The Treasure of Atlantis by J. Allan Dunn (black authors fiction txt) 📕
"There was nothing to do but to make the best of it, and that meant getting under way. My rifles and ammunition were in the shelter, and one of the dogs had stayed behind. There was no use crossing the stream, for the opposing cliffs were sheer and apparently unscalable, though I thought I saw traces of a succession of rough steps that almost looked like masonry leading to a ledge halfway up the cliff. But there they ended definitely in a smooth wall. So I decided to follow the stream downward. It ran almost due northeast toward the Amazon, and I hoped that later it would widen and become navigable for a raft. Shorthanded as we were, that was a slim chance, but the only one in sight.
"It was useless to follow the carriers. The day was drawing to a close, and I determined to pass the night where we were. At sunset I heard a shout from the machete men, and found them groveling on the edge of the precipice. It was the mirage again, float
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“You must not talk to me this way,” she said. “I spoke to you—I came this far with you only to repay the life you saved this afternoon.”
“Only for that, Leola? Swear to me that it was for that reason alone, and I will believe you and go.” He forced her to meet his gaze.
“You are not kind,” she murmured.
“Listen,” said Morse. “I heard the words of the chant to Pasiphae.”
She drew back with a gleam of anger in her eyes. “You dared—”
“I dared,” he answered quietly. “And you know why I dared, Leola. It was not to witness forbidden rites. But I heard the last of the singing. You asked the moon goddess to receive the prayers impaled upon your darts. You believe that she can answer them?”
“Surely.”
He took the arrow from his robe and read the linear script inscribed upon the papyrus:
“Grant, O Pasiphae, the dearest wish of our hearts.”
“It fell at my feet,” he said. “Your hand guided its upward flight, but surely the goddess directed its descent. Am I not the answer?”
He had dared a great deal, and resentment flamed in her glance. Then it softened.
“I do not know why I stay here talking with you,” she said. “My vows—”
The moonlight faded. Clouds formed from the vapors of the volcano were being driven across the face of the planet by a breeze which was beginning to stir the tree tops in back of them.
“Look!” said Morse. “Pasiphae is mighty, but Eros conquers her and veils her face. Love has come to both of us, Leola. It spoke from our eyes as they met when the procession halted. Was it for nothing that you came ashore last night as I was being captured, for nothing that I found you in the waters of the lake and rescued you? It was the will of the gods, Leola. Fate mocks at vows, except the ones she prompts; and Fate vowed you and I to each other long ago when she willed that we should meet, though half the world divided us.”
A heavy mass of vapor completely shrouded the moon and chased the watchful shadows. Morse placed his arms about her and drew her to him. For a moment she resisted, then suddenly accepted the embrace. Her face was lifted slowly to his, as if fighting against surrender. He set his palm against the masses of her hair and bent his lips to her. They were tremulous, but warm with life, and met his in a kiss that joined them irrevocably.
Men broke through the undergrowth, seized Morse from behind, and tore Leola from his arms. Her hair
caught upon a trailing vine and showered down in a rain of pale gold as the moon’s disk cleared. Morse struggled in silence as more men flung themselves upon him, but Leola shook off the lighter grasp of the two that held her.
“How dare you!” she gasped. “How dare you! One cry and my followers will come and slay you for your profanation!”
A man took a step from the band. He was bearded and dressed in priestly vestments. Morse recognized him as one of Ru’s advisers.
“You have no followers, Leola,” he said sternly. “It is you who have profaned your own shrine. Do you think the priestesses of Pasiphae will obey one who has forsworn her vows and brought the worship of the goddess into disrepute?”
Leola was silenced. Rude hands were clapped across Morse’s mouth before he could prevent it. The next moment he was trussed and helpless, and being carried to the cove where he had landed. Beside his shallop was a galley manned by slaves. He was tossed into its stern like a bundle, and the next moment Leola, also bound and gagged, was laid beside him.
Morse was sick at the thought of what he had brought upon the woman he loved, and he twisted until the hide strips sank into his flesh. His arm rested against Leola’s, and her fingers interlaced themselves in his with a pressure that was forgiveness perhaps, perhaps love.
The galley was poled out of the cove, and under lusty strokes raced toward the mainland. As Morse lay there, the wind lifted a fragrant tress of Leola’s hair, and it fell across his face like a caress. He touched it with his lips.
The boat glided against the landing, and the prisoners were lifted out silently and carried up the water stairs. Morse saw the cone of the volcano lifting its peak against the stars, its hoary crest gleaming frostily. The puffs of vapor had turned into an uninterrupted flow of smoke that funneled out to a dense mass, part of which streamed leeward like a dusty, pointing finger. The lower part of the cloud was tinged with a lurid, pulsating glow.
The palace festival hall was a blaze of light as the prisoners were ushered in. Its tables were arranged in a wide U, and the diners had apparently rearranged their places in expectation of something to come. Ru sat by the side of Rana, and back of them were ranged the priests of Minos. The guard was heavily disposed inside the door.
Morse looked around, first for Kiron and then for Laidlaw, but both men were absent.
Morse and Leola had been placed upon their feet outside the entrance, their lower bonds loosened in order that they might walk, and then forced into the dining hall by their captors. Rana regarded them with the eyes of a basilisk, and Ru with more complacency but none the less assurance.
“So, my sister,” said Rana fiercely, “it seems that you are more human than we thought. You—the woman who styled the other sex stupid—have succumbed to the seduction of a stranger.”
Leola surveyed the queen calmly, as if she had not spoken, and Ru took up the denunciation.
“Priestess of Pasiphae, you are forsworn,” he said, and the nobles about the tables craned their necks to listen. “The fire mountain shows the anger of the gods. The lake itself is an emblem of their growing wrath. We have consulted the oracles with anxious questionings, and they have answered.”
In the silence that fell upon the hall as Ru paused, the heavy breathing of the audience betrayed their fear and superstition. Ru looked at them with the air of an animal trainer who had been doubtful whether his performers had forgotten their tricks, but now he knew that they were held well in hand.
“The oracle has said: ‘From fire and water was Atlantis born. When fire and water mingle, then the beginning shall be the end. Watch carefully, lest destruction come from without. Desert not the gods, lest in time of peril they in turn desert you.’
“‘When fire and water mingle!’ The lake will soon begin to boil unless the danger can be averted. Vapor hangs over it tonight—vapor born of the mingling of
the elements. ‘Watch carefully, lest destruction come from without.’ Within our midst, in the very center of our age-old worship of the eternal gods—Leola has been unfaithful to her vows, a priestess who has flouted the gods and made a mockery of them before their own altars!”
A muttering broke out along the line of tables. Rana alone said nothing, but she bent a venomous gaze upon her sister who looked through her as if she had not been present.
“From the outside have come strangers with talk of peoples who are so much more powerful than Atlantis. If they are so great and wise, why do they come to spy upon us? Why are they not content to remain in their own land as we are in Atlantis? Yet, we would have treated them courteously, but they have conspired with this recreant priestess to pollute our sacred shrines. Their penalty must be death!”
The mutterings grew louder, but under Ru’s piercing stare no one dared show signs of dissent.
“And simple death cannot atone for, nor avert, the gathering displeasure of the gods. Sacrifice alone will appease them!”
A slight tremor rocked the building, and the lamps swung on the chains that supported them. Ru’s eyes blazed with triumph.
“See!” he cried. “The gods answer and accept!”
The mutterings changed to audible exclamations of awe and wonder. Into the faces of the nobles, men and women alike, crept the look that they had worn in the amphitheater. Their eyes hardened and their mouths grew cruel. There had been no human sacrifices in Atlantis for some time; it would be a rare spectacle.
“The false priestess shall stand upon the Spot of Sacrifice while Re touches with his shining finger the rays of his emblem,” said Ru. “As for the stranger, let him learn the embrace of the Bull of Minos.”
Morse, wondering what horrors might lie in the fate decreed for Leola, dimly sensed what his own would be. He knew the ancient torture of the Minoans described in the frescoes of Cnossus, where strangers were “presented” to the bull, shut up within the belly of a brazen image made red-hot to receive them. Doomed
and without hope as he believed them, strangely, death seemed far away, unfathomable. His mind was misty, and idly, without feeling, he wondered what they would do to Laidlaw, and if the scientist had already been condemned.
Dimly he heard the thrill, almost the pleasure, in the tones of the nobles as they repeated: “The Bull of Minos!”
He turned to Leola, and her eyes held an open avowal of love before they saddened to farewell.
“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely. The mist was clearing from his mind as the hands of the guards took hold of him.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Leola answered quietly. “You have given me love, and that is more than life!”
“Silence, you wanton!” It was the shrill voice of Rana, cracking in its malignity and unsuppressed anger. The queen had risen, and her face was convulsed with a deadly hatred. Ru laid a restraining hand upon her arm.
Leola smiled. “Yours is a hollow victory, my sister. I win far more than I lose, and you lose what you could never have won.”
Rana snatched a sharp-cutting dagger from the table and threw it with all her strength and fury. Hate thwarted her aim, and the blade sank into the shoulder of a guard who stood close by.
Ru motioned the captives away.
There was a sudden rush of sandaled feet, and the hall was filled with the indignant priestesses of Pasiphae. Their heads were topped with crested helmets, their waists girdled with swords. Some carried long shields that covered their bodies and bore spears, while the remainder were armed with bows and arrows. They surrounded Leola, the feathered shafts threatening Rana and Ru. The guards fell back sullenly; the determination of these women warriors was not to be held lightly.
One of the two priestesses who had been carried abreast of Leola in the afternoon procession—it was not the girl who had glanced at Kiron—advanced halfway the length of the tables and addressed Ru.
“By what right,” she demanded, in a tone of arrogance and anger, “do your guards seize the person of our high priestess upon the isle of Sele, within the holy borders of the shrine?”
Ru answered evenly:
“The priests of Minos have always held the right of entry upon Sele. But wait—” he cried, as the priestess started to bring up her spear. “Hear me out. We followed in the footsteps of this stranger, believing that he intended to violate the sacred precincts of the isle to keep a tryst with Leola.”
There was a movement of disbelief, of repulsion, among the priestesses, and their gaze fastened on Leola’s face.
“We found her,” continued Ru, “in his embrace. She cannot
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