I tell you again—you have nothing to fear except what may be in yourselves. You fools!" She stamped her foot in sudden wrath—"If we had wished to kill you, could we not have abandoned you to the Xin? Have you forgotten last night when you pursued the llama? I have fulfilled my promise to you. Argue no more. And beware of me—beware how you anger me further!"
Now Graydon saw Soames' face whiten as she spoke of the llama, and saw him glance furtively at Dan and Starrett who, too, had paled. The New Englander stood for a minute in thought. When he spoke it was quietly, and not to her. "All right. As long as we've come this far we won't go without takin' a look at the place. Dan', take your gun an' go over there where we came in. Cover the old dummy, an' keep watch. Bill and me will hold on to the girl. An' you, Mister Graydon, you go an' take a peep at the joint, an' tell us what you see. You can take your gun. If we hear you shooting,' we'll know there's somethin' there except gold and jewels an'—what was it—yeah, a stone face. March, Mister Graydon—on your way."
He gave him a push toward the radiant opening, and he and Starrett closed in on each side of the girl. Graydon noticed that they were careful not to touch her. He caught a glimpse of Dan at the cavern's opening. Sierra lifted her face to him. In her eyes were sorrow, agony—and love! "Remember!" he said. "I am coming back to you!"
Soames could not know the hidden meaning of that farewell; he took its obvious one. "If you don't," he sneered, "it's goin' to be damned hard on her! I'm telling' you, fellow." Graydon did not answer. He walked over to the curtain's edge, swinging his automatic free as he went. He went past the edge, and full into the rush of the radiance. The opened passage was little more than ten feet long. He reached its end, and stood there, motionless. The pistol dropped from his nerveless hand, and clattered upon the rock.
He looked into a vast cavern filled with the diamonded atoms. It was like an immense hollow globe that had been cut in two, and one-half cast away. The luminosity streamed from its curving walls, and these walls were jetty black and polished like mirrors. The rays that issued from them seemed to come from infinite depths within them, darting up and out with prodigious speed—like rays shot up through inconceivable depths of black water beneath which blazed a sun of diamond incandescence.
Out of these curving walls, hanging to them like the grapes of precious jewels in the enchanted vineyards of the Paradise of El-Shiraz, like flowers in a garden of the King of the Jinn, grew clustered gems! Great crystals, cabochon and edged, globular and angled, alive under that jubilant light with the very soul of fire that is the lure of jewels. Rubies that glowed with every rubrous tint from that clear scarlet that is sunlight streaming through the finger tips of delicate maids to deepest sullen red of bruised hearts; sapphires that shone with blues as rare as that beneath the bluebird's wings and blues as deep as those which darken beneath the creamy crest of the Gulf Stream's crisping waves; huge emeralds that gleamed now with the peacock vibrancies of tropic shallows, and now were green as the depths of a jungle glade; diamonds that glittered with irises fires or shot forth showers of rainbowed rays; great burning opals; gems burning with amethystine flames; unknown jewels whose unfamiliar beauty checked the heart with wonder.