Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/377

Rh This was the core of the room, as it were—part of the heating apparatus. It was covered with smooth slabs of stone, on which there was no covering of any kind. There is no knowing how much lurid smoke and fire rolled beneath this giant stone ottoman.

It chanced that only two men were in the place at the time. They had advanced to a certain stage of the process, and were enjoying themselves, apparently lifeless, and in sprawling attitudes, on the hot sloppy floor. The attendant of one had left him for a time. The attendant of the other was lying not far from his temporary owner, sound asleep. One of the Moors was very short and fat, the other tall and unusually thin; both had top-tufts of hair on their shaven crowns, and both would have looked supremely ridiculous if it had not been for the horrible resemblance they bore to men who had been roasted alive on the hot ottoman, and flung carelessly aside to die by slow degrees.

"Do as I doos," said Rais to Flaggan, as he stretched himself on his back on the ottoman.

"Surely," acquiesced Ted, with a gasp, for he was beginning to feel the place rather suffocating. He would not have minded the heat so much, he thought, if there had only been a little fresh air!

Rais Ali's bath-attendant lay down on the slab