Happily, this fear at least proved groundless, since it opened outward, and the force of the compressed air had torn it from its massive stone hinges and thrown it shattered to the ground.
We scrambled over it, and advanced down the passage, our revolvers in our hands.

We reached the audience hall, which was empty and in darkness.

We turned to the left, crossing various chambers, and in the last of them, through which one of the gates of the palace could be approached, met with the first signs of the tragedy, for there were bloodstains on the floor.
Orme pointed to them as he hurried on, and suddenly a man leapt out of the darkness as a buck leaps from a bush, and ran past us, holding his hands to his side, where evidently he had some grievous hurt.

Now we entered the corridor leading to the private apartments of the Child of Kings, and found ourselves walking on the bodies of dead and dying men.
One of the former I observed, as one does notice little things at such a moment, held in his hand the broken wire of the field telephone.

I presume that he had snatched and severed it in his death pang at the moment when communication ceased between us and the palace.
We rushed into the little antechamber, in which lights were burning, and there saw a sight that I for one never shall forget.
In the foreground lay more dead men, all of them wearing the livery of Prince Joshua.