Queen Sheba's Ring

They set us in a line, four ragged-looking fellows, all of us with beards of various degrees of growth, that is, all the other three, for mine had been an established fact for y...

Our breakfast on the following morning was a somewhat gloomy meal. By common consent no allusion was made to the events of the previous day, or to our conversation at bedtime.

Every one has read the monograph, I believe that is the right word, of my dear friend, Professor Higgs—Ptolemy Higgs to give him his full name—descriptive of the tableland of Mu...

Two or three days after this conversation, I forget exactly which it was, Maqueda held her council in the great hall of the palace. When we entered the place in charge of a guar...

As finally arranged this was the order of our march: First went an Abati guide who was said to be conversant with every inch of the way. Then came Orme and Sergeant Quick, condu...

“The fact is,” said Higgs presently, speaking with the air of an oracle, “the fact is that all these accursed sand-hills are as like each other as mummy beads on the same neckla...

When the ambassadors had gone, at first there was silence, a very heavy silence, since even the frivolous Abati felt that the hour was big with fate. Of a sudden, however, the m...

Our road toward the pass ran through the camping ground of the newly created Abati army, and what we saw on our journey thither told us more vividly than any words or reports co...

A more weary and dishevelled set of people than that which about the hour of dawn finally emerged from the mouth of the ancient shaft on to the cliffs of Mur it has seldom been...

I was right. The Abati did think that we had been burned. It never occurred to them that we might have escaped to the underground city. So at least I judged from the fact that t...

Another six weeks or so had gone by, and at length the character of the country began to change. At last we were passing out of the endless desert over which we had travelled fo...

Our ride from the plains up the pass that led to the high tableland of Mur was long and, in its way, wonderful enough. I doubt whether in the whole world there exists another ho...

Slowly and in very bad spirits I retraced my steps to the old temple, following the line of the telephone wire which Higgs and Quick had unreeled as they went. In the Sergeant’s...

Having first explained that he was suffering from shock, I translated word for word, whereon Maqueda blushed to her lovely violet eyes and let fall her veil in a great hurry. In...

Of all our tremendous journey across the desert until we had passed the forest and reached the plains which surrounded the mountains of Mur, there are, I think, but few incident...

Orme was right. Maqueda’s defiance did mean war, “an unequal war.” This was our position. We were shut up in a long range of buildings, of which one end had been burned, that on...

From this time forward all of us, and especially Oliver, were guarded night and day by picked men who it was believed could not be corrupted. As a consequence, the Tsar of Russi...

“This, Captain, for what it is worth; that I should go down through the hole that Cat here speaks of, and get into the den. Then when they let down the Professor, if they do, an...

and flowers, if in no other way. But enough of death and doom. Soon, who can tell how soon? we shall be as these are,” and she shuddered. “Meanwhile, we breathe, so let us make...

At this moment a fearful hubbub arose without. The front door slammed, a cab drove off furiously, a policeman’s whistle blew, heavy feet were heard trampling; then came an invoc...

But Oliver, whom she addressed, had left her side and was engaged in taking observations behind the hunchback’s funeral chair with an instrument which he had produced from his p...