Even the Master himself, tempered in the fires of war's Hell, sensed this tremendous potentiality of death as the tiny handful of white men galloped on and on behind Bara Miyan. Here the Legion was, hemmed and pent by countless hordes of fanatics whom any chance word or look, construed as a religious insult, might lash to fury. Five men remained outside. The rest were now as drops of water in a hostile ocean. In the Master's breast-pocket still lay Kaukab el Durri--and might not that possession, itself, be enough to start a jihad of extermination? Was not the fact of unbelieving dogs now for the first time being in the Sacred City--was not this, alone, cause for a massacre? What, in sober reason, stood between the Legion and death? Only two factors: first, the potential destruction of the Myzab and the Black Stone in case of treachery; and second, two tiny pinches of salt exchanged between the Master and old Bara Miyan! The situation, calmly reviewed, was one probably never paralleled in the history of adventure--more like the dream of a hashish-smoking addict than cold reality. Very contending emotions possessed the hearts of the Legionaries, in different reactions to their diverse temperaments. Only a vast wonder mirrored itself in some faces, a kind of numb groping after comprehension, a failure to believe such a thing possible as a city of pure and solid gold. Others showed more critical interest, appreciation of the wonderful artistic effects of the carven gold in all its architectural developments under the skilled chisels of the Jannati Shahr folk. Still others manifested only greed. The eyes of such, feverishly devouring walls, cornices, pillars, seemed to say: "God! If we only had the smallest of these things, what a fortune that would mean! What an incredible fortune!" Each man, reacting under the overwhelming stimulus of this wonder city, in his own expression betrayed the heart and soul within him. And thus, each absorbed in his own thoughts and dreams, silently the Legionaries pondered as they galloped through the enchanted streets. Some fifteen minutes' riding, with no slackening of the pace and always on an upward grade toward what seemed the central citadel of Jannati Shahr, brought the party to an inner wall, forty feet high and pierced by a triple-arched gate surmounted by a minaret of golden lacery. Through the center arch rode Bara Miyan, now reining into a canter. The _imams_ and the Legionaries followed, and with them about fifty of the Arabs, of superior rank. The rest drew rein outside, still in complete silence. The lessened cavalcade now found itself in what at first glance seemed an enchanted garden. Not even a feeling of anxiety caused by the silent closing of the hugely massive golden gates that, as they passed through, immediately blocked the triple exit, could divert the Legionaries' minds from the wondrous park confronting them.