The King's Talisman — page 175: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

166 THE KIN’ S TALISMAN. they to care whether they used them or not, for well they knew that such resistance as they might offer would pro- long the tortures their king had marked out for them. Perhaps a minute had elapsed after the eunuchs entered, when a deep roar, like the hoarse rumbling of distant thun- der, shook the solid rock. A shudder ran through the © crowd, and instinctively the more tender-hearted turned their eyes from the scene. Another roar, more fierce than the first, came belching forth, and as its reverberations rumbled among the distant mountain cliffs, the low, thril- ling growl of the royal tiger cut the air! Molech turned, as he heard the sound, and gazed a moment upon his compan- ions in misery, then he dashed the tears from.his eyes, and hurling the insignificant club from him, he folded his arms across his heaving breast, and calmly awaited his fate. The remaining Egyptians caught the noble impulse of their leader’s example, and they, too, threw down their miserable weapons and banished from them all traces of the deep an- guish that had but just moved them. “What!” cried the king, as he saw the unexpected move- ment of his victims; ‘‘ will the dogs not fight? Let the beasts come forth! Let them come, I say. What—ho, there. Unloose the barrier that shuts back the tiger, and throw open the lion’s den!” | - The slaves stood unmoved, but no beasts came forth. The superintendent came into the arena, in a state of intense agitation, and the astounded monarch was just upon the point of springing down to meet him, when he was startled by the appearance upon the stage of one whom he had little expected to see there, and whom he had occasion to dread. It was none other than Abdah Nazor. ; But at the next moment the eyes of the guilty monarch rested upon a sight that struck him powerless, and mur- muring, in a half-crazed and half-abstracted manner, “My brother!” he fell back upon his seat. Eomichbooks. ¢o im