Up this, each with
a sack or a basket on his head, the population was to have been induced
to run in single file, dumping its hard-won corn into the granary
through an opening at the top until the granary was full.
The emperor died--by poison--before he could see his cherished project
put into execution, but he had been a very thorough calculator, and
a builder who believed in permanency. He had foreseen that when the
granary was full, and the screw-jacks were turned beneath the cost
of living, there would probably be efforts made by unwashed, untutored,
unenlightened mobs to rape his storehouse. So he had made the little
platform at the top a veritable fortress of a place, such as a handful
of men could hold against a hundred thousand.
There was no known entrance to the granary above ground, except on
the ground level, where a huge stone gateway frowned above a teak-
and-iron door. Above that door there were galleries, and fortalices
and cunningly invented battlements in miniature, from behind whose
shelter a resolute defending-party could pour out a hundred different
kinds of death on a hungry crowd.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132