Page:Weird Tales v02 n01 (1923-07-08).djvu/10

Rh "The bottom of this hole," he complained, "is an inch deep in soft soot! What a mess!"

"Soot!" Adjusting his shell-rims, Otway viewed the bottom of the bowl with new interest. "What kind of soot?"

"W-what? Why, black soot, of course. Can’t you see? It’s all over me, and Tellifer, too—only I don’t believe he knows it." The younger man’s wrath dissolved in a sudden giggle. "Niggers! Sweeps! Is my face as bad as his?"

"You don’t understand," persisted Otway eagerly. "I mean, is it dry, powdery, like the residue of burned wood, or is it—er—greasy soot, as if fat had been burned there? What I’m getting at," he peered owlishly around his own pillar toward Waring’s, "is that sacrifices may have been made in this pit. Either animal or human. Probably the latter. I’ve a notion to fall in there myself and see—"

"Well, you can if you want to, but help me out!" Sigsbee gazed in dawning horror at the black stuff coating his hands and clothing. "It is greasy! Help me up quick, so I can wash it off!"

"Mustn’t be so finicky, Sig," chuckled Waring. "You aren’t the burnt offering, anyway. At least, not yet. Hello! What’s wrong with our little friend?"

Face buried in her hands, the girl had sunk to a crouching position behind the pillar. Soft, short, gasping sounds came from her throat. Her whole slender body shook in the grip of some emotion.

"Why, she’s crying!" said Otway.

"Or laughing." Sigsbee looked from his hands to Tellifer’s face. "I don’t blame her," he added loyally.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Sigsbee, but the little lady is crying." John B. had quietly left his own post and walked out on the dancer’s oblong of safety. "I can see the tears shining between her fingers, he added gravely.

Four helpless males contemplated this phenomenon through a long quarter-minute of shocked silence. Suddenly Otway flung up his hands in a gesture so violent that it nearly hurled him headlong into the pit.

"Gentlemen," he cried desperately, "what is this place? Where are the people who must be about it somewhere? Who and what is that girl? Why is she crying? And what in the name of heaven is that great thing shining there above a sooty pit surrounded by man-traps?"

It was Tellifer who took up the almost hysterical challenge. He came to life with a long sigh, as of some great decision reached.

“Your last question," he said, "in view of the object’s obvious nature, I assume to be purely oratorical. The others are of small importance. I have been deciding a real and momentous question—one the answer to which is destined to be on the lips of men in every quarter of the terrestrial globe, and not for a day or a year of fame, but through centuries of wondering worship! And yet," Tellifer waved a sooty hand in a gesture of graceful deprecation, "with all of what I may term my superior taste und intellect, I have been unable to improve on the work of that primitive but gifted connoisseur, Kuyambira-Petro.

"He has already christened this thing of marvelous loveliness. When he told us of this island he said that there presided here an anyi—a spirit—a strange power—and he called it Tata Quarahy! We could not understand him. The poor fellow’s simple language had not words to describe it further. And yet, how perfectly those two words alone did describe it! Tata Quarahy! Sunfire! Why not let the name stand? Could any other be more adequate? 'Sunfire!' Name scintillant of light. Let it be christened 'Sunfire,' that even the fancy of men not blessed to behold it with material eyes, may in fancy capture some hint of a supernal glory. But perhaps," Tellifer glanced with sudden anxiety from face to face of his bewildered companions above him, "perhaps I take too much on myself, and you do not agree?"

"TNT," said Waring desperately, "for just one minute, talk sense. What is that thing up there—if you know?"

Tellifer’s entranced vision strayed again to the huge bulk that seemed, in its radiant nimbus, to hover above rather than rest on the eight columns.

"I beg your pardon, Alcot," he said simply. "I really believed you knew. The phosphorescent light—the lucent transparency—the divine effulgence that envelopes it like a robe of splendid—Alcot, please! There is a lady present. If you must have it in elementary language, the thing is a diamond, of course!"

ETTING the two entrapped ones out of the sooty pit proved fairly easy. The sides of the bow! were smooth, but a couple of leather belts, buckled together and lowered, enabled the men below to walk up the steep curve, catch helping hands and be hauled to the solid paths behind the pillars.

Four of the men then retired from the treacherous ground, and in an excited, disputing group stood off, walked about, and from various viewpoints and distances attempted settling, then and there, whether Tellifer was or was not right in his claim that the enormous glowing mass above the pit was a diamond.

It must be admitted that for quite a time, the girl was forgotten. Only John B. failed to join in that remarkable dispute.

"Half a ton at least!" protested Waring. ‘‘Preposterous! Heard of stones big as hen's eggs. But this! Roc’s egg! Haroun al Raschid—Sindbad—Arabian Nights! You're dreaming, TNT! Half a ton!"

"Oh, very well, Alcot. It is true that I have some knowledge of precious stones, and that in my humble opinion Sunfire is as much a diamond as the Koh-i-noor. But of course, if you assure me that it is not"

"How many karat is half a ton?" queried Sigsbee. "I say, Tellifer, how about that young mountain for a classy stickpin?"

"I refuse to discuss the matter further!" Tellifer’s voice quivered with outraged emotion. "If either of you had the least capacity for reverent wonder, the faintest respect for the divinely beautiful, you would—you would hate anyone who spoke flippantly about Sunfire!"

"Gentlemen,"—Otway had dropped out of the discussion as he found its heat increasing—"why not leave deciding all this for a later time? Haven’t we rather lost sight of our object in ascending the pyramid? What of those air-men whom we were so eager to rescue?"

Followed a somewhat shamefaced silence. Then the disputants, even Tellifer, agreed that the surprising line of entertainment afforded by the pyramid had indeed shifted their thoughts from a main issue.

"But we haven’t seen anybody in need of rescue, so far," defended Sigsbee. "There is no one here but the girl."

"Beg pardon, sir." John B. had at last rejoined the group. In his brown eyes was a sad, mildly thwarted look, somewhat like that in the eyes of a dog left outside on the doorstep. "The young lady isn’t here now, sir. After you and Mr. Tellifer climbed out of the pit, she seemed real pleased for a while and stopped crying. I tried talking to her, and I tried eating some of her fruit, but she didn’t seem very much interested. And just now she went away. She went," John B. pointed down one of the open lanes, "out through that door and shut it behind her."

The steward paused.