t.

"Oh, faith now, but that's a damned shame, sir!" Bohannan protested,
rubbing an ugly welt on his brow. His voice was thick, dull,
unnatural. Madness glimmered in his blinking eyes. "With the blessed
tongue of me parched to a cinder! And wine like that! Here, sir--take
a handful of diamonds, or whatever, and give me just one little
drink!"

'"'Bristol! Restrain that man!" the Master ordered. "If you can't
handle him, get help!"

As a couple of Legionaries laid hands on the major, another voice
spoke up. It was that of Ferrara, the Italian ace:

"The major is right, sir, in spite of all! Good wine in our throats
would make death less bitter. 'We who are about to die, salute
thee'--and ask wine!"

The Master peered sharply from beneath black brows. Discipline seemed
crumbling. Now at what might be, perhaps, the last minute of his
command, was the Master's word to be made light of? Were his orders to
be gainsaid?

"No wine!" he flung at all of them, his voice tense as wire. "Who says
we are about to die? Why, there may be a fighting chance, even yet!
This underground river may come to light, somewhere. And if it does,
it may bear us back to day, again.

"But the confusion of wine may just turn the scale against our getting
through. No wine! We started on that basis. That's the basis we're going
through on. No wine, I say--no wine!"

Murmurs answered him, but no man dared rebel. Discipline still gripped
the Legionaries. The Master drove them to labor. "Come, quick now!
Prepare a sack, apiece! I'll show you how!"

He set lips to the emptied skin, and with many lungfuls of strong
breath inflated it. The leather thong tightly wrapped the neck. He
doubled that neck over, and took more turns with the thong, then tied
it in a tight square knot.

"Get to work, men!" he ordered. "To work!"

They obeyed. Even the major, brain-shaken as he was, fell in with
the orders. The floor, all round the black pit, ran red with precious
wine, a single cupful of which would have delighted the heart of the
world's most Lucullian gourmet.

Up from that floor and from the jetty, steaming walls of the pit
drifted ambrosial perfume that evoked visions of ancient vineyards
where, under the Eastern sun, bloomy clusters of grape--mayhap even
the very grape sung by the Tent-maker--hung ripening.

Still, none stooped to the mouths of the wine-skins, to taste. None
drank from cupped palm. Dry-mouthed, hot, panting, the Legionaries
sti