Ishmael prayed to all the gods that be, not forgetting Yojo, Queequeg's godlet, that no Booragangahns would happen by at this time.
Before the bottom of the wall had lifted more than a foot and a half, he was sliding forward on his chest. The others followed him, and long before the slow-moving section had turned completely over the band was in the little room on the other side.
"What caused it to move?" Namalee said.
"I do not know," Ishmael said. "But I strongly suspect that the activating mechanism is triggered by a bright light applied in a certain sequence to each of the shafts. Perhaps there is no necessary sequence, or it may be that just a certain number have to be exposed to a bright light. I do not know. But I am sure that the key is the application of torchlight to something within the shafts. Perhaps the light sets up a chemical reaction analogous to that..."
He stopped. The tongue of Zalarapamtra had no words for the scientific inventions of Monsieur Daguerre or Professor Draper. Besides, what mattered was that he had accidentally discovered the lock, however it worked.
"Zoomashmarta is with us!" Namalee said. "He knows that we have come for him through terrible dangers, and he has shown us the way as a reward for our devotion!"
"That is an explanation which cannot be disproved," Ishmael said.
He sent two men into the corridor to the left to scout, and he led the others down the opposite corridor. This was a very short incline which led into a vast room carved out of a greenish rock with red stippling. Torches were everywhere, and the sweet and intoxicating perfume of the gods was heavy.
Cautiously, Ishmael stuck his head around the corner.
There were hundreds of altars cut out of the rock; in fan-shaped bowers squatted the gods, the great and the little.
Far down at the other end of the room, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away, was the largest altar of all. On it sat the largest idol he had ever seen, though, admittedly, until then his experience with gods had been limited to the small ones of the whaling ships.
It was about two and a half feet high. It was ivory with red, black, and green streaks, and had many arms and two heads. It was Kashmangai, the great god of the Booragangahns.
A dozen robed priests were in the room. Three were genuflecting over and over before Kashmangai. The others were dusting the gods with feathery dusters or sweeping up the floor with feathery brooms.
Ishmael withdrew his head and became slightly dizzy with the movement. Even at this distance the perfume was strong enough to make him somewhat drunk.
"You'll have to identify Zoomashmarta and the lesser gods," he said to Namalee.
She looked around the corner for perhaps a minute and then said, "He and the small ones are on altars near the great one of Kashmangai."
The two scouts returned. They had traveled down the corridor to a point where it crossed another. They did not dare go further because of the sounds of many men nearby.
"This corridor could be a well-traveled one," Ishmael said. "So we'll have to act quickly."
He gave orders to each. The bowmen fitted arrows to the string and stepped out of the entrance. The others came behind them, and the entire band walked swiftly forward. They meant to get as close as possible before the priests would be aware of them. The bowmen had orders to shoot at the priests who were most distant.
His eyes widened, his mouth fell open, his skin turned gray.
Ishmael was already in the act of throwing a spear he had borrowed from an archer. The point took the man in the open mouth and drove into the back of his throat. Gurgling, the man fell with a crash against an altar, knocking over a small idol.
The bow strings thrummed; the arrows leaped ahead and plunged into the backs of the three before Zoomashmarta.
Other arrows and spears struck the remaining priests. None were able to give loud cries.
Most of the priests had died; those who still breathed were unconscious and would probably remain so until they died. Their throats were cut, and the bodies were dragged out of sight behind various altars.
Ishmael went with Namalee to the altar where the Booragangahns kept Zoomashmarta and the lesser gods prisoner. The great one was a foot and a half high and had a fat Janus head with two faces. He was sitting cross-legged with one hand on his lap and the other raised with a jagged stick which represented lightning. The lesser gods were about a foot high. All exuded the overpoweringly sweet and overwhelmingly intoxicating perfume.
Ishmael felt by then as if he had had four cups of rum unmixed with water.
"We have to get out of here quickly," he said to Namalee. "Or I'll have to be carried out of here. Aren't you affected?"
"Yes, I feel very happy and a little dizzy," she said. "But I am used to the divine perspiration and so I can stay soberer for a long time."
Ishmael wondered how the priests endured the perfume and then thought that they would be like the drunkards of the ports, the men who could drink enough to put others under the table and still stagger along the street and beg, in a clear enough voice, for money with which to buy more drink.
The little gods and Zoomashmarta were put into the bags of skin which would contain much of their perfume. Ishmael, seeing that their primary goal was accomplished, gave the order to return.
But Namalee said, "No, we must steal Kashmangai and take him back with us."
"So that the Booragangahns will then retaliate?" Ishmael said. "Do you want to establish a seesaw of slaughter?"
"Gods are always stolen," Namalee said, astonished.
"Why not just drop Kashmangai into a dead sea and forget about him?"
"He would not like that," Namalee said. "He would not rest until he had seen to our complete destruction. But while we hold him prisoner, part of his power is ours, and..."
Ishmael was about to throw up his hands in surrender and in disgust, when the scouts, who had stayed in the corridor as sentinels, came running.
"We had to shoot two priests," one said. "We tried to take them unaware and failed. One shouted out an alarm before he died, and now there is much commotion down the hall."
Kashmangai was stuffed into a bag, and the band started back toward the corridor. But, on reaching it, they saw a mob of priests and some armed men coming down the hall corridor toward them. Several had bows.
Ishmael snatched a torch from a man and ran down the short flight of steps to the wall with the shafts set in it. He passed the torch back and forth before each shaft in the same linear sequence he had used on the first occasion. The stone squeaked and the lower part of the wall started to swing out.
The approaching Booragangahns gave a great shout on seeing this, and two of the bowmen pushed to the front. They fitted arrows to their strings, but both fell before the shafts could be properly sent. Ishmael's archers had shot first.
At this, the entire enemy group ran forward, screaming war cries. Another volley of arrows downed those in front and then those immediately behind, and the others tripped on the bodies. Ishmael scooted under the wall with Namalee, carrying Zoomashmarta in a bag, behind him. A man carrying lesser gods followed her and close on his heels was a man carrying Kashmangai. Others followed them, rolling under the rising wall swiftly.
The enemy began to hack at the body to cut it apart and so let the wall continue to complete its revolution. Then they would unlock it again with their torches.