  Now began a period of waiting, during which the boys saw little of Jepthah. A guard of ten revolutionists was sent back to Korakum to supplement their own force under command of a cheery young man named Horeb who, like Jepthah, had served in the British Sudanese army, and had a good command of English. Thus the two parties had a common medium of expression. From Horeb, who each day sent a messenger to the main body, they received fragmentary accounts of the progress of events in the field. Things were going well with the revolutionists, they learned. The Janissaries, numbering 5,000, so far had failed to take the field against them, for what reason was not known. In the meantime, Captain Amanassar was rallying the sturdy peasants of the valleys and plateaus and the herders of the mountains to his standard. He had advanced twenty miles into the mountains in three days and already a force of fifteen hundred men had assembled. He lay at the village of Sharpath, on a high plateau, well guarded against surprise, and intended to maintain this position for a week or more while the countrymen continued to come in. Sharpath, the boys were told, stood in the center of a broad plateau comprising one of the richest agricultural districts of the mountain country and the road approaching it from Athensi, along which the Janissaries would have to move to attack, passed through a deep gorge which already was in possession of the revolutionists. “All right for them,” muttered Frank. “But the longer they stay there, the nearer draws the day of the Sacrificial Games. I’m worried about Bob, Jack, and I want to do something. Can’t you put your mind on it. I’ve been thinking of ways and means until I feel as if I were growing insane.” Frank was seated at the table on which the radio sending apparatus had been set up in the little grove off the Great Road where originally they had taken shelter. When surprised by the revolutionists he and Jack had left their work of putting the radio into shape uncompleted. Since their return they had been wandering over the ruins of Korakum for two days without again thinking of the radio, lost in admiration of this ancient city—the oldest, undoubtedly, in the world. Only a few of the buildings had survived the ravages of thousands of years, here a temple, there a palace. They jutted up among the vegetable gardens of the exiles, and, when the boys expressed to Horeb their surprise at not finding even a trace of other ruins, he shrugged and smiled. “The houses of the common people were not builded of enduring materials,” he said. “It is so in Athensi today. The common people live in mud huts with wattled walls and thatched roofs, little better than those of African savages. But the temples and palaces of Athensi, ah!” He made a gesture indicative of his despair at attempting to characterize them. “Some day soon, I hope, you shall see for yourselves,” he added. “And it was so in Korakum. These temples and palaces, as you can see, were built of granite hewn from the mountains, and are of immense solidity. Even they have fallen into ruins now, as you see, for this city was founded a full thousand years before the first of our people entered Egypt. “We came from the great island continent of Atlantis, lying west of the Pillars of Hercules, west of the Strait of Gibraltar, and our city was the first Atlantean colony. Our people pushed south along the African coast, into the Gulf of Guinea, up the Niger river, and thence eastward. Here was their first permanent settlement, and Korakum was a flourishing capital before we dreamed of entering Egypt. History?” said he. “Wait until the world receives the translations of the stories in the Library of Athensi. It is the history of the world before the Flood submerged Atlantis, giving rise to all the legendary stories of the Flood which persist in the literature of all people. It is the history of a mightier civilization, extending farther back into the years, than your wildest dreamers ever conjured out of their imaginations.” Through echoing stone halls of vast breadth and height, up stone stairways, under gaping roofs, for two days, the boys had wandered at will, staring at the shell of that ancient civilization of which Horeb spoke, marvelling at the tremendous labor involved in these buildings, involuntarily dropping their voices to a whisper in the presence of the ghosts of uncounted centuries. But now, on the third day, having seen all there was to see and not being scientists who could pore forever over the meaning of faded and worn inscriptions found here and there upon a fallen block of stone, they were back in the grove, and Frank was seated at the radio and voicing his desire for action, immediate action, looking to the rescue of his chum. This apparatus, devised by the boys working in conjunction in their home laboratories at the Temple and Hampton country homes, adjoining each other, on Long Island, was a duplex sending and receiving station. In it they had departed from the accepted methods of duplex operation, of which the best known is that of Marconi, regulated by a receiver coupled to the coils of a transmitting antenna and a balancing antenna, by means of which one signal may be cut out completely while another is retained undiminished, thus insuring reception and transmission simultaneously. Instead, they had worked out a system whereby the voice exercised full control. When speech was not being used, the set was receptive to messages from other points. But the moment one began to speak, a sluggish contact device consisting of mercury in capillary tube was closed by the vocal vibrations and the set at once thrown into transmission. This controlling device was located in the microphone transmitter, and that it had escaped destruction in the vandalism practised on the set by Professor Souchard’s murderers was little short of a miracle. After voicing his request that Jack put his mind to work to evolve some plan for rescuing Bob, Frank picked up the headphones and idly clasped them to his ears, and sat silent, gloomily regarding the instruments on the table, although in reality not seeing them. By some chain of thought, he was once more back on Long Island, standing on the lawn of the Temple home, and watching for Della to emerge from the doorway. It seemed to him, so powerful was the impression, that he had arrived to tell her Bob had been slain in the Sacrificial Games in Athensi, and—— “Jack,” he cried suddenly, in so startled and excited a voice that his chum, sprawled on the grass, leaped to his feet. “My—my—” Words failed him, his face grew white as a sheet, and his eyes seemed actually to bulge out of their sockets. “What is it?” demanded Jack, anxiously. “Are you sick? Speak. Tell me what’s the matter.” Frank could only wave his hands feebly and shake his head. Then he seemed to change into new life under Jack’s gaze. Color returned to his cheeks, his eyes grew bright and joyful, and, leaning forward, he drew the telephone transmitter toward him and began to speak. In Jack’s mind, stupefaction succeeded bewilderment as he listened. |
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