Chapter III: Part 3

Starting at the wall, and extending twenty feet out toward the center of the room, the floor was of black stone, a flat, continuous ring of smooth material that circled the whole room. Inside of this ring was the real floor, a single, huge disk of burnished metal, smooth as ice and as seamless, over nine hundred feet in diameter. And except for ourselves, who stood on the black ring near the entrance, there was nothing whatever on black circle or burnished floor, no people, tables, altar, nothing but the immense expanse of smooth metal and the comparatively thin black circle that surrounded it.

I looked up, and saw for the first time the people of the city. Cut in the thickness of the prodigious walls of the building were broad balconies, one above the other, ringing the building's interior as far up as I could see in the haze that hung above, and in these balconies were the dwellers of the city, Kanlars, guards and slaves. The lowest balcony, which was only a few feet above the floor, jutted forth in a smaller square gallery, a little away from where I stood, and in this projecting square sat three of the bright-haired Kanlars, the oldest-appearing men I had yet seen among them, two garbed in long robes of solid crimson while the other's garment was of deepest black. They sat there calmly, looking away across the big floor toward the great hall's other side. This lowest gallery, and the three directly above it, were filled with the Kanlars, while in the unnumbered galleries above these were the armored guards and the slaves. The only entrance to these galleries that I could see was a single narrow, winding stairway, a spiral stairway that began on the black circle of stone near the wall and slanted up from balcony to balcony, circling the building's sides several times as it spiraled up, and evidently leading up to the very roof of the place.

While I surveyed the scene, other ragged groups like our own had entered, escorted by guards, until a considerable number of us had been collected there near the entrance. Now one of the crimson-robed figures who sat in the gallery that jutted out from the lowest balcony, rose and uttered an order. My knowledge of the Kanlar language was too rudimentary for me to understand him, but when he had finished and resumed his seat, a delighted murmur swept over the massed crowds in the balconies.

Before I had time to speculate, the captain of the guards who watched us snapped out brief orders, and immediately eight of our number ran out of the center of the metal floor, where they at once drew their weapons and faced each other, in four individual combats.

In a few minutes, the four duels were over, but only three of the contestants came back from the floor's center. To my surprize, then, instead of being re-shackled to the rest of us, the three were handed armor and weapons like that of the other guards, which they donned at once. I began to understand now the purpose of these combats. Evidently the bravest fighters were weeded out in preliminary duels, such as I had taken part in, and the survivors of these first battles were then pitted against each other, the victors being adjudged worthy to enter the company of the guards. But where were these ragged fighters brought from?

The combats went on, always eight men battling at once, and I saw that our number was growing smaller very rapidly. Neither Denham nor I had yet been called on to fight, but my heart was beating rapidly, for I expected each time to be among the next eight. The blades clashed on, at the floor's center, and group after group went out from us, either to return and don the armor of the guards or to be dragged off the floor by slaves, dead or dying. The Kanlars in the lower balconies laughed and chatted as the ragged fighters on the floor slew each other, the massed guards above shouted their approval at each shrewd blow, and the fighting continued until finally but ten of our number were left, and by a freak of chance, both Denham and I were of that ten.

The fights on the floor ended, one by one, and swiftly the guards unshackled eight of our number and thrust them out onto the floor. I stood appalled. For the two who were left were myself and the Englishman!

While the swords clicked and flashed out on the floor, I stood in a daze, dismayed at the ironical trick which fate had played me. Of all the men in the city, I must fight the one whom alone I knew and liked. In a space of seconds, it seemed, the four fights on the floor had ended, and the fetters on my wrists were loosed. Together, hesitantly, Denham and I walked out onto the floor. Shouts of applause and encouragement came down from the balconies, for ours was the last fight, and the spectators wanted an exciting one.

* * * * *

Standing there at the very center of the huge building, Denham and I faced each other. Simultaneously we grasped the hilts of our rapiers, half drew them, and then, with a common impulse, slammed the blades back down into their sheaths. Without speaking, my companion stepped over and flung an arm across my shoulders, then tilted up his head and favored the spectators in the balconies with an insolent stare.

A howl of rage went up as it became evident that we would not fight each other. A torrent of taunts and execrations poured down on us from above, but we continued to lounge, arm in arm, as nonchalantly as possible.

Out from the black edge of the floor rushed a half-dozen of the guards, who seized us and hurried us off the floor, amid a storm of abuse from above. Instead of returning with us to the entrance, the guards led us toward the bottom of the spiraling stair and there stationed themselves beside us.

The angry cries in the balconies silenced, now, and a strange stillness filled the great hall. Music began, single, thrilling notes, like dropping peals of sound. Swiftly the lights began to dim, the glowing bulbs in the walls waning until all things in the vast room were wrapped in shadowy dusk.

The chiming music ceased, and over all that mighty fane was absolute silence, with no sound from Kanlars, guards or slaves. Then, in the little projecting gallery where he sat, the black-robed oldster rose and spoke.

His deep, heavy voice rolled out over the vast room with awesome effect, breaking as it did the unearthly silence. He was chanting, uttering an invocation or prayer. The words came to my ears, thick and blurred, so that I understood few of them. But the effect was one of utter solemnity--the darkness, the massed, silent crowds above, and that one deep voice speaking on, rising and falling.

For minutes the voice rumbled on, then abruptly ceased. There was another full minute of the strange silence, and a tremendous ringing note sounded. Even after it had died, the echoes of it beat in my ears like ghostly carillons of tiny, elfin chimes. And as it died away, there was a heavy, grating sound and the whole vast metal floor abruptly sank down some six feet into what appeared to be a gigantic smooth-walled shaft, then slid sidewise with another grating jar, vanishing into some aperture prepared for it. And where the floor had been was now a tremendous circular abyss, a straight-sided pit of such titanic depth that, looking down into it, I fell weakly to my knees and was seized with sudden nausea.

I stood on the very edge of the abyss, on the ring of black flooring that was its rim. And down from that rim, the stone sides of the great shaft fell smoothly to an unguessed depth. Far, far below, I seemed to see glimmering lights that winked faintly. And I saw, too, that the spiral staircase which circled the great room's interior from floor to roof continued on down beneath the floor and circled around and around this circular chasm in the same way, winding down into the unguessed depths below.

I felt Denham pulling me back from the edge of the shaft, beside which I lay. Dimly I realized that all in the great building were now chanting, rolling forth the same invocation as the black-robed leader. Far above, now, at the very ceiling or roof of the cylinder, a light burgeoned out, a burning purple beam that clove its light down through the dim haze and shadows around it. A moment it hung there, then there was a faint sigh of wind, a puff of icy air, and down, straight down from the vast hall's roof, there raced like a misty plummet--the Raider!

It flashed down until it hung on a level with myself, in midair, poised at the very center of the circular abyss and floating there effortlessly. It hung there, its gray mass changing, fluxing, interlacing, while at its center hung the three little orbs of purple light, steady and unwinking. From all the massed thousands on the balconies a sigh of worship went up.

The chant rolled out, louder, fiercer, and through it sounded another single ringing note. There was another whistle of wind, and the three purple orbs of the Raider flashed to green, while the solid but fluxing mass of it changed to a spinning cloud of gray vapor, that swirled rapidly around the central lights. Another fierce gust of wind smote me, and abruptly the Raider had vanished.

Up in the balconies the chant went on, repeated again and again. I saw a sea of white faces above, all turned down toward the spot where the Raider had disappeared. Minutes passed. The chanting went on, low, vast and deep-toned.

Came another buffeting breeze, a tempest of shrill wind-sounds, and with startling suddenness the Raider reappeared, flashing back into being at the same spot where it had vanished, above the center of the abyss. Again the green orbs changed to purple, and its cloudy mass contracted to the shifting but solid form it had occupied before. But now, held in its shapeless self, were men, who hung helpless in its grasp. It drifted over to the marble edge of the abyss, and loosed the men it held, then moved back to the pit's center.

The chanting swelled out, exultant, and I saw the men thus loosed struggle to their feet and look around with utter awe and terror. They were five in number, three in short white tunics who looked like men of ancient Greece, the other two wizened little figures with dark skin and long, wispy mustaches, either Huns or Tartars.

Again a ringing note cut through the chanting, and as if in obedience the Raider rose, floated up toward the vast hall's roof, whence it had come. It disappeared there, the purple light burned for a moment and vanished, and the chanting finally ceased.

The bulbs glowed out, at once, and light filled the place. The crowds in the balconies began to leave, streaming down the narrow staircase toward the floor. Before they reached it, however, guards had reached and fettered the five men the Raider had left on the pit's edge, and they now brought them over and shackled them also to Denham and me.

Our little group stood now on the very edge of the abysmal shaft. Some twenty feet below us there was a little landing, from which the stair started, spiraling down and around the shaft, into the darkness below. I wondered momentarily how the landing was reached, but my wonder ceased as a guard touched a lever in the wall, causing a little metal stair to unfold swiftly from the side of the shaft itself, a light little series of steps that connected the black marble ring of flooring with the landing below.

At an order from the guards we stepped onto it, down it to the landing and on down the spiral stair, which was cut in the solid rock of the great shaft's sides. Looking back, I saw the steps down which we had come fold back into the wall, and a moment later the light from above was shut out as the great metal floor of the temple swung back into position above us with a grating clash.

Our only light now was from bulbs set in the smooth wall along the down-winding stair, and these gave hardly enough light to show us the next steps. A low wall about a yard in height, pierced with an ornamental design of openings, was our only protection from the abyss on our left. Yet the guards still marched us on, around and around the great shaft, in a tremendous, falling spiral, down, down....

_CHAPTER 11_

THE CITY OF THE PIT

Soon a dim pearly light began to show far below us, a light that puzzled me. In the world above, I knew, it must be dawn, but how this was connected with the growing light below, if it was so connected, baffled me.

And now we reached the end of the shaft down whose sides we had come. It ended abruptly, and below on each side lay a great open space, obscured by drifting clouds of mist. But the stair did not end with the shaft. It dropped straight on down, a free, unsupported spiral of gleaming metal, winding down into the obscuring mists that hid its lower length. It was an eery thing to see, that gigantic twisted stairway, like a great corkscrew, vanishing down into the mists, like some pathway of the gods from heaven to earth. And it could hardly have been hung there by less than gods, I thought. No metal or material ever known to me would have been able thus to hold its unsupported weight in the form of this stair, yet there it was, seemingly tossed there in godlike indifference to the laws of mechanics. In its way, it was as great a wonder as the great building above. As that thought came to me, the light around us began to grow, to redden like the sunrise, and the mists cleared, drifted away in masses, vanished. And there, beneath me, lay the pit.

I can only describe that pit by saying that it was like the inside of a round, squat bottle, the neck of the bottle being the shaft down which I had come. This great cavern below me was roughly circular in shape, all of four miles in diameter, and a mile from its level floor to its glowing roof. For that roof was glowing. Looking up at it as we marched on down, I saw that set in it were scores of brilliant globes of glass, from which a flood of growing light, golden light, sunlight, _daylight_, was pouring down.

I saw now that the spiral stair down which we marched reached down to the pit's floor, and touched it near its center. And I saw, too, that all of the great cavern's floor, from one towering side to another, was covered with mass on mass of white, roofless buildings, of all shapes, covering the floor of the pit and huddling closely beneath the perpendicular walls of smooth rock.

At the center of this great mass of buildings, directly below us, was a great open clearing, or plaza, and it was there that the stairway touched the pit's floor. And from this plaza, clear to the circling walls, nine streets branched out, radiating in every direction like the spokes of a wheel. Along those streets moved great masses of men, and these were the dwellers in the city, the people of the pit.

So it was that I looked first on the city of the pit, the city of the Raider, and its people, over whom his shadow had been cast. And, looking, I wondered if there in the massed crowds below were Lantin and Cannell, and if it were possible to find them, here.

Again our guards ordered us forward, and we marched on. But now only a low wall on each side protected us from the abyss, and there was no wall on the right side against which to cling. But our guards seemed to mind this not at all, and I judged that they had made many trips up and down the stair, to be thus hardened to its dangers.

As we descended, Denham explained to me in a low voice the origin of the lights on the roof. These were merely lenses of a kind, he said, which diffused into the cavern real sunlight brought from above. I had already seen and puzzled at the glass globes set on pedestals through the city of cylinders above, but now saw their purpose. Those globes received the sunlight, transmitted it in some unknown fashion down to the globes on the roof, which gave it forth again. Thus it was that day and night in the pit were the same as in the world above, and the light there waxed and waned in accordance with the rising and setting of the sun which these people never saw.

We drew closer and closer toward the ground, and now I saw that at the stair's end, where it touched and debouched on the pit's floor, it was closed by a high, heavy gate of metal, barred and spiked, and that on our own side of this gate was a force of some fifty of the guards, armed with long spears and also with curious little cylinders of shining metal which they carried in their belts, and which I guessed were weapons of a kind unknown to myself.

As we came down toward them, these guards drew aside and unlocked the big gate. Our own captors unshackled us, and then pushed us through it unceremoniously, so that we stood in the clearing or plaza. And the gate was quickly shut and locked behind us.

Standing there, I forgot all else in the fascination of the scene around me. Across the open plaza, which was smoothly floored with stone, a great multitude of people were coming and going, and it was that shifting throng that held my gaze. For in it were men of every race and land and time, men of the far past and men of my own time, all seized and brought here by the Raider to mix and mingle in one vast, variegated throng. Even that first glance showed me that there must be thousands, tens of thousands of men prisoned in this gigantic under-city, and it showed me, too, that even as among the guards and slaves above, there were no women. All were comparatively young men, few being over middle age, and nearly all had the appearance of warriors.

Men of a thousand different centuries passed and repassed there before my eyes, men who had been flashed through the ages and brought there by the same alien being that had seized Cannell before my eyes, and that had seized, only a few hours before, the five newcomers who had come down the great stair with Denham and me.

For these, these crowds and masses of men that choked the streets and squares and buildings of this city of hell, these were the spoils of the Raider, gathered together for some unholy purpose of his own, and prisoned here in the pit, far beneath the city of the Kanlars. In a living panorama of the past, they streamed by me, a brilliant, barbaric throng.

Many of them were unknown in race to me, but many others I could recognize by their dress or features. There were Egyptians, shaven-headed men in long white robes, strangely aloof and silent in that noisy gathering. They carried short swords and bows, and I noticed that every one of the figures that passed before me wore weapons of some sort. I saw Assyrians, here and there, ravagers of the ancient world, wolf-faced, black-bearded men with burning eyes, clad in strange armor.

Three courtly, spade-bearded Spaniards sauntered by, carrying themselves as proudly as on the day when their galleons ruled the seas. A hulking, shock-headed savage clad in evil-smelling skins shambled by, with a giant gnarled club in his hand, his receding brow and jutting jaw proclaiming him a troglodyte, a man of the world's dawn. And right behind him came two stern-faced men in medieval armor, with the cross of the Crusaders blazoned on their battered shields.

Indians passed, with bow and tomahawk, hawk-faced and alert. Clear-skinned Greeks, laughing at some jest of their own. Chinese, quiet and inscrutable, whose eyes narrowed even further as they caught sight of the two wizened Tartars who had come down the stair with us. A tall frontiersman in suit of buckskin, with bowie knife in his belt, strode past, conversing with a helmed Phoenician sea-captain. And everywhere, clustering always together in little groups, were Romans, legionaries in tunic, breastplate and helmet, with bronze short-swords, who looked contemptuously on all other races in the passing throng.

* * * * *

A hand descended on my shoulder, and I turned, startled, to find that I had completely forgotten the Englishman, Denham, who stood behind me.

"Deuced strange, at first, isn't it?" he asked, smilingly, gesturing toward the moving pageant of the past, around us. Before I could answer, he went on, "You'd best come with me, now."

"Where?" I asked.

"Why, to my own barracks," he answered. "That's what these buildings are for, you know, but as a newcomer, you'd be in trouble here in a minute, without someone to answer for you. And, too, I want you to meet my own friends."

He looked at me more sharply. "I take it that you're no great friend of--" and he stopped, raising his eyes eloquently upward.

"The Raider?" I asked, and when he nodded I said, "Not I! I'm here to find a man--two men."

"Find a single man here?" asked Denham, sweeping his hand around the crowded streets in a hopeless gesture. "It's impossible! And what would you do when you found him? Escape? That, too, is impossible. How would you get up the stair, through the city of the Kanlars? And even if you achieved the impossible and did get through, there would be no place to go, for all around the city above is nothing but wild, uninhabited country where they would easily hunt you down."

"No matter," I told him; "once I got clear of the city above, I could make good my escape."

He looked at me with sudden interest. "So," he murmured; "and perhaps if my friends and I could help you--," but then he checked himself. "I must see them," he said, "before saying more."

I nodded, a new line of thought opening up to me, and then with Denham leading, we went on down one of the branching streets. In that street was a replica of the noisy, motley throng that filled the plaza, and their cries filled the air with a babel of a thousand different tongues. I noted, though, that many spoke in the language of the Kanlars, and guessed that it was that tongue which served more or less as a means of communication between the thousands gathered here, a supposition I later found to be correct.

Most of the buildings along the street seemed to be the barracks Denham had spoken of, housing the city's occupants, though some of them appeared to be wine-shops of a sort, judging from the drunken men who reeled out of them. An inquiry to my companion elicited the information that the only food of the city was the same golden liquid which had been furnished me above, and which I learned was made artificially directly from the soil itself. Thus the cycle of foodstuffs in my own time, where a plant draws its substance from the soil and is then eaten, or where an animal feeds on the plants sprung from the soil, to be eaten by us in turn, was entirely eliminated by the Kanlars, who manufactured their food directly from the soil itself, recasting the chemical composition of it to produce the yellow fluid. This yellow liquid, I learned, was made by slaves in the city above and was piped down to the city below and dispensed to the hordes there in the little buildings which I had assumed to be wine-shops. It seemed that while the stuff was a perfect food when taken in small quantities, yet when an excess was drunk it produced a violent intoxication. And as it was dispensed freely, it was not wonderful that there were great debauches of drunkenness in this under-metropolis.

One result of that we saw, for all along the street there was fighting, deadly battles between men of far-differing times and races. There was no interference in these combats, for there were none of the guards or Kanlars through all the city, the occupants being left to fight their own battles on the principle of the survival of the fittest. An excited ring of spectators was gathered round each combat, shouting at and cheering the opponents, not dispersing until the fighting was over. As we passed the scene of one such duel, I saw the victor dragging away the body of his late enemy.

"Where is he taking it?" I asked of Denham, motioning toward the receding figure.

"To the bottom of the stair," was his answer. "There is an iron rule that in any battle where a man is killed, the victor must carry the body of his opponent to the stair and hand it over to the guards there."

"But why?" I asked. "For burial above?"

Denham smiled grimly. "You saw the slaves in the city above," he said, "but did you notice how strange they were, how glassy-eyed and stiff-moving?"

When I nodded, he said, "Well, the slaves of the city above are men who have been killed here in the under-city."

At my exclamation of horror, he repeated his statement. "Man," he exclaimed, "you do not know the power of the Kanlars. With the wisdom that is theirs, such an accomplishment is child's-play."

"But how done?" I asked.

"Ask them," he answered darkly. "In some way they are able to bring back the breath of life into the dead men, to repair the wounds that killed them. They can make them live again, but not even the Kanlars can bring back their souls. They are just living, walking bodies, whom the Kanlars are able to control and to force to work their will in all things. Dead-alive, and slaves to the Kanlars!"

I shuddered deeply, for the idea was soul-sickening. Yet I knew now that Denham spoke truth, for I remembered how from my cell in the city above I had seen Talerri, garbed as a slave, Talerri, whom I had killed myself. It was an invention that would have aroused pride in the fiends of lowest hell, thus to raise dead men back to life and use them as servants. And I knew that this was but one of the dark evils that lay concealed under the rule of the laughing, bright-haired Kanlars.

* * * * *

While we talked we had been moving along the crowded street toward the distant wall of the pit. Finally, very near that wall, Denham turned in at a low, long building that was of white stone, and roofless, like most others in the city. I followed him inside, and looked around curiously.

The building's interior was a single large room, shaded from the light above by a suspended awning of green cloth. Ranged along the walls was a triple tier of metal bunks, in some of which lay cloth and fur robes. There was a long metal table at the room's center, and lounging in chairs around it, and in the bunks, were a score of men who looked up without interest as we entered.

Denham greeted them, and in reply they grunted lazily, looking at me incuriously. I followed my companion to the farther end of the room, where he seated himself in one of the bunks and motioned me to join him.

"My friends aren't here now," he said, "but they'll return before long."

A sudden curiosity prompted my next question. "How did you get here, Denham?" I asked. "Was it--the Raider?"

"Naturally," he answered. "It was the Raider, as you call it, that brought us all here, curse him. It was in the Colonial rebellion he got me."

"The American rebellion?" I asked, striving to understand his Eighteenth Century allusions.

"Of course," he answered. "We were quartered in Philadelphia, under that old fool, Howe. He liked the city, y'know, the bottle and the ladies. But the rest of us were itching for fight, and since we couldn't fight the rebels, we soon took to fighting one another.

"There was a ball one night, and toward the end of it I began to have a few words with a Hessian attached to our staff. We were both a little scrambled, by then. Curse me if there weren't some fine cellars there! But as to the German, he and I got hotter and hotter, until he finally made the assertion that our commander was a fool. Personally, that was my opinion also, but I couldn't allow the Dutchman to say so, and the upshot of it was that we left the ball together and adjourned to an open field near by to resume the argument, with our swords.

"Before we had made a half-dozen passes, there was a hellish sound of wind, a big, gray cloud with burning green eyes seemed to drop down on us from above, and then the bottom dropped out of the world. When we came to our senses, we were standing up there in the big temple, with a dozen others. Of course, we didn't know then that we had been brought on through time, but we knew it was a damned strange place.

"They brought us down here, down the stair, and as soon as we were turned loose here, we resumed our dispute, borrowing swords from two bystanders. By luck, I pinked him. There was a big crowd around, cheering us on, and it was then that I met D'Alord, who is one of the friends I mentioned."

As Denham finished his story, I began to feel a sudden, utter weariness, for I had not slept for many hours. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, and at once Denham jumped up.

"Why, take the bunk, man," he ordered me. "Go ahead and sleep."

"But what of Lantin," I asked, "my friend? He's somewhere in the city here, I'm sure, and I must find him."

Denham shook his head doubtfully. "What does he look like?" he asked.

When I had described Lantin to him, his face cleared a little, I thought. "An elderly man, you said?" he questioned, and when I nodded, he continued, "That should make it easier to find him, then. There are hardly any but young men here, so your friend would be more conspicuous and easily located. But you go ahead and sleep, and I'll find my friends and look for your companion. If anyone can find him, we can."

I tried to thank him, but he waved my words aside with a smile and walked out of the room. I sank back in the bunk and closed my eyes. As drowsiness overcame me, there came to my ears the dull sound of voices of the men in the room, with now and then a shout or bellow of laughter. And even these faded from hearing as I sank, contentedly enough, down into the green depths of sleep.

_CHAPTER 12_

PLANS FOR ESCAPE

Golden light again streamed through the windows when I finally woke, and I realized that in my utter weariness I must have slept the clock twice round. I swung out of the bunk and stood up, stretching.

There was only one man in the long room besides myself, a man who sat at the table, some distance away from me. As I looked at him he turned, saw me, and jumped up and hurried over toward me.

"Lantin!" I cried, extending my hands. He gripped them, his eyes sparkling.

"Where have you been?" I asked eagerly. "Were you in the city here all the time?"

"All the time since I left you," he affirmed. "They brought me directly here, Wheeler, and of course when I got here I knew at once that we had found the Raider's lair. Your friend Denham found me, a few hours ago, and told me where you were, but when I came here I saw that you were sleeping and didn't waken you."

"You should have," I told him. "But where is Denham now?"

"He'll be here soon," replied my friend. "He said he would go after his friends, who were helping him to look for me, and bring them here."

"But what of Cannell, Lantin?" I asked. "You have seen nothing of him in your stay here?"

His face clouded. "Nothing," he admitted. "I have searched for him, but how is one to find a single man in this city of thousands? And we do not even know that he is here, Wheeler. For all we know, he may have been killed long ago in some brawl here."

"Don't give up hope," I told him. "With Denham to help us, we have a far better chance to find him."

Lantin shook his head doubtfully, but before he could answer, our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Denham and his three friends. As they came up to us, I gazed with mounting interest at the trio of strange companions who accompanied the Englishman.

One of them was patently a Roman, a short, sturdy man with swarthy, stern-set features, attired in armor and helmet. The man beside him was brown-skinned and long-haired, with eagle black eyes, dressed in spotted skins, quilted cotton armor, and head-dress of feathers. He carried a curious long sword, or weapon, whose edges were serrated, or saw-toothed, and the weapon gave me the clue to his identity. I had seen swords exactly like it brought out of the Aztec ruins in Mexico.

But it was the third man who caught and held my gaze. He was a figure of romance, a slouch-hatted, wide-booted trooper, long sword rattling at his heels, laughing, dare-devil eyes, and white teeth gleaming behind a fierce black mustache. As I surveyed him, rather rudely I think, he smiled at me and exclaimed, in execrable English: "_Mordieu_, is this the lad who killed that pig, Talerri?"

When Denham nodded, he thrust forth his hand impulsively, and I was glad to take it. And then Denham made introduction. "The Chevalier Raoul D'Alord," he said, indicating the laughing trooper, who swept me a grand bow. "One time captain in the armies of Henry Quatre, King of Navarre and France, but now a lodger in our pleasant city," and he laughed at the wry face the Frenchman made.

"This is Ixtil, Cacique of Tlacopan," he went on, indicating the wild brown figure in the middle, and I looked at him with renewed interest, now that my surmise had proved correct. An Aztec! One of the fierce hordes who had swept away Maya and Toltec forever, only to be crushed in turn by ruthless, steel-shod Cortez. The chieftain bowed to me, gravely and silently, but did not speak.

Denham turned to the remaining figure. "Fabrius Arminius," he said, "formerly centurion in the legions of Tiberius Cæsar," and the Roman stiffly inclined his head. Then, at Denham's suggestion, we seated ourselves around the end of the long table.

"D'Alord speaks English as well as I do," said Denham, "and between us we taught it to Ixtil and Fabrius, so you can speak freely. I have told my friends that you are, like ourselves, ready for an attempt at escaping. Naturally, though, they would like to hear it from your own lips."

"It is so," I assured them. "Lantin and I came here to find a certain man, and if we can find him, we'll take him out of here in spite of the Raider."

"The Raider?" queried D'Alord, and Denham interjected a brief explanation. "He means--_him_," he told the Frenchman, jerking a thumb upward.

The trooper laughed. "_Sacré_, that's a name for the beast! Eh, Fabrius?"

The Roman nodded, silently, and Denham came back to the subject. "For some time," he went on, "we four have considered different plans for escaping, but none has been practical. There are so many obstacles. It will be necessary to get up the stair, avoiding the guards at bottom and top. Once up, it will be necessary to pass through the city of the cylinders, though that should not be too difficult. But once out of the city, what then? How cross the ice?"

"We are talking at cross purposes," I said. "You must remember, Denham, that I know next to nothing about this place. Why have all these men been collected in this under-city? Does anyone know, except the Raider? What is the purpose of it all?"

"You do not know?" asked Denham, in surprize. "I thought you would, by now. These men, these thousands of warriors in the city here around you, have been gathered here by the Raider to act as his armies, his mercenaries, to pour down in hordes upon the cities of the enemies of the Kanlars, and destroy those enemies utterly, which the Kanlars are too few in number to do."

I gasped with astonishment. Denham went on. "You tell him, Fabrius," he said, addressing the Roman. "You have been here longer than any of us."

The centurion spoke, in a slurred, accented English. "Some things I have heard," he said, "but whether true or not, I can not say. There was a man here I knew when first I was brought here, a Persian. Before he was killed (for he was killed in a drunken brawl) he told me that once, in the city above, one of the Kanlars had become drunk and had babbled to him the story of his race.

"As you know, endless fields of ice lie around this land where is the Kanlar's city. Well, the Persian said that these fields of ice were not endless, that far to the south there were other green lands and in them a mighty people and a mighty city, named Kom. He said that long ago the Kanlars lived in this city, and were of its people, but that trouble had risen between them and the other people of Kom, _because of the Raider_. More than this he did not know, but said that because of this trouble, the Kanlars had fled from the city, with the Raider leading them, and coming north in their air-boats over the ice-fields, had found this green, uninhabited land, set in the ice. Its existence had never been suspected by those in Kom, who thought that the ice extended clear north to the very edge of earth.

"So the Kanlars had settled here and had built the city of cylinders, which lies above us. But still they planned to sweep back on Kom, and annihilate all there. But this they could not do, being too few in number. So the Raider, who is their god and their king, spoke to them and said that he would bring them men from every age of earth's past to be their servants, to fight for them at will. The Raider could travel at will through time--ask me not how!--and he swept back through the centuries and brought men by the thousands to the Kanlars, young warriors to fight their battles for them.

"There was a great cavern far beneath the city of the Kanlars, a great hollow space formed by inside shiftings of the young earth, and in this the Kanlars prisoned the men brought by the Raider, piercing a shaft down to it from their temple above, and placing in that shaft the stairway down which you came, under the direction of the Raider. They chose from among their prisoners some to be guards of the others, and those killed in battle here they brought back to seeming life by their arts of hell, and used as slaves.

"So, steadily, the hordes here in the pit have grown in number, until scarcely more could be contained here. Soon there will be enough to suit the purpose of the Raider and then they will be loosed and hurled south to carry fire and death to the cities beyond the ice, to Kom and the people of Kom, who can have no knowledge whatever of the peril that hangs over them. Up on the great roof of the temple, which is the home of the Raider, there are scores of great flying-platforms which the Kanlars have been constructing. They have made strange weapons, too, and so when their hour strikes, they will open the gates here and allow the hordes to pour up the stair, up to the roof of the temple, where they will crowd into the flying-platforms, under the leadership of the Kanlars, and race south over the ice to rain down death and destruction on Kom. And thus will the Raider and the Kanlars be revenged upon the people who cast them out."

* * * * *

Fabrius stopped, and I looked at Lantin, then back toward the Roman. Was this the true secret of the Raider's activity?

"But will the hordes here do this?" I asked. "Will they follow the Kanlars, and obey them?"

Fabrius laughed shortly, and D'Alord replied for him. "Ha, friend," he said to me, "you are new here, and do not know these men. They are evil, I tell you. They boast always of what they will do when they are loosed on Kom, for they know that soon they are to be thus loosed. Some subtle poison from the Raider's self has entered into them, I think. They are like tigers waiting to be freed upon a helpless prey."

"It is so," said Lantin, "for short a time as I have been here, I have found that this is so. There is no hope from the hordes here in the pit, for they will follow the Raider to a man."

There was a silence after that. Suddenly Denham spoke. "I think it would be possible for some of us, at least, to get out of the pit here," he said, "for I have a plan that would effect that much. But what then? Do you suppose it would be possible to get up to the roof of the temple and steal one of the flying-platforms you speak of? Or steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats? If we could do that, we could fly south over the ice-fields and warn the cities there of their peril, get their aid and come back and crush the Raider and these damned Kanlars."

For the first time, the Aztec spoke, shaking his head. "It can not be done," he said, speaking in precise, queerly clipped English. "I was to the roof of the temple once, and know. The only way to get to that roof is by the narrow stairway that spirals up the inside of the temple. And that stairway leads directly through the lair of the Raider!"

"But what can we do, then?" asked the Englishman. "It would be folly to try to steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats, for they always rise from and alight on the roofs of buildings, and we could never get to them unobserved."

Lantin broke into the silence that ensued. "But suppose there was an air-boat hidden back in the hills, outside the city," he said; "that would make things easier, wouldn't it?"

When they assented, he went on quickly, "Wheeler and I have such a machine hidden," he said, "and it was on it that we came here from our own time."

They looked up eagerly, incredulously. "Do you mean that you came into this age from your own time on a machine?" asked Denham. "That you came yourselves, and were not brought here by the Raider, like all the rest of us?"

Lantin nodded affirmation, and then went on to describe briefly the seizure of Cannell, our pursuit through time, and our subsequent capture outside the city by the guards. They listened, fascinated, and when he had finished, D'Alord asked, with something of awe in his voice, "And you made this machine yourselves? You found the secret of the Raider's time-traveling?"

"It is so," Lantin told them; "we made the time-car and then came after Cannell."

"God!" exclaimed the trooper, "what a chance for freedom! If we could all win free of this pit, escape from the city to your car, we could get back to our own times in it. Back to France!"

"No!" said Denham, decisively. "In the first place not all of us can escape from the pit. I have a plan by which some of us can, but the rest must stay here. And another thing, even if we each got back to our own time, D'Alord, who knows but that the Raider would come back and recapture us, as he did this Cannell they tell of? For all we know, the Raider may have placed on us some sign or mark by means of which he could track us down through the ages again. And until he is destroyed, it will be of no use to return to our own times."

"But what to do, then?" asked the Frenchman.

"This," said Denham. "We four will help Lantin and Wheeler to escape from the pit. Only two can succeed in escaping, by my plan, for more would be noticed in the city above, and we four will be needed to give them their start up the stair, how, I will explain later. And since only one or two can escape, Lantin and Wheeler must be the ones to make the attempt, since they alone know how to operate their machine, and know where it is hidden.

"If they can reach their car, they will speed south across the ice, warn the people of Kom of the plans of the Kanlars, and come back with a force sufficient to crush the Raider and the Kanlars forever, and then they can rescue us four from the pit."

"The plan is good," approved the Roman. "We four must stay while they go. When do you plan to make the attempt?" he asked Denham.

"We must wait until the night will be moonless," he said, "for the darkness will favor the attempt. The eighth night from today would be best."

"But your plan," asked the impatient Frenchman; "how do you plan to get up the stair?"

"In this manner," explained the Englishman; "we must make a grappling-hook of heavy metal, and a long, strong rope. On the night we select for the attempt, we four will assemble at the lower gate of the stair, while Lantin and Wheeler take up a position at the plaza's edge, directly under the lowest curve of the spiral stair. Then, by shouting or fighting, we four shall create a riot around the gate, to draw the attention of the guards inside. When the excitement is at its highest, and when the people around the position of Lantin and Wheeler have run toward the riot, as they always do here, then Wheeler will fling up the grappling-hook toward the curving stair above him. If fortune favors us, the hook will catch, he can ascend the rope and pull up Lantin, and the two can then proceed on up the stair, being above the gate and its guards."

"But the guards above?" D'Alord objected. "How pass them? And what of the metal floor of the temple, which covers the shaft? It will be closed, and how will they get through it?"

"No," said Denham, "for if we start a sufficiently large riot at the gate of the stair, the guards behind it will become alarmed and call for help from above. They have a system of signaling with those above and if they think the hordes here are going to attack the gate, those above will open the shaft by swinging aside the temple floor, and will send guards down to repel the attack on the gates. The shaft being open, and the guards gone, Lantin and Wheeler should have no trouble getting out and through the city, to their car."

"But we will meet the guards coming down the stair!" I cried.

"Not so," Denham assured me, "for when there is a call for aid from their fellows below, the guards above don't descend by the stair, since it would take them too long. They unreel great ropes or cables, drop them over the shaft's edge so that they hang clear to the stair's bottom, and then attach a sort of harness to themselves, join that harness to the cables with special pulleys, and slide down to the stair's bottom in a few minutes. Twice, since I have been here, there have been riots around the gate, and each time the guards above came whizzing down in that way, to repel the riot."

"Whatever else they are," added D'Alord, "there are no cowards among the guards. No one ever called me craven yet, but _ventre-de-biche_, I'd look twice before sliding down a rope into this hell."

"Yet what if some of the guards did come down the stair?" I asked.

Denham shook his head. "I do not think they will do so," he said.

"Yet if they did?" I insisted.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Why, then you would meet them on the stair."

We looked at each other, a little grimly, I think, and then there was a shattering roar of laughter from D'Alord. "Why borrow trouble?" he cried. "Take your sword with you, lad, and if you meet anyone on the stair, have at him. If you are the stronger, you will kill your enemies, and if your enemies are the stronger, they will kill you. What more is there to it?"

I could not help laughing, ruefully, as did the rest, but Lantin suddenly sobered.

"But Cannell?" he asked. "What of my friend? We came here to rescue him, you know, and can't leave without him."

"There are eight days yet in which to find him," Denham pointed out, "and if you can not find him in that time, we four will try to locate him after you and Wheeler have escaped. If he's here in the pit, we'll have him with us by the time you come back."

* * * * *

Our conversation was abruptly broken off by the entrance of a number of the room's occupants, who regarded our little group with suspicious stares.

"We'd best break up," Denham whispered, "for we don't want it to get abroad that we're planning something."

So, rising, we sauntered out of the room into the street. Outside a hot sunlight was pouring down from the glass globes in the roof, so strongly that one could not look up at that roof directly, any more than one can look directly at the sun. Whatever method the Kanlars had devised to collect and bring so far underground the light and heat of the sun, it was a wonderfully efficient one.

Behind us loomed the gray-rock wall of the pit, and before us, stretching away for miles to the opposite wall, were the masses of white buildings that housed the city's teeming thousands. And at the central plaza, the titanic, gleaming spiral of the metal stairway rose vastly up toward the black, round shaft that pierced the cavern's roof, its winding turn on turn glinting in the light like a huge, upraised serpent of metal.

In the shifting, noisy throng that pressed by us along the street, that swirled aimlessly through streets and buildings, I sensed a quality of expectation, of eager, restless waiting. Even I, new to the city as I was, could feel the unwonted excitement that pulsed from the passing crowds. And I saw that my companions felt it likewise.

A grizzled seaman in stained, shapeless clothes, who might have sailed with Drake or Hawkins, stopped in front of us.

"Ho, comrade!" he cried to Denham; "hast heard the news?"

"News! What news?" asked Denham, his brows drawing together.

"An hour ago," said the other, "the guards sent word through the city to sharpen all swords, to get all weapons ready. I tell thee, lad, it's soon we'll be dropping down on Kom, to loot it from end to end. Split me, they're going to loose us ere long," and with an anticipatory, gloating chuckle, the seaman passed on.

Denham turned to us, his face suddenly white. "You heard?" he asked. "That means that we have little time left for action. We dare not wait now until the moonless nights. We'll have to take our chance on the first night that it's cloudy above, for then it will be darker here. And if we fail in our attempt, it means these hordes of devils here flashing down to make a hell of an unwarned, unprotected city. For the Raider is getting ready to strike!"

_CHAPTER 13_

IN THE PIT