Kona looked around longingly as we passed through the courts and chambers. He was anticipating with eagerness the time when he and his men would re-enter the place as conquerors, and was probably reflecting upon the amount of loot his men could obtain in the event of an order being given to sack the palace of the dreaded Naya. But without pausing to glance behind, our guide hurried us forward along a number of winding back streets of the city, hot, dusty and close-smelling after the broiling day, until he stopped before the door of a fine house, the walls of which were of polished white marble, that reflected the last rays of the sun like burnished gold. Striking the door thrice, it opened, and on going in he conducted us to a spacious hall, where we found exposed to our view a great collection of arms and warlike accoutrements. All kinds of instruments of death, which the inventive malice of man had ever discovered had been collected for the use of those determined to accomplish the overthrow of the wicked rule of the Naya. First, there were sticks, staves and knotty clubs. Next to these, spears, darts, javelins, armed with brass or iron, or their points hardened with fire, and innumerable bows with quivers and arrows, which Kona examined critically, giving low grunts of approbation as he scrutinized a specimen of each. After these, instruments of dubious use originally designed for the assistance of man, but perverted through cruelty and malice to the service of slaughter and death; such as knives, scythes, axes and hammers. On these were heaped arms, deliberately fashioned for the offence of mankind, swords, daggers, poignards, scimitars, and rapiers, while on the opposite side of the spacious place were stored the more refined and destructive instruments of European war, rifles, muskets, revolvers, bayonets, small field-pieces, machine-guns of various patterns, including four Maxims and their food, boxes of cartridges, kegs of powder, cakes of dynamite, bombs and shells. "Behold!" exclaimed Goliba, halting before them. "Here is one of our secret stores of arms." "One of them!" said Omar. "How many, then, have we?" "In the city there are sixteen, all similarly filled. Away in various parts of the country there are depôts in every populous centre," he replied. "But it must have taken a long time to obtain all these," the Prince observed, puzzled.