earth. And it was there that she had examined the strangers who were drawing near.

Owing to the peculiar mirages of the desert the inhabitants could always see anybody coming toward the forbidden land many days in advance, It happened every now and then; only, as a rule, the invaders died on the way or gave up hope. And even if they got to the outer rim of Yekeh-Kuruk it wouldn’t happen once in a thousand years that the mouth of the tunnel would be open.

Then— oh, joy! Oh, marvel! Ai-Yaruk had recognized one of the strangers as the youth who had always shared that secret life of hers.

The slaves sent out to bring in a specimen of the three adventurers had come back with Charley Ling.

Then they had been sent out to bring in the other two. But, in the mean time, Shan had started through the tunnel. Ai-Yaruk watched him all the time — frightened, eager to save him from harm, not sure what to do. She was only a girl, after all, and all alone.

She had cried her warning as Shan started to drink. Too late! She had dragged him all alone— and this time it was Shan’s turn to blush— to that secret room of hers, then had brought her own grandmother into consultation; this with the result that her grandmother gave in, as she always did, and came to see Shan fully restored, bathed, and dressed with a new kimono.

“But that bell? That ting-a-ling-a-ling?”

The one order that every member of the race had to obey— the temple-bell.

It was later, also, that Shan was to learn about the tunnel. There were twelve tunnels radiating in as many different directions from the crystal mountain— the so-called Mountain of Jade; for in the beginning, although all Yekeh-Kuruk had been an island, there was never any communication with it by water. Those who came and went— and the last who went were those who had come with the body of Genghis Khan— passed by a road similar to that through which Shan had come.

But even though Shan didn’t learn all this that first evening of his in Ai-Yaruk’s company, he did learn many things— among them this: That Ai-Yaruk was more beautiful than he had ever imagined her.

Chapter 23

The Three Brothers.

WHEN Charley and Ivan called on Shan he learned that they likewise had been to school, after a fashion. But they were rather contented with themselves, as much as old men ever are— men who have lived long enough to take literally the allegation that “vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

Charley was inclined to be meditative about it— silent, with a thin Chinese smile on his homely, kindly old face. Like Ivan, he was decked out in a new kimono. He murmured something about “mandarin tea”— that being the summit of hyperbole for Charley. Then reflectively he added something about its having been poured for him by a “mandarin’s daughter.”

Shan saw the lady in question the next day— fair, fat, and as much over forty as such ladies ever get.

It was a good deal like that with Ivan. He looked more prosperous than Shan had ever seen him: gentler, too— all whiskers and silk kimono.

“Who tied your sash like that, Ivan?” asked Shan playfully.

Ivan shook his shaggy bead. His chin went to his breast in retrospection.

“She would have been like that,” he whispered hoarsely.

Shan wasn’t playful after that.

Shan saw this lady also on the following day— a mature and motherly person, with as kind a face as he had ever seen; and with something of faded romance in it, too, like an after-glow, so to speak, of her young girlhood.

But just then Ivan’s words, and the tone in which he had pronounced them, had called to Shan’s mind the ineffable Ai-Yaruk.

Again silence settled down upon them— silence accentuated hy the tinkling music of the cascades.

“Perhaps the Man in Green who visited us in Hambleton would visit us now,” said Charley Ling, voicing, perhaps, a thought that had occurred to all of them.

“There are things that we would know,” said Ivan.

Shan meditated.

“It was different in Hambleton,” he said at last. “He was something like that first view we had of the Mountain of Jade. Now that we are here we do not see it as we saw it then.

“It is that way with the spirit of the Man in Green. He is here— in us, all around us. The Blue Wolf doesn’t send his ambassadors to those who are within hearing of his voice; he speaks to them direct. We had proof to-day— and yesterday— and since we started out— that we are under his protection.

“We have come to the place we started out to find. Let us be contented with what we have. We have friends here. Instead of calling on those we cannot see, let us put our dependence on these visible friends and the invisible influence back of them. We’re in the home of the Blue Wolf—”

“Spoken like a shaman,” said Ivan.

“And, oh, besides,” Shan concluded with a little laugh, “who knows but that all these people we have seen today are nothing but spirits— as much, as the Man in Green— angels, some of them, at any rate!”

“The black slaves must be spirits of a kind,” said Charley after a pause. “There are many people in the world, and many animals, who can tell what you want without a word being spoken. I had a cat like that one time. When the cat was on my ironing-board I could think to myself. “Cat, make room!” and she would jump down without my speaking or making a motion. These black slaves are like that.”

“I knew a woman once,” said Ivan, “who could know my wishes even before I—  Siberia—  And she—”

His voice trailed off.

“The slaves don’t understand English,” said Shan. “See, now, I’m going to will tea and a good-night smoke. I hadn’t thought of that.”

There was a touch of uncanniness about it as they sat there waiting. It was something like that time that they had waited in Charley Ling’s back room— for something— for something—

There was a slight sound as two of the weird blacks appeared. Each was carrying a tray. On one was a teakettle with a flaming lamp under it, three bowls and a tea-canister, all of burnished metal— gold, most likely. On the other tray were three pipes of the familiar Chinese design and a square gold box of Chinese tobacco.

The three friends looked at each other almost guiltily, as if they had lightly exerted some sacred force.

For several minutes they smoked and drank in silence— a little awed. The black servitors had disappeared again. But when Shan spoke there was a new eagerness in his voice.

“It’s will-power,” he said, “nothing but that. Here in Yekeh-Kuruk, just as everywhere else in the world, will-power’s the thing that counts. If our will-power’s greater than those of our enemies we can command not only these slaves that have been placed at our disposition but all the others in the region. That’s answer to one of the things that we would know, at any rate.”

But for a long time after his friends left him Shan couldn’t sleep.

In a physical way he was ideally comfortable. Inured as he was to sleeping on the ground, the bed that had been spread for him on the porch of his house was the last word in luxury. The very atmosphere was luxurious. He had the impression of being some sort of a god translated to his own particular estate in paradise. But the events of the day and the possibilities of the morrow kept racing through his brain like a fantom cavalry.

Throughout it all there was a lurking anxiety which finally he localized. It had to do with his grandmother. It was all very well for him to be here, rocked like this in the lap of luxury. But how about her? That was the question.

He fell at last into a half-waking somnolence, in which his physical surroundings— house, trees, perfume of flowers, song of leaping waters, and the all-pervading starlight— became the setting of fleeting dreams.

He was paying imaginary visits to the Khanoola— the tomb of Genghis Khan, where the great leader still lay lifelike, awaiting the next cycle of his days when he should again lead his hosts to the conquest of the planet; then to the Abyss of Wonders, whatever that was; and again he was wending his way homeward across the desert with many camel-loads of gems and gold.

But his ultimate thought swung around once more to the girl he had always dreamed about.

Was it a dream or was it a reality? Even in Hambleton there had been occasions when he had asked the question and was unable to decide. It was so now. He felt as if she were there again, just at his side, as she had been before Charley Ling and Ivan had appeared.

He opened his eyes slightly. Ai-Yaruk was there, kneeling beside him, looking down at him, wide awake, cautious, tender, the picture of a young mother beside the cradle of her firstborn.

Shan spoke as if in his sleep:

“Loa, loa, Ai-Yaruk!”

Chapter 24

Questions of State.

GRADUALLY but rapidly the three friends were learning the language and customs of the Golden Race, extending their individual acquaintances and their general ideas of the population at large, and getting something like an adequate conception of the geography and meteorology of the place.

An island it had been in the beginning; an island it still was— an island formerly surrounded by a sea of water, surrounded now by a sea of sand.

It was hard to tell how much of it was natural, how much of it the result of human effort. In fact, like so many ancient works it was hard to tell if man and Nature had not worked together in the formation of it, acting in accordance with laws that have since been lost— temporarily at least.

Most likely it was thus that the mountain itself had been constructed, for they had the gift of making crystals— just as some crystals can still be made by modern chemists. Likewise, it was probably that way that the great dike had been formed which surrounded the mountain on all sides, like a far-flung rampart.

It was this dike that had effectually prevented any intercourse with the island by the water-route in times past; for it presented an unscalable sea-wall of smooth, unbroken rock-crystal of more than a hundred feet in height.

Through this and out under the bed of the surrounding sea tunnels had been bored connecting Yekeh-Kuruk with its sister-islands, twelve in all, and with the mainland, north and south.

Where the inhabitants came from originally was unknown. The native annals, contained in the Book of Dzyan, intimated that they were descendants of that race of Magi, or Sons of Wisdom, who had prepared the earth for the advent of ordinary men, and from whom ordinary men had, ever since, been absorbing knowledge and power.

Then one by one the islands disintegrated and disappeared, their populations shrinking and dying off, until now this was the only island that remained, and it no longer what it once was.

“Nothing exists without a purpose,” the high priest D’lak told Shan in the course of one of their innumerable interviews. “And it will be like that with Yekeh-Kuruk. We were the last reservoir of secret knowledge. This knowledge is now seeping out into the rest of the universe— especially into this land of yours that you tell me about.

“I have long seen the signs of it. Our population is growing steadily less and less. Pretty soon our island will be following the others. The vacant house falls to pieces. Unused steel decays. When no one lives on our sacred island it also will return to its native elements, like a body from which life has fled.”

“Are you doing anything about it?” Shan asked.

D’lak smiled.

“You’ve had a little experience yourself,” he said, “with what would be done by some. They were for murdering you that day that you and your friends appeared in the temple. It was the way of certain of our ancestors. Some of our people— notably Mok-Ruk, whom you mishandled on the rostrum— still believe that that is the only way to save ourselves from annihilation. I don’t agree with them. Neither do most of our people, particularly the women.

“You see, in spite of all the strangers who have been killed for coming into our territory, Fate goes right on. The last man killed was one Shan Makaroff. We started to admit him to citizenship, but then thought better of it. However, before he died he managed to get a part of his treasure, including that ring you have, into the hands of outsiders.

“Then we discovered that he was a magician and that killing him didn’t make any difference after all. As a matter of fact I believe that all men are like that; once they’ve acquired knowledge of any kind they can keep right on spreading it around whether their throats have been cut or not.”

“Murder will out,” said Shan with his thoughts on his own case and that of his friends.

“And then when you pronounced your name and showed your ring, the map, and that piece of paper—”

“Why did you laugh when you looked at it?”

“It was merely a copy of our alphabet, showing that it had gone abroad, but was still undecipherable.”

“And so they decided—” Shan put in tentatively.

“They decided that it would be better to keep you here with the magician’s spirit safely confined in your breast than to kill you and let the spirit once more go roaming about the earth, sapping our power by spreading abroad the things only we know, hastening our end by taking away the reason for our existence.”

THE GREAT DIKE surrounding the mountain was about twelve miles in circumference. On the inner slope of this Ai-Yaruk had that secret little retiring-place of hers, whither she had brought Shan from the tunnel.

Inside the dike was a valley like a vast moat running entirely around the foot of the mountain, and covered with exquisitely cultivated lawns and gardens. The mountain was likewise cultivated in its entirety.

The population, not counting the slaves, numbered not quite two thousand, of whom the great majority were girls and women. There was little marriage. Overcivilization, perhaps! And sometimes not a dozen children would be born in as many years.

And yet, to offset this it was a region of great longevity. It was nothing for a man or woman to pass the century-mark. Which wasn’t so surprising, perhaps, with a climate automatically regulated by some natural combination which the founders of the strange empire had put into operation; with slaves to do all the work; with no excitements; with few germs.

There must have been some germs imported from the outside world— although it had been the immemorial policy of the country to kill all these off as the human invaders were likewise killed— there must have been some germs; for the supplies of things not grown and manufactured by the slaves in Yekeh-Kuruk itself had ever since D’lak could remember been brought in by the slaves from the desert.

How many caravans richly laden had gone into the Gobi, never to be heard from again! So much for perishable stuff. As for imperishable things like gems and precious metals they had no value in Yekeh-Kuruk whatsoever, apart from their beauty and utility.

According to the standards of the outside world Yekeh-Kuruk was a glut of wealth.

Many of the buildings which Shan had at first believed to be at the best merely gold-plated were found to be of the solid metal. There were tons of gold, tons of jewels and gems, marvelous carvings as fine and complicated as lace in the omnipresent crystal.

Labor must always have been exceedingly cheap and plentiful in Yekeh-Kuruk— labor, intellect, and the artistic temperament.

The slaves were likewise of prehistoric origin— a subverted race of desert-dwellers, perhaps. No census was kept of them. From the desert they came and to the desert they went— to work or breed or die. If they had any volition at all it was of the lowest order. They were as powerless to shape the will of their masters as ordinary men are powerless to shape the ends of Fate. So it seemed to Shan.

But as was only natural it was the subject of his own fate and that of his friends that kept recurring in his discussions with D’lak.

“You needn’t have any fears,” said the high-priest. “Even Mok-Ruk, your worst enemy, is coming to see the advantage of keeping you here in full citizenship, thus not only helping to conserve our race as it is, but doing something toward building it up.”

It was an allusion to Shan’s possible marriage which made Shan blush.

“Instead of living here why couldn’t you scatter into the outside world?” Shan asked. “The world needs all that you can teach it—”

“We can’t leave except by dying,” said D’lak. “You understand. Didn’t you tell me that in your country there were also people who couldn’t free themselves from certain conditions except by death?”

“Yes,” Shan answered. “That’s so. And I’ve talked to Charley Ling and Ivan about it. They’ll be glad to remain here. But I— suppose I should want to get away?”

D’lak went a little pale, He cast a quick glance about him.

“Sh-h! Don’t so much as think it,” he pleaded. “Even to think it may be death.”

Chapter 25

Consider the Way.

BUT Shan had to think about it. D’lak, himself being a man of singular intelligence, probably knew that Shan had to think about it; and that was the reason why D’lak had gone pale. For a very real friendship was growing up between the two of them.

Shan was seeing less and less of Ivan and Charley Ling.

The two old men were perfectly happy. They couldn’t have been happier if they had died and gone to heaven— a heaven fashioned for each after his own ideas as to what such a place should be. They were so happy, in fact, that Shan didn’t like to intrude.

Moreover, he could see that their interests were decreasingly his own.

So more and more Shan got the habit of turning to the right when he left his house and following the crystal path toward the home of the high priest, instead of turning to the left in the direction of the houses where Ivan and Charley basked, dallied and dreamed.

For he and D’lak had much in common.

D’lak told Shan how he had once attempted to organize a general exodus from Yekeh-Kuruk of all those who, including himself, were unwilling to prolong their own lives at the expense of the world at large; and if they died on the way to trust that their spirits would go marching on for the world’s enlightenment; and if they survived to devote themselves to the world’s education.

What was the central thought in this wisdom? Shan wanted to know.

“I can tell you,” said D’lak, “but unless you are ready for it you can’t be benefitted by it, any more than a baby would be benefitted by hearing the chemical make-up of milk. It is this— that a man has the universe inside of him.”

“I guess I’m not ready for it.” said Shan. “I don’t see how it applies. It doesn’t seem practical— like knowing how to run a lathe, or cooking a meal.”

“Certainly it’s practical.” said D’lak; “practical and beautiful. As for what you say about cooking a meal or running that other thing, leave that to the slaves.”

“D’lak,” said Shan, “that’s just the point. I keep thinking all the time about my grandmother. She’s one of the finest women in the world; but she’s a slave. She’s slaved for me all her life, or for some one else. I can’t desert her— and yet—”

“And yet—”

Shan flushed as he started to say something that he hadn’t intended to say.

“And yet my heart cleaves to Ai-Yaruk. I love her.”

After all it was the only thing to do— to mention his love for Ai-Yaruk sooner or later. She and D’lak and D’lak’s mother, Ai-Yaruk’s grand-aunt, lived there together in the high priest’s house— a larger house than Shan’s, but of the same general type, with a broad, roofed-in terrace for a porch.

“And Ai-Yaruk loves you. Shan,” said D’lak. “She has told my mother so. We were hoping that you would be married soon; that you would settle here in peace. She’s the leading citizen in Yekeh-Kuruk at the present time, Shan. She’ll take my place when I die, as I may at any time. You and she could do something great together, Shan.”

Shan listened to this speech with quickened breath and pulse. He had almost feared that there was something clandestine in those frequent visits of Ai-Yaruk. She continued to come at will by day and night. Often Shan awoke to find her sitting at his side. Several times he had visited her in the crystal room on the slope of the dike.

“I love Ai-Yaruk,” Shan went on. “I feel that life will be impossible to me without her. I must have her — to have always. But I can’t leave my grandmother. How does this wisdom of yours apply to a case like this? That’s what I want to know.”

“It must apply,” said D’lak. “because it’s the truth. But if forsooth your grandmother is only a slave—”

Shan smiled. He could see the innocence of the remark.

He even had a momentary vision of remaining here and starting a great reform by making every one work as his grandmother had worked, thus saving the Golden Race from destruction.

But suddenly there had come into his mind another plan.

Why shouldn’t he and Ai-Yaruk flee? Their place was in the world at large. And now that he had put the thought into words he knew that the plan wasn’t among things impossible.

“Don’t think it, friend,” came the urging voice of the high priest.

“Think what?”

He could not only sec what was written on the slate of a man’s mind, but he could write things there himself, as it were. However, he never used the latter power except in cases of extreme necessity.

Shan looked D’lak steadily in the eyes.

“I should like to have Kal-kee where I can use him occasionally,” said Shan. “It is only natural that I should like to make tours of inspection about the island, and that I should prefer to ride instead of walk. I understand that he has been well cared for.”

“The camel is well,” said D’lak, “and what you say will sound reasonable. There is a grotto back of your house where he can be stabled. There seems to be a friendship between him and the blacks. They’ve taken good care of him and will continue to do so. In the meantime—”

“I’ll hide my thoughts, friend,” Shan assured him.

And he did, from all save Ai-Yaruk. He told her of his plan that night— told her all the things that he had not dared tell D’lak. Not that he distrusted D’lak, but for fear of involving the high priest, somehow or other, in the complications which he knew only too well were looming up ahead.

Chapter 26

“Whither Thou Goest.”

AS DEFTLY and completely as she entered his dream-life back in Hambleton, she had entered into his every-day life here in Yekeh-Kuruk. His original concern as to “what folks might say” at their all-but-constant association had been quickly dispelled by the attitude of the people themselves.

It gradually dawned on Shan that it was expected.

When Ai-Yaruk was born a horoscope had been cast. This had shown that she was to be the bride of a certain stranger coming out of the desert and bearing a gift. It was this that Ai-Yaruk had recalled on the day she spoke in his defense in the temple. It was this that had held off other possible suitors for her hand.

One of the first bits of knowledge she conveyed to Shan was that he had always had a place in her dream-life, just as she had had in his. It somehow sanctified their companionship— made everything seem all right that might otherwise have been open to misinterpretation.

And there he was. He could no more have ejected Ai-Yaruk from his life than he could have detached his heart.

But the more he thought of his grandmother — thought of all that might happen to her without him there to lend her a helping hand— the more frantic became his determination to return to her.

Shan had just completed his supper— he ate alone, for in Yekeh-Kuruk no one ate in the presence of any one else— when Ai-Yaruk appeared at the end of the porch, looking at him with that little swoon of bashfulness which never ceased to be one of her most captivating traits.

“Ai-Yaruk!” said Shan, pronouncing her name in a way that meant the translation of it.

Ai-Yaruk blushed again— so delicately that it would have been hardly visible under skin less fine than hers. As usual, her long hair was flowing. On the pale gold of her throat was the dark gold of the necklace which Shan had placed there. Her robe was of that peculiar heavy yellow silk— like felt, only infinitely softer, almost spongy and having no visible weave.

There always was a suggestion of fathomless mystery in her eyes— enthralling, disquieting.

A slave came out of the house with a golden bowl of scented water and a silk-felt napkin. With an instinct to serve which is older than slaves Ai-Yaruk seized the napkin, dipped a corner of it in the water, and offered it herself to Shan.

“Oh, gee, Ai-Yaruk!” Shan exclaimed, reverting to the slang of his youth. “Oh, gee!”

She always needed some little pretense like that to put her perfectly at her ease, now that their courtship was visibly progressing.

“What does that mean?” she asked, dropping down beside him.

“It means,” said Shan, striving to translate, “song, tears, joy, wonder—”

“Life!” Ai-Yaruk divined.

“Yes— life, forever and ever!”

“Oh, gee!” said Ai-Yaruk seriously, unconscious of Shan’s smile.

What haunted evenings those always were in Yekeh-Kuruk! It was as Shan had said the other evening to Ivan and Charley Ling— as if they were within hearing of the Blue Wolf’s voice— the voice of the un-unknown; again, that they themselves and all the air around them, and all the other people in the island, were the habitat of other spirits than their own.

The slaves brought cushions.

Shan and Ai-Yaruk stretched themselves out on the floor like a couple of children, and gazed out into the valley below. Some day science will be regulating the climate of the rest of the earth, getting rid of fogs and other disagreeable incidents. This had already been done in Yekeh-Kuruk. There, in the midst of the sand-fogged Gobi, the air was sweet and pure.

While the sun went down they amused themselves— -if they needed any other amusement than the mere knowledge of each other’s presence— by watching the quavering appearance and vanishing of the mirage— clouds for the most part, but once a caravan.

“Ai-Yaruk, did you ever think of going with a caravan like that?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“God bless you! But” — whispering— “what if some day I should want to go?”

Ai-Yaruk also whispered.

“I’d go, too.”

“Do you know what that might mean?”

“Joy— joy unspeakable!”

As Shan was telling her of his duty to return to his grandmother, suddenly he became aware that Ai-Yaruk had dropped a tear— a big tear, so big that it must have splashed and sent something of its electrifying shower over one of his finger-tips.

“Why, Ai-Yaruk!”

She pressed up to him and let him draw her head into the hollow of his arm and shoulder.

“Just let me cry a little!” she said. “I’ll be all right in a moment.”

He had never imagined Ai-Yaruk in tears! He had imagined her as a fighting heroine or a queen enthroned— and as a smiling bride! But this took him by surprise— stabbed him to the heart! He stroked her hair; kissed her; murmured futilities.

Then she forced a little laugh and wasn’t crying any more— she was just supremely ingenuous and tender.

“What a perfect, perfect idiot I am!” she murmured softly. “But, you see, I had thought so often about you and me living here together and ruling the island better than it had ever been ruled before, and getting more strangers to come here, perhaps, and getting rid of the slaves, so that life would be more interesting—”

”Oh, what a king you would make of any man. you— you—”

“And how we’d go up to my little crystal room and there dream dreams together, for ourselves and others; and later on how we’d make them come true, until every one loved us almost as much as we loved each other. Why, thinking things like that was all my life until you came. But now—”

“We’ll stay here— do all the things that you have said!” cried Shan in an access of tenderness and passion.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” Ai-Yaruk thrilled with her lips close to his. “What you had in your mind is more beautiful still. My thoughts were playthings. I merely shed tears over them because they were broken. But what you were thinking of is life itself— life, even if we lose our own!”

“Ai-Yaruk, I’ve weakened!”

“Your grandmother needs you. Go to her— with me. I’ll love her so! Oh, I’d go— with you— even if it were up to the gate of the blazing sun!”

Chapter 27

Until Break O’ Day.

THE night deepened, with enveloping, purple-velvet warmth, star-gemmed, translucent. Now and then there swam into view an all but invisible wraith — some baby cloud, most likely, from a waterfall, but looking for all the world like a gentle, friendly ghost! Up from the little world around them came the soft, pleasant night-sounds— the splash and play of water, gusts of faint music, twitter of dreaming birds, far voices.

“How do folks get married here, Ai-Yaruk?”

“First you announce your intention, and then the elders go over the horoscopes— the boy’s and the girl’s— to make sure that it will be all right; only if they’re very, very much in love I guess the elders fix the horoscopes so that it’ll be all right, anyway. And then the couple and their families, and about every one else, all go up to the Abyss of Wonders! Why?”

The question sprang out with sudden breathlessness.

“Because,” whispered Shan, “you and I’ll get married like that, Ai-Yaruk, loa, before we start out on this trip of ours!”

The declaration seemed to add a fresh wonder and thrill of mystery to the night. It was enough just to remain there in immobile silence for a while, as if they listened to the receding echoes of it, felt the vibrations of it permeate them to their very souls.

Betrothal! Promise of marriage! As if such a thing could ever be a subject for agreement among relatives or wrangling lawyers!

A slight movement in the bushes, a little to the front of and below them, startled them somewhat. Even when they had agreed in whispers that it was a lizard there was a shred of excitement left behind as they discussed their plans.

“It was for this that I wanted Kal-kee where I could keep an eye on him,” said Shan. “I’m glad that he wasn’t killed.”

“Camels are never killed— merely turned loose,” said Ai-Yaruk. “I understand that they tried to turn your— our— camel loose, but he refused to leave. And this made them believe that either you had cast a spell over him or that he was possessed by a spirit. Such things do happen—”

“He’s a good camel— spirit or no spirit. He’ll carry us both over the sands like a great bird. I’ve thought out a plan of sending out the slaves to dig wells in advance and put down supplies of food. Ten days of travel like that should bring us to the principal caravan route out of Kalgan. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I just thought of Mok-Ruk.”

“What about him?”

“He’s in charge of the observatory; he can see miles and miles across the desert on account of the mirage, and it is he who sends out the slaves to mislead those who come too near.”

“I’ll do to him what I did in the temple— only more.”

“And if I tell you something else will you promise not to be worried?”

“Yes.”

“Mok-Ruk’s our enemy.”

“Because I shook him?”

“That, and because you’ve spoiled his plans. He wants to seize all authority. He’d be only too glad to have an excuse for killing— you— and me.”

Shan put a protective arm about Ai-Yaruk and drew her closer. It needed no words to give her assurance that she could depend on him in whatever crisis might come up. Presently he unfolded that part of his plan which had to do with a sort of elementary training of as many slaves as possible to be obedient to his will alone.

“How many are there, do you suppose?” he asked.

“No one ever knew,” she answered. “We call them in from the desert as they are needed, send them away again when they’re needed no longer. Mok-Ruk has always used them more than any one else— to mislead travelers in the desert and to bring in useful things that have been lost out there.”

Strange, this Golden Race; so gentle in some respects, no better than robber barons in others. Shan had noticed other evidences of this in the internal life of Yekeh-Kuruk— family attachment the exception rather than the rule, particularly among the young people and the men.

If it hadn’t been for what Ai-Yaruk had just told him about marriage and for stray remarks he had heard elsewhere, he would have been ready to believe that even marriage didn’t exist— every one was circulating so freely, keeping irregular hours, associating with whom he— or she— pleased.

A state of affairs but very surprising in a region where there was so little occasion for sacrifice, for unselfish devotion, for purifying toil; so many opportunities for the individual expression of temperaments, humors, and whims!

“There may be a fight,” said Shan. “I hope not. I should hate to see any one get hurt— even Mok-Ruk, unless it is for the public good. What will happen to your uncle if you disappear?”

“Uncle D’lak will be all right. He has the majority of the people with him. Besides he can hypnotize them at his will. Only he’s so afraid of doing something wrong—”

“I understand.”

“And Mok-Ruk’s real adherents are few, although he makes a play for the elders every now and then, as he did the day when he urged your death and the death of Ling and Ivan— you know— pretending that the only hope for the future is to be found in the past.”

In the succeeding pause there was a sudden deepening of the velvet darkness and a patter of rain— one of the brief and refreshing showers that occasionally descended on Yekeh-Kuruk in the middle of the night, though never by day.

Kal-kee, safe in his rock-crystal stable back of the house, sneezed and moaned.

“Dear Kal-kee!” said Ai-Yaruk. “When are we going to leave, beloved?”

“We should be ready in a month, at the longest.”

The words brought a vague sense of sadness with them. What if that month should be all that he was to have of happiness like this! The words of friendly warning that D’lak had let fall returned to him now, but he said nothing about them to Ai-Yaruk.

The shower passed by, the darkness lifted, and they saw that the stars had paled.

It was almost dawn.

“Oh,” Ai-Yaruk cried. “we’ve forgotten to sleep!”

“Go, sleep now, dear heart!” Shan breathed. “And don’t let anything worry you. Leave all the arrangements to me. We must let people believe that we intend to stay here always. Sleep well, loa; Ai-Yaruk, loa!

Shan watched her disappear, his heart following her. Then, with a glance about him, he descended from the terrace of the porch and penetrated the damp and fragrant shrubbery, scanning the ground in the growing light.

The rock-crystal had been washed bright and clean by the shower, but there in a little patch of cultivated earth he saw what he had expected, yet feared to find.

It was the imprint of a sandaled foot— Mok-Ruk’s, he had no doubt.

Chapter 28

The Face of Genghis Khan.

YEKEH-KURUK drowsed on, something like a colony of millionaires— of gifted, Bohemian millionaires, where every one was something of an artist or a poet, or a logician; where no one cared very much what the other person did; where even the children were egotists, but of an egotism that didn’t hurt, as there was more than enough for every one— service, food, time; where folks regarded with an indulgent eye the eccentricities of others as they went about their way indulging their own.

Shan observed all this as he rode Kal-kee about the miniature empire.

Nobody else ever rode; there was nothing about the crystal mountain that everybody, save Shan and Ivan and Charley Ling, didn’t know by heart.

Now and then he found some youngster, boy or girl, who wanted to ride with him for a little way merely for the novelty of it, or “to say that he’d done it”; but it was always evident that the ultimate judgment of the children was that of their parents— that riding about uncomfortably on the back of a camel was sheer eccentricity when one might comfortably walk.

And when one was too old to walk, or in the mood to ride, why not have slaves carry you in a comfortable hammock ?

But Shan had his reason for riding about so much. He was keeping Kal-kee from getting too fat. A fat camel can’t travel— he had learned that in the desert. Sometimes after a long encampment a camel owner will keep his mount tied up for a week or so without food and with scarcely any water, getting him into shape for the work ahead.

But Shan preferred to give Kal-kee plenty of exercise instead of starving him. The rock-crystal paths of Yekeh-Kuruk made a camel gymnasium— if there ever was such a thing. It would have been a gymnasium for goats.

Not only that, but Shan was making the most of his opportunities for observation. He could never get rid of that abiding inner sense of responsibility, of his duty to others. And now that same sense that had made him decide to get back to his grandmother, taking Ai-Yaruk with him, had spread and spread.

First it had included merely his own people— Ivan, Charley, his grandmother, and Ai-Yaruk; then Ai-Yaruk’s people— her gentle and learned uncle, the high priest D’lak, and D’lak’s mother, the kind-hearted old Oka.

Then he was beginning to feel responsible for the happiness and the lives of others as well— folk who had been good to him, friends of Ai-Yaruk’s, girls, nice old ladies, rather effeminate but nice young men.

It reminded him of a discussion he had heard during the noon hour one day among the men in the machine-shop where he had worked back in Hambleton.

“Supposin’ there was a rich old prince or something over on the other side of the world, a sort of a chink John D.,” one workman had said; “and supposin’ that by just raisin’ your finger an inch or so you could make him die and bring all his riches to you. Would you raise that finger?”

Shan was getting his answer to the question now.

Almost any one might “raise that finger” as long as the victim of the move remained an abstraction, a shadow, a supposition. But not if one had seen the rich old prince really wipe his spectacles or smile at a grandchild, or stoop to pick a yellow leaf from some favorite bush.

It was the human element that had knit new meshes into the widening net of his sympathies. Several new meshes were added every time that he was invited into a house, and he was invited into many of them. Such visits stirred him— stirred him infinitely— especially after his first visit to the Khanoola, when he looked on the face of Genghis Khan.

Yet what is the face of a dead emperor, however great, compared to the face of a living girl, however obscure?

The tomb of the emperor was not more than two miles from Shan’s house. It was a cathedral grotto in the mountainside, with a door just wide enough for one person to pass— and then only if he wasn’t too stout; this in order that the place could be sealed quickly by causing the crystal to grow together in case of danger.

It was twilight in the place, but this twilight was informed with the sheen and sparkling effulgence of millions of jewels— festooned in ancient ropes and banners, piled up in gold urns, spilled broadcast over the floor.

And then the great khan himself— seated on a gold throne in the midst of a crystal pyramid, small eyes open, fixed on space, a broad and beardless face with high cheek-bones.

Shan turned away. He was never going to return there again. The piled-up wealth was making him sick.

It was all on account of the expression on Genghis Khan’s face. Such sadness! Such horror of remorse! And he sitting there throughout the centuries, looking at these baubles he had won from a score of murdered populations!

It was then that Shan lost his delusion as to glory, and his delusion as to wealth. Genghis Khan had had them both!

The visit clarified his vision otherwise. It was his first inkling of the truth of that thing that D’lak had said about a man having everything inside of him, not outside.

More than that! Wasn’t Genghis Khan in a way symbolical of all Yekeh-Kuruk? Wasn’t this entire remnant of the Golden Race sitting here, like him, in a crystal pyramid, staring out into space— not so hideously remorseful? Not yet— but wouldn’t remorse as profound be theirs unless awakened?

Here they were, like him, with their useless wealth piled up around them; and, like him, dead, dead, dead!

He got to thinking about this more and more as he rode about on his camel, taking stock of the people and their ways.

The entire domain was parklike. It was like some magnificent decorative table-piece, carved and planted by the cunningest Japanese artists, and then magnified by the hand of Omnipotence.

Gold bungalows situated on crystal terraces with decorative gardens round about! For even the plantations where the foodstuffs grew were decorative. The rice-trees— that was their real name as translated from the Sinzar, the language of the Sin, or Golden Race, and likewise the language of the Book of Dzyan— even the rice-trees were decorative, with their delicate sprays of leathery white blossoms and their long, glossy black pods.

Arched bridges spanned the myriad streams in which the decorative gali spawned, sported, and grew until big enough to go happily toward the national food-supply.

Sometimes Shan passed people who turned their backs— which was not an insult, but merely a sign that they had no present desire for company. Not often. Generally they looked in his direction; and he learned their ways so rapidly that more often than not it was he who looked in the other direction, knowing as he did that he couldn’t possibly hurt any one’s feelings by so doing.

But neither did this occur very often. As a rule, he looked at the golden ones, and the golden ones looked at him. If he had been vainer than he was he might even have been led to believe that some of the natives, the young women especially, made it a point at times to cross his path.

A lovely land and a lovable people. Then, with a start, Shan would remember the face of Genghis Khan. And along with that memory would come the thought that out there beyond the wide desert not only his grandmother, but the whole world was waiting; and that he shouldn’t carry away Ai-Yaruk alone from this living death of empty possession, but all those who would have the courage to follow.

Shan remembered what D’lak had told him about that boyhood dream of his— of going forth into the world to teach, or, if needs be, to die. And why not?

What was that saying, “He who loseth his life— shall find it”?

“Beloved,” said Ai-Yaruk as she drew Shan’s head against her throat after one of these tours of his, “tell me what is this new thing that is growing in your thought?”

Shan told her all.

“How good you are!” she thrilled. “How great!”

A slave appeared, prostrated himself, and held up a message.

Chapter 29

Mok-ruk Aims a Blow.

IT was written on a piece of the silky paper common to Yekeh-Kuruk, quantities of which remained from prehistoric times, although it was no longer manufactured. The writing, well executed, was in the Sinzar character, and even to Shan’s inexperienced eye was evidently the work of a woman. He started to read; then colored, stopped, and put his arm around Ai-Yaruk.

“Whatever this turns out to be,” he said, “we read it together.”

Was there any word in Sinzar meaning jealousy? Shan never learned it if there was.

The message ran:

I write this because I love you. Perhaps some day you will find out that it was I who wrote, and thus you will come to love me also—

“Ai-Yaruk,” Shan interrupted, “let’s stop if— if—”

But Ai-Yaruk, glancing ahead, had confirmed her guess that this was no mere love-letter. Writing wasn’t popular for such purposes in Yekeh-Kuruk. Music and tokens of one sort or another were preferred. She gave him a hasty kiss as a sign of confidence, and herself took up the reading aloud:

“Mok-Ruk plans your destruction. Even now he is assembling his friends in the Abyss of Wonders. They meet this afternoon at the three-quarters’ sun. He will demand your death.”

Scarcely had Ai-Yaruk pronounced the last word than they heard D’lak’s friendly voice greeting them.

“Hail, my children!”

The high priest stood just beyond the extremity of the porch, his face even graver than usual. Obviously he had just arrived from his own house, a little farther up the slope. Shan sprang forward to meet him.

It had been several days since they had seen each other, for D’lak had been in almost constant meditation, so Ai-Yaruk said, when not in consultation with various of the elders.

“The sight of you offsets bad news,” said Shan.

Ai-Yaruk, who had still been gazing at the message, handed it to her uncle. After reading it through he stood there, thoughtful and silent, for a moment. Shan saw a slave, who had appeared as if by magic from the house at the appearance of the high priest, start off down the mountainside at a nimble run.

“I also brought news,” said D’lak; “but not such as this. The days of your probation are over. To-day you and Ivan and Ling are to be taken into full citizenship.”

“And Mok-Ruk?”

“We shall see.”

The tinkling yet penetrating treble of the temple bells began to split the quiet air with a sort of fairy bombardment. It was a summons that no citizen of Yekeh-Kuruk had ever dared disobey. Would it be otherwise now with Mok-Ruk and his friends?

Shan had kept away from the Abyss of Wonders, up there where the observatory was and in the neighborhood of which Mok-Ruk and most of his adherents, whether from accident or design, had taken up their residence.

He knew that, as Ai-Yaruk had said, the majority of the people were friendly to himself, to Charley and Ivan, and to such authority as there was represented by D’lak.

But he had. mused more than once on the possibility of the fighting strength of these friends — girls and women chiefly; young men who had never taken any other exercise than that of dancing and occasional strolls; elderly men who had long surrendered any claim to activity of any kind that was not mental.

It had confirmed him in his purpose to drill the slaves as much as possible. But the difficulty here had been great, for it was impossible to individualize them in any way. He tried to uniform them by tying a cord around their hairy arms or necks, but the effort failed. They continued to come and go like specters— to do his bidding, and then, the instant they were released from his will, to disappear. Wonderfully agile, potent, and as difficult of control as free quicksilver.

Charley and Ivan had attempted to aid him in these experiments, but had reported similar difficulties.

One thing was certain, however— they had pushed out the line of escape for more than a hundred miles due east. If he ever did make a dash for it—

“Friend,” said D’lak. “I have followed what you’ve been doing.”

He dropped his hands on Shan’s shoulders. They looked into each other’s eyes.

“When you first spoke of going back, and I told you that even the thought might be death,” he went on, “I spoke from the sleep into which I and, all the others of Yekeh-Kuruk had fallen. Now I am awake. I, for one, am ready to follow you out into the greater world, even if this does mean what men commonly call death.”

“But I do not want you to die,” said Shan. “I don’t want to die myself.”

There was a catch in his voice as he added: “I don’t want— Ai-Yaruk to die.”

“There’ll be no death— unless we’re separated,” cried Ai-Yaruk softly, spontaneously.

Shan slipped his arm about her waist. D’lak smiled at them.

“Have you still the ring?” he asked Shan.

“I was— keeping it for our wedding-ring,” Shan confessed as he pulled it from his breast.

“You can read now what was written on it.”

“Not all.”

“Archaic Sinzar,” D’lak commented; “and what it says is this— two words— ‘All’ and ‘You.’ A good talisman— meaning no one can hurt you but yourself; no one can reward you but yourself. And a good wedding-ring— meaning,” he concluded with a grave smile, “that your wife is good and beautiful only as these qualities are reflections of yourself.”

There wasn’t time just then to perceive whatever there might have been of pure truth in D’lak’s words. At the high priest’s own orders the temple bells still thrilled with tinkling vibrancy, unlike any other sound Shan had ever heard. Those citizens, young and old, man and woman, to whom the ringing still meant an imperative demand, were hastening down toward the temple on the edge of the valley.

As on that other day when Shan had watched the gathering of the congregation, they were arriving singly, in couples and groups— gentle, unmilitant — reminding him more than ever of churchgoers in a country town. It smote him to the heart to think that he might be instrumental in some way in causing these people pain.

Where had he heard the expression: “A life of love is a life of pain;” and why should that be so?

Ask the women! He glanced at Ai-Yaruk; their eyes met.

“Come,” said D’lak, “we’ll announce what we know to the congregation. Then all of us will proceed to the Abyss of Wonders, where the principal business of the day awaits.”

They had started down the flower-bordered, tree-arched, crystal path that zigzagged so prettily toward the valley, when there was a blinding flash of light just ahead of them, and a puff of resinous smoke as the branch of a gnarled pine shriveled up.

D’lak uttered a cry of horror.

“Sacrilege! Quick! The faithful must be warned!”

Chapter 30

The Black Brigade.

SHAN stopped where he was. This thing that had just occurred was Mok-Ruk’s work. Whatever the nature of it, this was evidently a blow aimed, not only at himself, but at all his friends.

“Quick!” cried D’lak, looking back.

“You go on,” said Shan urgently, but softly. “Warn them. Do all you can to keep them safe. Ai-Yaruk, go with him.”

“I stay with you.”

She caught Shan’s arm, and was looking up at him with illumined face.

“Go, D’lak. Do what you can. Trust the rest to me.”

“The Arrows of Fire,” said D’lak. “It was like this, they say, that the destruction of the other islands began. Remember— the ring— that brought you here— until I gather volunteers.”

“You’ll find me—”

”Us!” thrilled Ai-Yaruk.

“— at the Abyss of Wonders.”

Left alone, Shan took time to give Ai-Yaruk a hasty kiss of encouragement and a smile.

“This was to have been our wedding day!”

“It is,” she answered him. “We were married by that streak of fire— made one!”

“Come. We will first get Kal-kee. Call what slaves you can.”

They started back as fast as possible in the direction from which they had just come. There was reason for Shan’s thought of Kal-kee. In his rides about the mountain he had noticed that when he was on the camel’s back, his power over the odd, subhuman servitors was greater than when he was not mounted.

Before they got back to the bungalow the bushes parted. There were Charley Ling and the woman he had called his “mandarin’s daughter.”

“War-time!” Shan panted in Pekingese. Charley comprehended.

Ivan was on the porch of the bungalow with his ineffable “her” by the time they arrived.

“We saw you coming,” he said briefly in Russian.

“Mok-Ruk plays with fire.” exclaimed Charley Ling.

“Up in the Abyss of Wonders,” said Shan.

“O-ho!” cried Ivan. “And we three old campaigners will go up to clean him out!”

“No,” Shan answered. “Help me only by commanding all the slaves that you can.”

Already they were trooping in— those queer creatures, in some respects so like some primitive effort at man; so different in others.

They all resembled that first hairy prisoner they had taken in the desert— smaller than the average man, exceedingly light as to build, covered with fine, black hair. Twenty were all that Shan had thus far been able to muster in his experiments when alone. If some primitive force of the universe had expressed itself in animate shape, such would have been the result.

If Mok-Ruk used fire as a weapon, why shouldn’t he use this other, more nearly human, element as a shield?

The slaves came in, cowering to obedience, from out of the houses, from bushes and trees, from crystal grottos back of waterfalls— from all their lurking-places, where they apparently loved to remain invisible until drawn out by the magnet of some superior will.

Almost before Shan had finished speaking a dozen of the creatures had appeared around the corner of the house leading Kal-kee, stroking the camel, gamboling about him with evident joy. Quickly their numbers increased. A hundred— two hundred, Shan estimated.

There was no occasion for Kal-kee to kneel. A slave had bent his back for Ai-Yaruk, and she was in place before Shan could have protested, even had he intended to.

He spoke rapidly to Charley and Ivan, using the Sinzar for the sake of the women.

“We go first and fastest. You follow. Go slow, gathering all the slaves you can. Maybe we shall need help. You’ll be on the road.”

A slave had stirruped his foot with monkeylike hands, and shot him into place in front of Ai-Yaruk on the camel’s back while he was still speaking. The other slaves were crowding close, already aware that they were expected to accompany the god that had mastered Kal-kee.

Kal-kee swung into a trot, and the black, compact mass of the hairy slaves began their peculiar, jubilant skipping run. Had his thought, Shan wondered, likewise reached their consciousness— stirred up within them some elemental hope?

Not more than five minutes could have elapsed since that first searing bolt had stricken the pine-tree in their path.

The shrilling vibrancy of the temple bells— it was more like a sparkle of sound than anything else— filled the air. Now and then, half-heard, half-divined, through this finer sound there came a whirring menace followed by an impact.

“Heat-shells,” said Ai-Yaruk. “Mok-Ruk has learned how to use them. See! See!”

They had emerged on a gently sloping terrace. A hundred yards ahead of them, through the decorative foliage, they could see the greenish-gold roof of a bungalow.

Just over this roof there was the same sort of dazzling streak as that which had struck the pine. There was a puff of blue flame and yellow smoke; then a round, black hole where the thing had struck. Almost instantly, as Shan jerked Kal-kee to a standstill, there came a gust of other smoke from the interior of the house.

Shan slid to the ground.

“Five miles by road, Ai-Yaruk,” he said. “Go as fast as you can. Half of the slaves will follow you. I take the others straight up to the mountaintop.”

Ai-Yaruk went white, but she smiled.

“We’re one,” he reminded her.

“Forever!”

Kal-kee had resumed his lumbering trot.

Shan found himself in the midst of such a horde as might have gone forth to battle before Adam’s day. They were naked and unarmed, but they knew no fear. Life held no prizes for them; but death did, perhaps.

A black brigade, led by a white man, plunging up a mountainside in the conquest of the Abyss of Wonders. And Shan, breathless, glad to avail himself of the pulls and shoves of his apelike helpers, still found time to smile at the queer rôle he was cast for in the Great Tragedy.

He was not worried about himself. He was not worried about Ai-Yaruk. He had that elation that comes to brave men at times in the thick of battle— the feeling that everything would be all right, whatever might happen.

They clambered on up and up, the steady climb relieved at times by easy stretches across pretty terraces or an occasional plunge through dancing water.

When it happened he did not know, but he had gone almost as naked as his swarming slaves. Nothing but a breech-cloth remained to him— which was just as well, perhaps, considering what might lie ahead. It was curious how the slaves obeyed— subservient to his will, yet marvelously elastic— as if their tireless muscles were his own.

The top of the mountain was his goal. He had never been there, but he knew that here was the ancient laboratory of the Sin, where the founders of the race had established that peculiar equipoise of forces that kept this garden-spot of theirs so eternally beautiful, fertile, and green. Such expenditure of force as that which Mok-Ruk was using could not but disturb this equipoise; threaten the whole place with destruction; loose the desert upon it like a devouring dragon.

It was this that had driven Shan to take the shorter course.

Time— in this place where time had never been valued— had suddenly become the priceless thing it is in other parts of the world. So Shan reflected as he panted, sweat, bled from the scratches on arms and legs.

They were just under a terrace, above which there was a prospect of fleckless sky. Over this, and then—

A score of slaves were already on the rim, reaching for him as others hoisted him up. Then something terrible happened. Even in that intensely brilliant light Shan sensed an intenser ray that swept in their direction like that of a search-light swinging around.

And there, where all those willing black helpers had crowded just above his head, there was a blotch of instant death.

The swish of a scythe! White flame instead of steel!

And Shan shouted:

“Up! Up!”

Chapter 31

Mok-Ruk Sees Nemesis.

NOT a groan, not a cry, not a word except his own; and he was over the rim of the terrace. It was in the form of a parapet of dust-strewn crystal, blistering hot, a dozen paces in width. Death had been here but the fraction of a second before. It would return again, he knew, in an instant— and what if that ray should meet Ai-Yaruk on her arrival!

Impelled with the added momentum of his slaves, he hurled himself forward on toes and fingers, dropped from the parapet into a parklike depression within— cool, green with grass— just as he felt the searing breath of destruction flash past once more.

He had the hurried impression of a three-storied pagoda of shimmering gold, very wide of base, doorless so far as he could see in the sudden glare; then of something else— the flash of a face in the uppermost section of the structure.

All this as he was running across the lawn in the direction of the pagoda, instinct telling him that here was where lay either victory or defeat.

He had reached that state of mind in which death or life are not considered: where there is no fear, no courage.

This was the game of cosmos in evolution.

It was almost as if he were more than a man; as if he were himself an elemental force.

The nearest wall of the pagoda was perhaps fifty yards ahead. Before they had traversed more than half the distance there was a counter rush of other slaves from back of the pagoda. Shan’s first thought was that Ai-Yaruk had arrived, and that these were the black serviles who had continued on with her. But an instant later he recognized his error.

The enemy up there in the tower had likewise pressed what slaves he could into service. There must have been a hundred of them, against the fifty or sixty that remained to Shan.

Their purpose was manifest. They paid no more attention to their brethren than as if they did not exist at all.

Shan felt their eyes upon himself— on him alone.

All the legends and myths of the werewolves he had ever heard or read about flashed through his brain— the world-wide, world-old belief in lycanthropy that, like the belief in ghosts, still lingers in the back of every human brain.

They were rushing at him. but this was their tragic and terrible handicap. The will that directed them had not willed that they defend themselves as well.

In response to a scarcely formed command in Shan’s own mind his company leaped to meet the attack like a pack of trained mastiffs— a primitive battle such as the ancestors of men must have fought at the remotest dawn of humanity. It was all the more dreadful and all the more pitiful in that they fought— as they had died back there— in silence.

There was no curse, no groan, no battle-cry, no plea for mercy nor shout of triumph. They were puppets, obedient to superior wills; but they were puppets that bled.

Shan fought, with mounting pity in his heart; soulless eyes still fixed on him as the life went out of them; hairy, sinewy arms that used their last shred of strength in an effort to give him the death their master had willed.

It seemed incredible that in the thick of this murderous conflict his own slaves and those they fought could be responsive to anything but the elemental battle lust.

Yet, as the battle surged forward against the pagoda and around it to the farther side, a change was evident. That pity in Shan’s breast, even as he helped defend himself, may have had an effect— likewise the unspoken prayer in his heated brain.

One of the attackers had broken through the defenders, as others had done before him, to go down before the superior weight back of Shan’s fist; but this time instead of striking Shan stared into the subhuman eyes with a sudden concentration of his will. He saw the eyes shift direction; he saw the lithe and hairy back twist round and join the phalanx of the defense.

He threw his whole will into the battle now, fearing nothing. He cried aloud in English as if they could understand:

“Storm the pagoda!”

Events were passing so rapidly that it seemed that an hour must have elapsed since he scaled the parapet. He knew that the deadly heat-ray still whirled and whirled.

This time he prayed aloud that Ai-Yaruk would be delayed until something could be done.

He had been hoisted nimbly on a suddenly formed pyramid of slaves three high, standing on each other’s shoulders like Arab tumblers, and was reaching up to grasp the top of the first stage of the pagoda when there was a simultaneous commotion beneath him and far over to one side.

Out from the pagoda below there rushed fresh throngs of slaves, guided and directed this time by half a dozen Sin, who, he knew, must be members of Mak-Ruk’s infernal conspiracy.

Naked as he was, with nerves and muscles at supernormal tension, Shan had swung himself to the platform, even while taking note of what that other disturbance was. From his elevation he saw the head of Kal-kee appear— saw the first rush of slaves who had accompanied Ai-Yaruk.

“Stop!” he shrieked.

Kal-kee kept on.

The heat-ray flashed on its deadly round not more than ten feet above the camel’s head.

And then Ai-Yaruk!

Shan’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

“O God!” he choked. “Stop her! Ai-Yaruk!”

But it was as if that supreme cry had carried farther than his will would have done. He saw the slaves at Kal-kee’s head suddenly reaching up, seeking to force the camel back.

Again the heat-ray whirled around, deadly, eager— a famished cobra.

This time instead of a prayer it was an imprecation that was choking Shan. He flung himself at a gold lattice that formed a portion of the wall of the pagoda’s second floor.

It must have been pure gold, finely chiseled, very soft.

He beat a hole through it with his fists, rended it still larger with his bare hands, and forced his naked body through it regardless of cuts and tears.

There was a narrow, circular stairway against the wall. Up this he slipped as if he himself were a fantom or a thing of air.

On the upper floor he saw a man standing with his back turned, watching with breathless eagerness the work of a lens that whirled round and round with all but blinding flashes. It was an odd instrument, topped by a crystal globe, the interior of which seemed to be made up of innumerable hemispheres with their concavities turned outward.

One leap and Shan had sent this sphere crashing to the floor, just as the deadly white ray in its last revolution scorched his side.

The man who had been working the engine of destruction gave a cry, staggered back, and looked at Shan as he would have looked at the genius of eternal torment. It was Mok-Ruk.

And no wonder that he was frightened. Shan must have been hideous— naked, bleeding, and burned, half-mad with all that he had just been through.

Shan laughed.

“O-ho!” he cried. “O-ho!”

Chapter 32

When Genghis Khan Smiled.

“WORK still to do,” said Shan as he knocked the half-fainting Mok-Ruk to the floor and began tearing the clothes from his enemy with feet and hands. He was beginning to feel sick himself, was Shan; but it made him all the more desperate to finish the work in hand, now that he knew in his heart that the worst was over, and that the rest of the fighting would be sheer waste of blood and energy.

He fastened a generous portion of Mok-Ruk’s garment about his waist as a breech-cloth; Ai-Yaruk was down there, and soon there might be other ladies. But this was no time for full dress. So he told himself while he worked. With what remained of the clothes he bound the insurgent’s feet and hands— none too gently— then dragged Mok-Ruk after him down the stairs.

Mok-Ruk was unconscious now, apparently. The coma of fright! He who had been so alert and terrible just a little while before when he saw no danger for himself!

Work still to do, for Ai-Yaruk was out there, and the other conspirators and warring slaves. Thank the Lord the heat-saber was not waving any longer, nor the heat-bombs raining down.

At the foot of the stairs Shan found himself in a vast chamber, almost dark, what light there was filtering down from the second floor, he dropped Mok-Ruk in his tracks and made the round of the chamber looking for an exit. The doors were concealed by careful joining. Then Shan was back at Mok-Ruk’s side again, shrieking at him, trying to kick and shake him into wakefulness.

Mok-Ruk pointed.

Shan took a step backward, dragging with him his prisoner, who was now suddenly awake, suddenly struggling. A trap-dour slid down under them and, tumbling over and over each other they fell into a corkscrew chute of polished stone. They were in a circuitous descent that would have made an ideal fire-escape for a modern apartment-house.

At the chute’s bottom they picked themselves up, shaken but unhurt.

In the darkness Shan got Mok-Ruk by the throat and hissed a threat that set the other trembling.

“Where are we? Quick!”

“A secret passage to the Khanoola. I had heard of it, but I’ve never been here before!”

“Liar! Find the way out— now!”

“My feet are too closely bound,” Mok-Ruk blubbered.

With a sigh Shan knelt in the darkness to undo his own handiwork. The bond slipped. With a sudden movement Mok-Ruk had stepped back and kicked out with the savage strength of the coward driven to desperation.

The kick, delivered with Mok-Ruk’s heel, caught Shan in the short-ribs, taking his breath away. For a moment it seemed as if his whole body had been caved in. Lying there recovering himself, he listened to his enemy’s shuffling tread as Mok-Ruk felt his way off along some familiar route. It made Shan muster what strength remained to him.

He pulled himself up, listened with mouth open, again caught the sibilance of retreating footsteps, and followed as fast as he could, feeling his way with groping hands and feet. Again he listened; again hurried forward. Perhaps he could catch up with Mok-Ruk. and then—

He was still groping forward when he heard the unmistakable swish of a heavy, tightly fitting door. From far off ahead of him had come a slow pulse of pale light. Then darkness again— darkness and silence.

Praying to the spirit of Ai-Yaruk, Shan stuck as closely as he could to the direction whence the light had come. He wouldn’t despair. He wouldn’t hope. He would merely keep on.

He had missed the door through which Mok-Ruk had passed— he made no doubt of that; but so long as he had strength to pull one leg after another he would keep up.

At last he saw a pale glow ahead of him, high up and to his left.

He shut his eyes once, then looked again to make sure that there was no illusion about it. The light was there. At the same time his questing feet told him that he was on an incline.

At first he was almost certain that it was an opening straight out into the open air, the light appeared so bright to his dilated pupils. But the closer he came to it the more confusing it became. Then he saw that it was nothing more nor less than a transparency, in the crystal of which the whole mountain was composed. It was not an opening at all, but a window sealed with a thickness of crystal that it would have required a sledgehammer to shatter.

Was this to be the final mockery? he wondered.

He pressed his face against the hard, transparent rock. His heart quickened a little as he found himself gazing into the shadowy depths of the Khanoola. Mok-Ruk had spoken the truth to that extent, at any rate.

He could see it all now. That corkscrew chute into which he and his prisoner had plunged had been prepared especially, no doubt, in case reenforcements were demanded here in a hurry. In times gone by this place where he now was must have been a sort of sentry-box, where guardians could watch the piled-up treasure within, yet be incapable of yielding to temptation.

Shan saw the ropes of gems, the overflowing urns.

Strange! It seemed to be getting lighter in there. Then something else—  He put his hand against the crystal and confirmed the impression that had already been reported by his feverish face. The crystal was warm and getting warmer.

Shan uttered an ejaculation as he saw several shadowy forms appear, running. Then he recognized at least one of them. It was Mok-Ruk. There was a flash of light in a far corner of the great chamber, and a sense of terror in those running forms that made Shan’s teeth chatter in spite of the increasing heat. They were running about in there like rats trapped in a burning warehouse.

There was a gradual spread of blue flame.

What devilish power had been loosed by Mok-Ruk when he began to play with fire for the undoing of his fellow men? Why didn’t they go out by the narrow door? Why didn’t they go out by the door through which Mok-Ruk had come?

“They must be collecting treasure for an escape,” said Shan out loud to himself; but his teeth chattered as he said it.

The great cathedral-grotto— like a certain other that Shan was to see before long— was now filled with sparkling blue radiance. The men inside still ran about; but Shan hardly saw them.

He was looking again at the face of Genghis Khan, startlingly illuminated as the dead monarch sat there enthroned in his crystal pyramid.

Was it possible that some terrible change had been worked in that human relic by the spectacle of what was going on? It seemed so. Where was that look of century-old remorse?

Over the face of the great khan had spread a ferocious smile. At last! At last! The chaste poverty of shriven dust!

Shan turned away— reeled— began to run. For the first time that day he was frightened.

Chapter 33

Into the Abyss.

BUT Ai-Yaruk had been seconding him better than he knew. Arriving as she did at the critical moment on the mountaintop, just as Shan knocked over both Mok-Ruk and his engine of destruction, she had first succeeded in routing the conspirators— a score of them— and destroying those slaves who had remained subservient to their will, driving them off down the mountainside. It was they who had sought refuge in the Khanoola, where they were to be trapped by the narrow door— sealed that day, forever perhaps, by the forces that Mok-Ruk had loosed when he began “to play with fire.”

Then, with the assembled slaves that she herself commanded, and with the reenforcements brought by Charley Ling and Ivan, she had penetrated the interior of the mountain by way of the storied Abyss of Wonders.

It was but a minute or two after Shan had started to run from what he had seen in the Khanoola that he found himself in the midst of a swarm of slaves— friendly, he knew at once; and it was his own will, in conjunction with the despairing commands of Ai-Yaruk and his friends, that caused the black servitors to speed with him to where they waited.

Ai-Yaruk, Charley, Ivan, the “mandarin’s daughter,” with Ivan’s ineffable “her”— it was like heaven after a strenuous death to find them all there.

They proceeded through ways known to Ai-Yaruk since her girlhood to the Abyss itself— a mighty temple, all gold and crystal, encased in that crystal mountain, bigger than any church Shan had ever seen, with churchlike spaces overhead, from which fluttered ancient banners inscribed with prayers and words of wisdom; crystal columns forming nave and transept, a vast recess corresponding to the apse of a Gothic church in which there hung, suspended by invisible means, a great, dentellated disk, fully twenty feet in diameter, all gold and gems, representative of the sun.

Underneath this was a sort of altar— a gemmed gold case, cubical, about three feet square, and severely plain— and this, in turn, was supported by a plain but beautifully harmonious pedestal of solid crystal.

In front of this, three steps down, was an ornate throne-chair, something like that one Shan had seen in the lesser temple in the valley, only larger and richer.

He saw all this in the subdued light of the place— such a light as might penetrate through clear water on a sunny day— while Ai-Yaruk and the other ladies were binding up his wounds with cooling, healing ointments that the slaves brought, pressing him to take a sip of this and that pungent stimulant from bottles like the one which Ai-Yaruk had shown him on his first day in Yekeh-Kuruk.

All to such good end that by the time he had drawn the folds of a new kimono about him he was feeling rested and almost perfectly fit again.

Then D’lak arrived, accompanied by a party of elders. They were followed by the rest of the population— tremulous, grateful, solemn, yet glad.

“Oh, D’lak!” cried Shan. “See the ruin I’ve caused!”

“We should have been ruined indeed had it not been for you, friend and brother,” said the high priest.

“It would never have happened if it hadn’t been for me,” said Shan.

“Mok-Ruk had been meditating this for a long time,” D’lak answered. “And we thank our ancestors for having sent us a fighting man when one was needed.”

“He has met his fate.”

“He and all those who were associated with him— sealed up in the Khanoola. They had planned to seize what they could if their revolt went against them and use the slaves to get away to the outside world, to become princes and high priests themselves of greater populations. But they had possession of only a part of the ancient wisdom concerning the guardian elements of the place. They themselves were to blame for the way they died.”

“Why didn’t you arrest them long ago?”

“I thought that kindness would bring them around,” said D’lak.

D’lak disappeared as others crowded about with congratulations, silent and spoken. There was one girl, of Ai-Yaruk’s age, who gave Shan a single look as she spoke to them in passing, and the look told Shan that she was the one who had written him that warning letter.

Nothing said; only a look.

Then, very softly, the vast place was filled with the hum of plaintive music. At first it was as if there were a dozen orchestras all going at once— not out of tune precisely, but with such chords as Western ears are unaccustomed to— very appealing, plaintive, solemn.

Soon such dissonance as there was had disappeared, and all the music was fused into a sort of mounting and receding cadence of a kind to lift the soul.

In the mean time the quality of the light had changed, for night was falling out of doors. It was as if a special light were radiated from the great, gemmed sun in the apse, sending down a yellow shimmer over the throne, the solid gold altar and crystal plinth.

Beyond the range of this yellow radiance the great temple was filled with blue shadows and transparencies, as if the outer starlight had penetrated here. In this blue dusk Shan put his arm about Ai-Yaruk and held her close, while his heart pounded and grew big.

It was true that never again in his life could he be small nor petty after an experience like this. With Ai-Yaruk’s yielding shape warm and vibrant in the hollow of his arm, he cast a look in the direction of Ivan and Charley Ling.

He divined that each, in his own way, was experiencing the thoughts and sentiments that were his own just then.

D’lak appeared, the high priest every inch of him. It seemed impossible that this was the familiar friend to whom he had been speaking but a minute or so before, D’lak’s face was so mystic and ethereal.

The music throbbed along— a hundred stringed instruments at least, picked and fingered with sliding quavers.

It was in this setting that Shan, Ivan, and Charley Ling were accepted into the full sonship of the Blue Wolf. For this was the lair or lodge of the Blue Wolf— so D’lak, reading from an ancient book in the most beautiful, poetic, old Sinzar, told them. Then there were various cabalistic instructions and forms to be gone through which brought Shan, Charley, and Ivan forward alone.

Where Shan stood with uplifted eyes he could see one of the ancient banners suspended from the roof. Now and then it fluttered as if in a passing breeze, and he could sec what was written on it.

The characters were the same as those engraved on his old ring: “All— You,” which in the subtle, deft Sinzar could say so much to those who had the power to understand. They meant that even Ai-Yaruk— the beautiful, the sympathetic, the palpitant— was a part of himself, an emanation or a reflection; and that she would not be all these things unless he was worthy of her.

So he reflected as he found her once more at his side, as the elderly but otherwise beautiful brides-elect of Charley and Ivan likewise stood forth, and the rites of citizenship in the universal lodge of the Blue Wolf became a marriage service.

Chapter 34

When Death Is Life.

THUS Shan, Charley, and Ivan were taking that last degree of all in the Abyss of Wonders. Mok-Ruk had indeed let loose powers of destruction— of change, at least— greater than he knew. The ancient equipoise of forces— atmospheric and psychic, too, most likely—  that had preserved Yekeh-Kuruk for so many centuries after the dissolution of its sister islands had now been disturbed, never to be restored; no, not by all the knowledge of D’lak nor the elders, schooled though they were in the ancient wisdom.

The change was already apparent as the remaining population of Yekeh-Kuruk poured out of the Abyss of Wonders into the starlit night.

The stars hung white and refulgent, as they always had, but the air was changed; it was drier, hotter. There came a gust of wind that made the population cough and stagger.

Shan recognized it. So did Charley. So did Ivan. It was the sand-filled air of the desert, which they had not known since that day when they came their several ways through the long tunnel; such air as the inhabitants of the lost kingdom had never known.

Shan stopped where he was and clutched Ai-Yaruk to his breast.

“What is it?” she asked.

Shan kissed her and drew a fold of his wide silk sleeve about her face.

Others were asking the same question. Little gusts of panic, like a fugitive breeze, were sweeping here and there. Children began to cry; women to 1ift their voices; men to shout counsel for courage and calm.

“It’s the breath of the desert— of the outside world,” Shan answered Ai-Yaruk, seeking to explain.

“I’m not afraid,” she said.

“Down to the valley!” cried Shan as he recognized D’lak in the obscurity. “Down to the valley, where the water is!”

D’lak was showing a new quality of leadership. Even there in the starlight Shan could see that the mystic quality of the high priest’s face had become still deeper and was fortified now by lines of strength that had not been there before.

So it was with many others.

He noticed it as he passed among the stricken people, urging them as cheerfully as possible to get down from the mountain to where they could find shelter and water. A good many of those to whom he spoke— particularly the young men— responded to his words with a prompt manliness that he knew they would have been incapable of showing on the morning of this day, before disaster began.

But even he did not then suspect the magnitude of the catastrophe. He was thinking of the desert as he had known it— a thing to try one’s strength and patience— lethal unless respected. But men, women, and children could live out there and travel long distances when properly equipped.

However, this was true only of the desert-bred. It was not true of the men, women, and children of Yekeh-Kuruk; nor were they equipped for the struggle. They were hothouse plants suddenly exposed to the rude blast of the wilderness.

A little way down the mountainside Shan noticed something that shook him even more than that premonitory blast from the desert. They had crossed a water-course— dry, dry already!

There was a rending crash not far behind them.

The population of Yekeh-Kuruk started to run. It was panic. Down they went over once-familiar terraces, now familiar no longer; past former retreats of calm and luxury, now haunted with invisible menace. The whole mountain was crumbling away— as if it, also, were unable to support the contact with the rough, wild forces that had crumbled so many magic mountains in the past.

By the time that they reached the valley Shan was half supporting Ai-Yaruk. There he paused long enough to kiss her, console her, murmur questions that needed no answer. She smiled up at him and pressed his hand against her breast.

There were far crashes as if heavenly wreckers were pulling down this house of the ages, and the voices of people who cried out or laughed or sang; then something else— the wail of a rising sand-storm as the light of the stars went out.

Shan was suddenly face to face with D’lak.

“That early dream of mine,” he said—  “and yours!”

“No, no!” Shan answered. “I see now that your people could never stand it— out there.”

He brought himself up, gasping, as he thought of what he had said— gasping on his own account; for Ai-Yaruk— she was one of these people.

“Their spirits will stand what their bodies cannot,” D’lak answered.

Shan would have said more, but D’lak had bent closer to Ai-Yaruk.

“All will be well. Good-by— if—” he said. And then: “Stand close to Shan.”

He touched his finger-tips to Ai-Yaruk’s temples, shook Shan by the hand, enveloped them both in a mystic smile, and was gone.

There was a watercourse in the valley over against the dike. It had ceased to flow, but there was still much water in its pools. There the people drank.

Even the dike was crumbling-— an earthquake in the world of atoms and molecules which the crowding people could only sense in the burdened atmosphere, the thickening gloom, the hectic outbursts of weeping and ecstasy.

No refuge was left. The tunnel was lost in the welter of crumbling ruin.

Then over all this there came the moaning charge of aerial cavalry as sand-regiment chased sand-regiment out of space. Tons of sand— the spume of the Gobi— hurled forth in rolling regiments!

Shan lost track of all things except that Ai-Yaruk must be preserved. Both he and she had done all they could to succor and cheer others as long as the chance of doing so remained. Then there came a time when he was crawling, crawling, seeking for shelter, no other instinct alive than that of protecting still this other life that was dearer to him than his own.

He had soaked his proud silk raiment in the last water he found, and wrapped it about Ai-Yaruk’s beloved head. He found a ridge of rock, under the shelter of which he buried his own face in the protective silk. Here he waited and prayed, prayed and waited— as almost every one will do at some time or other if he loves.

THERE came a time when Shan, Ivan, and Charley Ling, each with his bride of yesterday, were making their way through the desert along that route of escape that Shan had laid out. But it was only too obvious that Ai-Yaruk, the “mandarin’s daughter,” with Ivan’s ineffable “her,” were not meant for such a struggle against the gaunt hardship that confronted them.

For a long time Shan hoped— as Ivan and Charley Ling must have done. The slaves that Shan had sent out had done their work well; but they had provided for two, not six; and for those two mounted on a swift camel, not crawling painfully forward like this. The three men scarcely touched food or water; but, even so, the battle to keep death away was heart-breaking.

Yekeh-Kuruk was no more. It had shriveled up in a night as a flower would have done— as all its gentle, kindly, beautiful people had done— and lay back there, buried for the ages to come no doubt under the drifting, soulless, remorseless sand.

Only these six had survived— the three men and the fine spirits they had sworn to cherish and protect. For in that ultimate, cataclysmic test it was their practical, rougher knowledge of the wild, wide world that had been their salvation.

The refinements of pure knowledge that had so long been the pride of the Golden Race had broken down, had failed to save them. Perhaps such knowledge as theirs would be more worth while among the spirits whither they had gone.

The party came to the last of the places where food and water had been placed. There they held counsel. It was a mournful little party— six human atoms in a sea of sand.

Said Charley Ling as he soothed his mandarin’s daughter with a tender hand:

“Friends, my heart calls me to the south— in the direction of Peking. Perhaps only death awaits me in that direction, but I should like to be overtaken, if overtaken I must be, with my face toward home.”

Those were not his exact words, but nearly so. He had spoken in English, so that his words would not further disturb the woman who had brought him almost the only real happiness he had ever known.

Said Ivan:

“Brothers, my heavy old heart calls me to the north. I don’t expect to find water up that way or meet a caravan. But she— she” — he looked down at the head that was pillowed in his hands—  “she must have a spirit-home up there. It was there she first appeared to me.”

Shan brought a strand of Ai-Yaruk’s hair to his dry lips.

“We’ve expected this,” he said, “ever since we failed to call any slaves to our aid. My heart is breaking, but I’m glad. My grandmother lives over that way— straight ahead—”

Ai-Yaruk opened her eyes and smiled up at him.

“She’ll love you so!” Shan murmured.

THE NEXT TIME the sun came up he and Ai-Yaruk were alone. They had traveled in the night— almost playfully at times, to the hum of faint, sweet music, the murmur of friendly voices, escorted by silent friends.

And not very far ahead was a city that was a curious combination of Yekeh-Kuruk and of Hambleton— a green hill, a grass-grown valley; only the houses were of brick or boards, and the temples had assumed steeples. But the people were about the same, so Shan and Ai-Yaruk agreed, and recognizing them was like a new game.

But with the coming up of the sun these fantoms, or whatever they were, became hard to control, receded, and came back only to disappear.

It was to be their last dawn together— in a way.

They came to a shriveled, long-dead tamarisk, and with the dry sticks of what had once been its ambitious, out-reaching branches Shan constructed a tent of a kind— enough to shade Ai-Yaruk’s spiritualized face. There he rested and gazed down at her.

They remained there throughout the day, hardly knowing when they slept or when they waked, there was so little difference between the things they saw when dreaming and when their eyes were open.

For they were always together. There were always pale figures that danced and whirled and beckoned, to music that was now loud, now soft. Figures and music became more pronounced as the sun dipped toward the west.

“They are getting ready for the nightly concert,” said Shan.

“They’ve come to help you, beloved,” said Ai-Yaruk, with a faint smile.

“In what way, Ai-Yaruk, loa?”

Ai-Yaruk merely smiled again. Suddenly Shan understood.

The sun dropped toward the horizon— slowly, as if it were watching them, as if it were sorry to go, as if it knew that when it came up again there would be but one of them there.

There came one of those little periods of clear perception— like a glade in a haunted forest. It came to both of them at the same time. It was, indeed, as if they were one person, with one heart, one mind, one soul.

“Shan,” Ai-Yaruk said, “I’m not going to die. I’ll be with you—”

Shan could not speak.

“Kiss me.”

He kissed her.

“You’ll find me— in your land— your home.”

The white shadow of an ethereal smile drifted across her face. Shan panted with open mouth, keeping back the sobs. He forced a smile in answer to her own.

How did it come that there was organ music here? he wondered. And why did the cloaked specters of the desert march round and round?

He would have to bury Ai-Yaruk here in the desert in her silken shroud, and he needed help. He got to his feet and waved for the nearest of the figures to draw near. They paid no attention.

“Here! Here!” Shan shouted. “Oh, God! My Ai-Yaruk’s dead!”

He tried to catch up with the nearest figures to explain; but while he was doing this still other figures, circling close, gently, pitifully, to the drone and hum of the lifting wind, sifted Ai-Yaruk over with sand, deeper and deeper, lifting a crescent-shaped dune where she lay.

Shan saw the light of a fire. It was the encampment of a band of wandering Kirghiz. They listened to what he told them. Some of them followed him out a way into the desert in the direction from which he came, and where he told them that they would find the body of the one he loved.

They searched and searched, and found nothing. They treated Shan kindly, for they said that he was mad— as perhaps he was.

Chapter 35

Home Again.

SHAN got back to Hambleton. He was sick and broken for a while, but his grandmother nursed him back to strength and health again as quickly as any one could have done. She did not ask him where he had been.

One day the postman brought him two letters.

One was from Charley Ling. It bore a Peking post-mark.

Charley wrote:

I am here to end my days. I am alone, except for what I have in my heart. Farewell.

The other letter was from Ivan. It was dated at Urga. It said:

Greeting. I am pardoned and well cared for. Likewise, O friend, I have an old man’s dreams. God bless you.

On the first day he was strong enough to get about Shan went across town to the machine-shop where he had worked and interviewed the friendly foreman.

“Hello,” said the foreman. “Did you get as far as Omaha?”

“I guess so,” Shan answered. Then he continued: “While I was knocking about I thought of that improvement you said was needed in the reversing-plate on the big lathe.”

He borrowed a stub of a pencil from the foreman and drew a plan on the white-washed wall.

“You’ve got it,” said the foreman. “Gee, that ought to make your fortune! Where d you get it?”

Shan looked at the foreman unsmilingly.

“We’ve got all that inside of us, you know.”

“How’d you like to have your old job back while you’re putting this thing through?” the foreman asked.

“I’d love it,” said Shan. “You can do all sorts of wonderful things in a little old shop like this.”

When Shan came back to his grandmother’s cottage he saw a girl standing at the gate talking to the old lady. A vague, disquieting tremor passed through Shan’s heart as he recognized her. It was Frances Talbot, looking paler than when he last saw her, more ethereal; infinitely— his heart supplied the words that his mind refused to form— infinitely more beautiful.

And when they met there at the side of the dusty, grass-grown street, it was wonderful how the visible world went into oblivion, so to speak, as he looked into her eyes and she looked into his. And was it Frances Talbot’s voice that spoke?

“And so we meet again!”

“Again,” Shan replied in a haunted whisper.

And stranger than this fashion of greeting each other was the fact that neither of them appeared to think it strange at all.

They talked a little while about inconsequential things. Each time their eyes met there was a quivering gust of mystery, shadowy semblances and fantom music, as if a bit of a breeze had floated half-way around the world, out of the Gobi Desert, to find them here.

After a while Shan bade Frances good afternoon, came up to his grandmother’s gate and kissed the old lady on top of her smooth, gray head.

“Frances was mighty good to me while you were away,” said Mrs. Sprague.

“She has changed,” said Shan.

“Yes,” his grandmother explained. “About a month or so before you got back Frances fell very sick. There was one night when they thought she was going to die; and then all of a sudden it was as though a new spirit had come into her. A sweet girl! We’ve sorta got to love each other, she and I—”

After supper, as the night settled down, Shan thought of all this. Across the street there still fluttered in the window of Charley Ling’s deserted laundry the sign that the old Chinaman himself had placed there. From down the street there came no staccato heat, as in former times, of Ivan’s hammer on rebellious leather.

He was touched with longing and loneliness. Then as he lifted his face to the stars he was touched with a tremor of ecstasy and tenderness.

He felt the touch of the magic ring on his breast.

He had seen Ai-Yaruk, his Golden Girl, when he looked into Frances Talbot’s eyes. Was it merely an illusion caused by all that he had in his heart?

All that there is is within you!

So the ring said.

So it had been explained to him by the last high priest of the Blue Wolf.

He wanted to make sure. He started off down the street in the direction of Frances Talbot’s house, while a stray breeze, dry and warm, caught up a wraith of dust from the street and started it whirling off ahead of him.

End

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35