A shimmer of unearthly light played over the pits, like the thin, colored flames at the edge of a driftwood fire. Soft, opalescent gleams were blent with prismatic blues, greens, crimsons. Melting violets were stabbed through by hard yellows and penetrant purples. And here an orange flash vied with a delicate old rose; there a rich carnation sparkled beside a misty gray, like fading clouds along the dim horizons of fairyland. The Master murmured: "It's true, then--partly true. Rrisa knew part of it!" "Not all?" asked the woman. "I hardly think the Caliph el Walid's gold was ever brought to Jannati Shahr," he answered. "Coals to Newcastle, you know. And these jewels are not all uncut. Some are finely faceted, some uncut. But in the main Rrisa spoke the truth. He told what he believed." "Yes," assented the woman. Then she added: "Spartan simplicity, is it not? No elaborate coffers. Not even leather sacks. Just bins, like so much wheat." "The shining wheat of Araby!" "Of the whole Orient!" They fell silent, peering with fixed attention. And gradually some calm returned to the others. At the door, too, the turmoil had ceased. No doubt the Jannati Shahr men, baffled, had sent for much gunpowder to blow in the massive planking. That silence became ominous. Still the Legionaries could take no thought of anything but the Caliph el Walid's hoard. As they stood, squatted, or knelt around the pits--pits about two and a half feet square and deeper than the deepest thrust of any arm--it seemed to them that bottomless lakes and seas of light were opening down, down below them into unfathomed depths of beauty. Such beauty caused the soul to drink nepenthes of forgetfulness. Hardships, wounds, blood, pain, menace of death faded under that spell. That the Legionaries were trapped at the bottom of a vast rabbit-warren, with swarms of Moslem ferrets soon to rush upon them, now seemed to have no significance. Tranced, "indifferent to Fate," the adventurers peered on greater wealth of jewels than ever elsewhere in this world's history had been garnered in one place. The liquid light of the hoard flashed strange radiances on their tanned, deep-lined faces, now smeared with sweat and dust, with powder-grime and blood. Their eyes were beholding unutterable rainbows, flashings and burning glows like those of the Moslem's own Jebel Radhwa, or Mountain of Paradise. Each of these jewels--several million gems, at the least computation--what a story it might have told! What a tale of remotest antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim starlight! Of passion and of pain!