Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/292

 Again that weird, fantastic dance commenced, the princess working herself up from the drowsiest undulations to a hurricane of emotion. Then she stopped close by the orb, and seized the corner of the web covering it. We saw the globe begin to beam with veiled magnificence at her touch.

Not an eye wavered, not a thought wandered from her in all that silent multitude. It was a moment of the keenest suspense, and just when it was at its height there came a strange sound of hurrying feet behind the outermost crowd, a murmur such as a great pack of wolves might make rushing through snow, while a soft long wail went up from the darkness.

Whether Heru understood it or not I cannot say, but she hesitated a moment, then swept the cloth from the orb of her fate.

And as its ghostly, self-emitting light beamed up in the darkness with weird brilliancy, there by it, in gold and furs and war panoply, huge, fierce, and lowering, stood—Ar-hap himself!

Ay, and behind him, towering over the crouching Martians, blocking every outlet and street, were scores and hundreds of his men. Never was surprise so utter, ambush more complete. Even I was transfixed with astonishment, staring with open-mouthed horror at the splendid figure of the barbarian king as he stood a-glitter in the