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[Illustration: A HAIL OF SLUGS BOMBARDED THE VAST-SPREAD WINGS AND
FUSELAGE OF _NISSR_.]




THE FLYING LEGION


BY GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND


Published July, 1920




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

  I A Spirit Caged.

  II "To Paradise--or Hell!"

  III The Gathering of the Legionaries.

  IV The Masked Recruit.

  V In the Night.

  VI The Silent Attack.

  VII The Nest of the Great Bird.

  VIII The Eagle of the Sky.

  IX Eastward Ho.

  X "I Am the Master's!"

  XI Captain Alden Stands Revealed.

  XII The Woman of Adventure.

  XIII The Enmeshing of the Master.

  XIV Storm Birds.

  XV The Battle of Vibrations.

  XVI Leclair, Ace of France.

  XVII Miracles, Scourge of Flame.

  XVIII "Captain Alden" Makes Good.

  XIX Hostile Coasts.

  XX The Waiting Menace.

  XXI Shipwreck and War.

  XXII Beleaguered.

  XXIII A Mission of Dread.

  XXIV Angels of Death.

  XXV The Great Pearl Star.

  XXVI The Sand-Devils.

  XXVII Toil and Pursuit.

  XXVIII Onward Toward the Forbidden City.

  XXIX "Labbayk!"

  XXX Over Mecca.

  XXXI East Against West.

  XXXII The Battle of the Haram.

  XXXIII The Ordeal of Rrisa.

  XXXIV The Inner Secret of Islam.

  XXXV Into the Valley of Mystery.

  XXXVI Journey's End.

  XXXVII The Greeting of Warriors.

  XXXVIII Bara Miyan, High Priest.

  XXXIX On, to the Golden City!

  XL Into the Treasure Citadel.

  XLI The Master's Price.

  XLII "Sons of the Prophet, Slay!"

  XLIII War in the Depths.

  XLIV Into the Jewel-Crypt.

  XLV The Jewel Hoard.

  XLVI Bohannan Becomes a Millionaire.

  XLVII A Way Out?

  XLVIII The River of Night.

  XLIX The Desert.

  L "Where There Is None but Allah."

  LI Torture.

  LII "Thálassa! Thálassa!"

  LIII The Greater Treasure.

The Flying Legion




CHAPTER I


A SPIRIT CAGED

The room was strange as the man, himself, who dwelt there. It seemed,
in a way, the outward expression of his inner personality. He had
ordered it built from his own plans, to please a whim of his restless
mind, on top of the gigantic skyscraper that formed part of
his properties. Windows boldly fronted all four cardinal
compass-points--huge, plate-glass windows that gave a view unequaled
in its sweep and power.

The room seemed an eagle's nest perched on the summit of a man-made
crag. The Arabic name that he had given it--_Niss'rosh_--meant just
that. Singular place indeed, well-harmonized with its master.

Through the westward windows, umbers and pearls of dying day, smudged
across a smoky sky, now shadowed trophy-covered walls. This light,
subdued and somber though it was, slowly fading, verging toward a
night of May, disclosed unusual furnishings. It showed a heavy black
table of some rare Oriental wood elaborately carved and inlaid with
still rarer woods; a table covered with a prayer-rug, on which lay
various books on aeronautics and kindred sciences, jostling works on
Eastern travel, on theosophy, mysticism, exploration.

Maps and atlases added their note of research. At one end of the
table stood a bronze faun's head with open lips, with hand cupped
at listening ear. Surely that head must have come from some buried
art-find of the very long ago. The faint greenish patina that covered
it could have been painted only by the hand of the greatest artist of
them all, Time.

A book-case occupied the northern space, between the windows. It, too,
was crammed with scientific reports, oddments of out-of-the-way lore,
and travels. But here a profusion of war-books and official documents
showed another bent of the owner's mind. Over the book-case hung two
German gasmasks. They seemed, in the half-dusk, to glower down through
their round, empty eyeholes like sinister devil-fish awaiting prey.

The masks were flanked by rifles, bayonets, knives, maces, all bearing
scars of battle. Above them, three fragments of Prussian battle-flags
formed a kind of frieze, their color softened by the fading sunset,
even as the fading of the dream of imperial glory had dulled and
dimmed all that for which they had stood.

The southern wall of that strange room--that quiet room to which only
a far, vague murmur of the city's life whispered up, with faint blurs
of steamer-whistles from the river--bore Turkish spoils of battle.
Here hung more rifles, there a Kurdish yataghan with two hand-grenades
from Gallipoli, and a blood-red banner with a crescent and one star
worked in gold thread. Aviator's gauntlets draped the staff of the
banner.

Along the eastern side of this eyrie a broad divan invited one to
rest. Over it were suspended Austrian and Bulgarian captures--a lance
with a blood-stiffened pennant, a cuirass, entrenching tools, a steel
helmet with an eloquent bullet-hole through the crown. Some few framed
portraits of noted "aces" hung here and elsewhere, with two or three
photographs of battle-planes. Three of the portraits were framed in
symbolic black. Part of a smashed Taube propeller hung near.

As for the western side of _Niss'rosh_, this space between the two
broad windows that looked out over the light-spangled city, the Hudson
and the Palisades, was occupied by a magnificent Mercator's Projection
of the world. This projection was heavily annotated with scores of
comments penciled by a firm, virile hand. Lesser spaces were occupied
by maps of the campaigns in Mesopotamia and the Holy Land. One map,
larger than any save the Mercator, showed the Arabian Peninsula. A
bold question-mark had been impatiently flung into the great,
blank stretch of the interior; a question-mark eager, impatient,
challenging.

It was at this map that the master of _Niss'rosh_, the eagle's nest,
was peering as the curtain rises on our story. He was half reclining
in a big, Chinese bamboo chair, with an attitude of utter and
disheartening boredom. His crossed legs were stretched out, one heel
digging into the soft pile of the Tabreez rug. Muscular arms folded
in an idleness that irked them with aching weariness, he sat there,
brooding, motionless.

Everything about the man spelled energy at bay, forces rusting,
ennui past telling. But force still dominated. Force showed in the
close-cropped, black hair and the small ears set close to the head;
in the corded throat and heavy jaws; in the well-muscled shoulders,
sinewed hands, powerful legs. This man was forty-one years old,
and looked thirty-five. Lines of chest and waist were those of the
athlete. Still, suspicions of fat, of unwonted softness, had begun to
invade those lines. Here was a splendid body, here was a dominating
mind in process of going stale.

The face of the man was a mask of weariness of the soul, which kills
so vastly more efficiently than weariness of the body. You could see
that weariness in the tired frown of the black brows, the narrowing
of the dark eyes, the downward tug of the lips. Wrinkles of stagnation
had began to creep into forehead and cheeks--wrinkles that no amount
of gymnasium, of club life, of careful shaving, of strict hygiene
could banish.

Through the west windows the slowly changing hues of gray, of
mulberry, and dull rose-pink blurred in the sky, cast softened lights
upon those wrinkles, but could not hide them. They revealed sad
emptiness of purpose. This man was tired unto death, if ever man were
tired.

He yawned, sighed deeply, stretched out his hand and took up a bit
of a model mechanism from the table, where it had lain with other
fragments of apparatus. For a moment he peered at it; then he tossed
it back again, and yawned a second time.

"Business!" he growled. "'Swapped my reputation for a song,' eh?
Where's my commission, now?"

He got up, clasped his hands behind him, and walked a few times up and
down the heavy rug, his footfalls silent.

"The business could have gone on without me!" he added, bitterly.
"And, after all, what's any business, compared to _life_?"

He yawned again, stretched up his arms, groaned and laughed with
mockery:

"A little more money, maybe, when I don't know what to do with what
I've got already! A few more figures on a checkbook--and the heart
dying in me!"

Then he relapsed into silence. Head down, hands thrust deep in
pockets, he paced like a captured animal in bars. The bitterness
of his spirit was wormwood. What meant, to him, the interests and
pleasures of other men? Profit and loss, alcohol, tobacco, women--all
alike bore him no message. Clubs, athletics, gambling--he grumbled
something savage as his thoughts turned to such trivialities. And into
his aquiline face came something the look of an eagle, trapped, there
in that eagle's nest of his.

Suddenly the Master of _Niss'rosh_ came to a decision. He returned,
clapped his hands thrice, sharply, and waited. Almost at once a door
opened at the southeast corner of the room--where the observatory
connected with the stairway leading down to the Master's apartment on
the top floor of the building--and a vague figure of a man appeared.

The light was steadily fading, so that this man could by no means be
clearly distinguished. But one could see that he wore clothing quite
as conventional as his master's. Still, no more than the Master did he
appear one of life's commonplaces. Lean, brown, dry, with a hawk-nose
and glinting eyes, surely he had come from far, strange places.

"Rrisa!" the Master spoke sharply, flinging the man's name at him with
the exasperation of overtensed nerves.

"_M'almé?_" (Master?) replied the other.

"Bring the evening food and drink," commanded the Master, in excellent
Arabic, guttural and elusive with strange hiatuses of breath.

Rrisa withdrew, salaaming. His master turned toward the western
windows. There the white blankness of the map of Arabia seemed mocking
him. The Master's eyes grew hard; he raised his fist against the map,
and smote it hard. Then once more he fell to pacing; and as he walked
that weary space, up and down, he muttered to himself with words we
cannot understand.

After a certain time, Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the soft
dusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with a
hook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-pot
rose into a tall, minaret-like spike. On the tray stood also a small
cup having no handle; a dish of dates; a few wafers made of the
Arabian cereal called _temmin_; and a little bowl of _khat_ leaves.

"_M'almé, al khat aja_" (the khat has come), said Rrisa.

He placed the tray on the table at his master's side, and was about to
withdraw when the other stayed him with raised hand.


"Tell me, Rrisa," he commanded, still speaking in Arabic, "where wert
thou born? Show thou me, on that map."

The Arab hesitated a moment, squinting by the dim light that now had
faded to purple dusk. Then he advanced a thin forefinger, and laid
it on a spot that might have indicated perhaps three hundred miles
southeast of Mecca. No name was written on the map, there.

"How dost thou name that place, Rrisa?" demanded the Master.

"I cannot say, Master," answered the Arab, very gravely. As he stood
there facing the western afterglow, the profound impassivity of his
expression--a look that seemed to scorn all this infidel civilization
of an upstart race--grew deeper.

To nothing of it all did he owe allegiance, save to the Master
himself--the Master who had saved him in the thick of the Gallipoli
inferno. Captured by the Turks there, certain death had awaited him
and shameful death, as a rebel against the Sublime Porte. The Master
had rescued him, and taken thereby a scar that would go with him to
the grave; but that, now, does not concern our tale. Only we say again
that Rrisa's life lay always in the hands of this man, to do with as
he would.

None the less, Rrisa answered the question with a mere:

"Master, I cannot say."

"Thou knowest the name of the place where thou wast born?" demanded
the Master, calmly, from where he sat by the table.

"_A_ (yes), _M'almé_, by the beard of M'hámed, I do!"

"Well, what is it?"

Rrisa shrugged his thin shoulders.

"A tent, a hut? A village, a town, a city?"

"A city, Master. A great city, indeed. But its name I may not tell
you."

"The map, here, shows nothing, Rrisa. And of a surety, the makers of
maps do not lie," the Master commented, and turned a little to pour
the thick coffee. Its perfume rose with grateful fragrance on the air.

The Master sipped the black, thick nectar, and smiled oddly. For a
moment he regarded his unwilling orderly with narrowed eyes.

"Thou wilt not say they lie, son of Islam, eh?" demanded he.

"Not of choice, perhaps, _M'almé_," the Mussulman replied. "But if the
camel hath not drunk of the waters of the oasis, how can he know that
they be sweet? These _Nasara_ (Christian) makers of maps, what can
they know of my people or my land?"

"Dost thou mean to tell me no man can pass beyond the desert rim, and
enter the middle parts of Arabia?"

"I said not so, Master," replied the Arab, turning and facing his
master, every sense alert, on guard against any admissions that might
betray the secret he, like all his people, was sworn by a Very great
oath to keep.

"Not all men, true," the Master resumed. "The Turks--I know they
enter, though hated. But have no other foreign men ever seen the
interior?"

"_A, M'almé_, many--of the True Faith. Such, though they come from
China, India, or the farther islands of the Indian Ocean, may enter
freely."

"Of course. But I am speaking now of men of the _Nasara_ faith. How of
them? Tell me, thou!"

"You are of the _Nasara, M'almé!_ Do not make me answer this! You,
having saved my life, own that life. It is yours. _Ana bermil illi
bedakea!_ (I obey your every command!) But do not ask me this! My head
is at your feet. But let us speak of other things, O Master!"

The Master kept a moment's silence. He peered contemplatively at the
dark silhouette of the Arab, motionless, impassive in the dusk.
Then he frowned a very little, which was as near to anger as he ever
verged. Thoughtfully he ate a couple of the little _temmin_ wafers and
a few dates. Rrisa waited in silent patience.

All at once the Master spoke.

"It is my will that thou speak to me and declare this thing, Rrisa,"
said he, decisively. "Say, thou, hath no man of the _Nasara_ faith
ever penetrated as far as to the place of thy birth?"

"_Lah_ (no), _M'almé_, never. But three did reach an oasis not far to
westward of it, fifty years ago, or maybe fifty-one."

"Ah, so?" exclaimed the Master, a touch of eagerness in his grave,
impassive voice. "Who were they?"

"Two of the French blood, Master, and one of the Russian."

"And what happened to them, then?"

"They--died, Master."

"Thou dost mean, thy people did slay them?"

"They died, all three," repeated Rrisa, in even tones. "The jackals
devoured them and the bones remained. Those bones, I think, are still
there. In our dry country--bones remain, long."

"Hm! Yea, so it is! But, tell me, thou, is it true that in thy country
the folk slay all _Nasara_ they lay hands on, by cutting with a sharp
knife? Cutting the stomach, so?" He made an illustrative gesture.

"Since you do force me to speak, against my will, _M'almé_--you being
of the _Nasara_ blood--I will declare the truth. Yea, that is so."

"A pleasant custom, surely! And why always in the stomach? Why do they
never stab or cut like other races?"

"There are no bones in the stomach, to dull the edges of the knives,
_M'almé_."

"Quite practical, that idea!" the Master exclaimed. Then he fell
silent again. He pressed his questions no further, concerning the
great Central Desert of the land. To have done so, he knew, would have
been entirely futile. Beyond a certain point, which he could gauge
accurately, neither gold nor fire would drive Rrisa. The Arab would at
any hour of night or day have laid down his life for the Master; but
though it should mean death he would not break the rites of his faith,
nor touch the cursed flesh of a pig, nor drink the forbidden drop of
wine, nor yet betray the secret of his land.

All at once the Arab spoke, in slow, grave tones.

"Your God is not my God, Master," said he, impersonally. "No, the God
of your people is not the God of mine. We have our own; and the land
is ours, too. None of the _Nasara_ may come thither, and live. Three
came, that I have heard of, and--they died. I crave my Master's
bidding to depart."

"Presently, yea," the Master answered. "But I have one more question
for thee. If I were to take thee, and go to thy land, but were not to
ask thy help there--if I were not to ask thee to guide me nor yet to
betray any secret--wouldst thou play the traitor to me, and deliver me
up to thy people?"

"My head is at your feet, _M'almé_. So long as you did not ask me
to do such things as would be unlawful in the eyes of Allah and the
Prophet, and seek to force me to them, this hand of mine would wither
before it would be raised against the preserver of my life! I pray
you, _M'almé_, let me go!"

"I grant it. _Ru'c'h halla!_" (Go now!) exclaimed the Master, with a
wave of the hand. Rrisa salaamed again, and, noiseless as a wraith,
departed.




CHAPTER II


"TO PARADISE--OR HELL"

For a time the Master sat in the thickening gloom, eating the dates
and _temmin_ wafers, drinking the coffee, pondering in deep silence.
When the simple meal was ended, he plucked a little sprig of leaves
from the khat plant in the bowl, and thrust them into his mouth.

This khat, gathered in the mountains back of Hodeida, on the Red Sea
not far from Bab el Mandeb, had been preserved by a process known
to only a few Coast Arabs. The plant now in the bowl was part of a
shipment that had been more than three months on the way; yet still
the fresh aroma of it, as the Master crushed the thick-set, dark-green
leaves, scented the darkening room with perfumes of Araby.

Slowly, with the contemplative appreciation of the connoisseur, the
Master absorbed the flavor and the wondrous stimulation of the "flower
of paradise." The use of khat, his once-a-day joy and comfort, he had
learned more than fifteen years before, on one of his exploring tours
in Yemen. He could hardly remember just when and where he had first
come to know the extraordinary mental and physical stimulus of this
strange plant, dear to all Arabs, any more than he definitely recalled
having learned the complex, poetical language of that Oriental land
of mystery. Both language and the use of khat had come to him from
contact with only the fringes of the country; and both had contributed
to his vast, unsatisfied longing to know what lay beyond the forbidden
zones that walled this land away from all the world.

Wherever he had gone, whatever perils, hardships, and adventures had
been his in many years of wandering up and down the world, khat,
the wondrous, had always gone with him. The fortune he had spent
on keeping up the supply had many times over been repaid to him in
strength and comfort.

The use of this plant, containing obscure alkaloids of the
katinacetate class, constituted his only vice--if you can call a habit
such as this vice, that works great well-being and that leaves no
appreciable aftermaths of evil such as are produced by alcohol or
drugs.

For a few minutes the Master sat quite motionless, pondering. Then
suddenly he got up again, and strode to one of the westward-looking
windows. The light was almost wholly gone, now. The man's figure,
big-shouldered, compact, well-knit, appeared only as a dim silhouette
against the faded blur in the west; a blur smoky and streaked with
dull smudges as of old, dried blood.

Far below, stretching away, away, shimmered the city's million
inconsequential lights. Above, stars were peeping out--were spying
down at all this feverish mystery of human life. Some of the low-hung
stars seemed to blend with the far lights along the Palisades. The
Master's lips tightened with impatience, with longing.

"There's where it is," he muttered. "Not five miles from here! It's
there, and I've got to have it. There--a thing that can't be bought!
There--a thing that must be mine!"

Among the stars, cutting down diagonally from the north-west, crept a
tiny, red gleam. The Master looked very grim, as his eyes followed its
swift flight.

"The Chicago mail-plane, just getting in," he commented. "In half an
hour, the Paris plane starts from the Cortlandt Street aero-tower. And
beyond Paris lies Constantinople; and beyond that, Arabia--the East!
Men are going out that way, tonight! And I--stick here like an old,
done relic, cooped in _Niss'rosh_--imprisoned in this steel and glass
cage of my own making!"

Suddenly he wheeled, flung himself into the big chair by the table and
dragged the faun's head over to him. He pressed a button at the base
of it, waited a moment and as the question came, "Number, please?"
spoke the desired number into the cupped hand and ear of the bronze.
Then, as he waited again, with the singular telephone in hand, he
growled savagely:

"By Allah! This sort of thing's not going to go on any longer! Not if
I die stopping it!"

A familiar voice, issuing from the lips of the faun--a voice made
natural and audible as the living human tones, by means of a delicate
microphone attachment inside the bronze head--tautened his nerves.

"Hello, hello!" called he. "That you, Bohannan?"

"Yes," sounded the answer. "Of course I know who _you_ are. There's
only one voice like yours in New York. Where are you?"

"In prison."

"No! Prison? For the Lord's sake!"

"No; for conventionality's sake. Not legally, you understand. Not
even an adventure as exciting as that has happened to me. But
constructively in jail. _De facto_, as it were. It's all the same
thing."

"Up there in that observatory thing of yours, are you?" asked
Bohannan.

"Yes; and I want to see you."

"When?"

"At once! As soon as you can get over here in a taxi, from that
incredibly stupid club of yours. You can get to _Niss'rosh_ even
though it's after seven. Take the regular elevator to the forty-first
floor, and I'll have Rrisa meet you and bring you up here in the
special.

"That's a concession, isn't it? The sealed gates that no one else ever
passes, at night, are opened to you. It's very important. Be here in
fifteen minutes you say? First-rate! Don't fail me. Good-bye!"

He was smiling a little now as he pressed the button again and rang
off. He put the faun's head back on the table, got up and stretched
his vigorous arms.

"By Allah!" he exclaimed, new notes in his voice. "What if--what if it
_could_ be, after all?"

He turned to the wall, laid his hand on an ivory plate flush with the
surface and pressed slightly. In silent unison, heavy gold-embroidered
draperies slid across every window. As these draperies closed the
apertures, light gushed from every angle and cornice. No specific
source of illumination seemed visible; but the room bathed itself in
soft, clear radiance with a certain restful greenish tinge, throwing
no shadows, pure as the day itself.

The man pulled open a drawer in the table and silently gazed down at
several little boxes within. He opened some. From one, on a bed of
purple satin, the Croix de Guerre, with a palm, gleamed up at him.
Another disclosed an "M.M.," a Médaille Militaire. A third showed him
the "D.F.C.," or Distinguished Flying Cross. Still another contained
aviator's insignia in the form of a double pair of wings. The Master
smiled, and closed the boxes, then the drawer.

"After these," he mused, "dead inaction? Not for me!"

His dark eyes were shining with eagerness as he walked to a door
beside that through which the Arab had entered. He swung it wide,
disclosing an ample closet, likewise inundated with light. There
hung a war-worn aviator's uniform of leather, gauntlets, a sheepskin
jacket, a helmet, resistal goggles, a cartridge-belt still half full
of ammunition, a heavy service automatic.

For a moment the man looked in at these. A great yearning came upon
his face. Caressingly he touched the uniform, the helmet. He unhooked
the pistol from where it hung, and carried it back to the table.

There he laid it down, and drew up his chair in front of it. For
a moment, silence fell as he remained there studying the
automatic--silence save for the faint, far hum of the city, the
occasional melodious note of steamer-whistles on the river.

The Master's face, now that full light brought out its details, showed
a white scar that led from his right ear down along jaw and throat,
till the collar masked it. Gray hairs, beyond those of his age,
sprinkled his temples. Strangely he smiled as he observed the nicks
and deep excoriations in stock and barrel of the formidable weapon.
He reached out, took up the gun once more, weighed it, got the feel of
it, patted it with affection.

"We've been through some wonderful times together, old pal, you and
I," said he. "We thought it was all over, didn't we, for a while? But
it's not! Life's not done, yet. It's maybe just beginning! We're going
out on the long trek, _again_!"

For a while he sat there musing. Then he summoned Rrisa again, bade
him remove the tray, and gave him instructions about the guest soon
to arrive. When Rrisa had withdrawn, the Master pulled over one of the
huge atlases, opened it, turned to the map of Arabia, and fell into
deep study.

Rrisa's tapping at the door, minutes later, roused him. At his order
to advance, the door swung. The Arab ushered in a guest, then silently
disappeared. Without a sound, the door closed.

The Master arose, advancing with outstretched hand.

"Bohannan! God, but I'm glad to see you!"

Their hands met and clasped. The Master led Bohannan to the table and
gestured toward a chair. Bohannan threw his hat on the table with a
large, sweeping gesture typical of his whole character, and sat down.
And for a moment, they looked at each other in silence.

A very different type, this, from the dark, sinewed master of
_Niss'rosh_. Bohannan was frankly red-haired, a bit stout, smiling,
expansive. His blood was undoubtedly Celtic. An air of great geniality
pervaded him. His hands were strong and energetic, with oddly
spatulate fingers; and the manner in which his nails had been gnawed
down and his mustache likewise chewed, bespoke a highly nervous
temperament belied by his ruddy, almost boyish face. His age might
have been thirty-five, but he looked one of those men who never fully
grow up, who never can be old.

"Well, what's doing now?" demanded he, fixing blue eyes on his host.
He produced a cigarette and lighted it, inhaled smoke deeply and blew
a thin gray cloud toward the ceiling. "Something big, eh? by the way
you routed me out of a poker-game where I was already forty-seven
dollars and a half to the good. You don't usually call a fellow, that
way, unless there's something in the wind!"

"There is, now."

"Big?"

"Very."

"So?" The newcomer's eyes fell on the pistol. "Yes, that looks like
action, all right. Hope to heaven it _is_! I've been boring myself
and everybody else to death, the past three months. What's up? Duel,
maybe?"

"Yes. That's just it, Bohannan. A duel." And the Master fixed strange
eyes on his companion. His muscular fingers fell to tapping the
prayer-rug on the table, drumming out an impatient little tattoo.

"Duel? Lord's sake, man! With whom?"

"With Fate. Now, listen!" The Master's tones became more animated.
A little of the inward fires had begun to burn through his
self-restraint. "Listen to me, and not a word till I'm done! You're
dryrotting for life, man. Dying for it, gasping for it, eating your
heart out for it! So am I. So are twenty-five or thirty men we know,
between us, in this city. That's all true, eh?"

"Some!"

"Yes! We wouldn't have to go outside New York to find at least
twenty-five or thirty in the same box we're in. All men who've been
through trench work, air work, life-and-death work on various fronts.
Men of independent means. Men to whom office work and club life
and all this petty stuff, here, is like dish-water after champagne!
Dare-devils, all of them, that wouldn't stop at the gates of Hell!"

"The gates of Hell?" demanded Bohannan, his brow wrinkling with glad
astonishment. "What d'you mean by that, now?"

"Just what I say! It's possible to gather together a kind of
unofficial, _sub rosa_, private little Foreign Legion of our own,
Bohannan--all battle-scarred men, all men with at least one decoration
and some with half a dozen. With that Legion, nothing would be
impossible!"

He warmed to his subject, leaned forward, fixed eager eyes on
his friend, laid a hand on Bohannan's knee. "We've all done
the conventional thing, long enough. Now we're going to do the
unconventional thing. We've been all through the known. Now we're
going after the unknown. And Hell is liable to be no name for it, I
tell you that!"

The Celt's eyes were alight with swift, eager enthusiasm. He laid his
hand on the other's, and gripped it hard in hot anticipation.

"Tell me more!" he commanded. "What are we going to do?"

"Going to see the stuff that's in us, and in twenty-five or thirty
more of our kind. The stuff, the backbone, the heart that's in you,
Bohannan! That's in me! In all of us!"

"Great, great! That's me!" Bohannan's cigarette smoldered, unheeded,
in his fingers. The soul of him was thrilling with great visions. "I'm
with you! Whither bound?"

The Master smiled oddly, as he answered in a low, even tone:

"To Paradise--or Hell!"




CHAPTER III


THE GATHERING OF THE LEGIONARIES

One week from that night, twenty-seven other men assembled in the
strange eyrie of _Niss'rosh_, nearly a thousand feet above the city's
turmoil. They came singly or in pairs, their arrival spaced in such a
manner as not to make the gathering obvious to anyone in the building
below.

Rrisa, the silent and discreet, brought them up in the private
elevator from the forty-first floor to the Master's apartment on the
top story of the building, then up the stairway to the observatory,
and thus ushered them into the presence of the Master and Bohannan.
Each man was personally known to one or the other, who vouched
absolutely for his secrecy, valor, and good faith.

This story would resolve itself into a catalogue were each man to be
named, with his title, his war-exploits, his decorations. We shall
have to touch but lightly on this matter of personnel. Six of the
men were Americans--eight, including the Master and Bohannan; four
English; five French; two Serbian; three Italian; and the others
represented New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Cuba, Poland, Montenegro, and
Japan.

Not one of these men but bore a wound or more, from the Great
Conflict. This matter of having a scar had been made one prime
requisite for admission to the Legion. Each had anywhere from one to
half a dozen decorations, whether the Congressional Medal, the V.C.,
the Croix de Guerre, the Order of the Rising Sun, or what-not.

Not one was in uniform. That would have made their arrival far too
conspicuous. Dressed as they were, in mufti, even had anyone noted
their coming, it could not have been interpreted as anything but an
ordinary social affair.

Twenty-nine men, all told, gathered in the observatory, clearly
illuminated by the hidden lights. All were true blue, all loyal to
the core, all rusting with ennui, all drawn thither by the lure of the
word that had been passed them in club and office, on the golf links,
in the street. All had been pledged, whether they went further or not,
to keep this matter secret as the grave.

Some were already known to each other. Some needed introduction. Such
introduction consumed a few minutes, even after the last had come and
been checked off on the Master's list, in cipher code. The
brightly lighted room, behind its impenetrable curtains, blued with
tobacco-smoke; but no drop of wine or spirits was visible.

The Master, at the head of the table, sat with his list and took
account of the gathering. Each man, as his name was called, gave that
name in full, briefly stated his service and mentioned his wound.

All spoke English, though some rather mangled it. At any rate, this
was to be the official language of the expedition, and no other was to
be allowed. The ability to understand and obey orders given in English
had, of course, to be one essential requisite for this adventurous
band of Legionaries.

When all the credentials had been proved satisfactory, the Master
rapped for order. Silence fell. The men settled down to listen, in
tense expectancy. Some took chairs, others occupied the divan, still
others--for whom there were no seats--stood along the walls.

Informal though the meeting still was, an air of military restraint
and discipline already half possessed it. The bright air seemed to
quiver with the eagerness of these fighting-men once more to
thrust out into the currents of activity, to feel the tightening of
authority, the lure and tang of the unknown.

Facing them from the end of the table, the Master stood and spoke
to them, with Bohannan seated at his right. His face reflected quite
another humor from that of the night, a week before, when first this
inspiration had come upon him.

He seemed refreshed, buoyant, rejuvenated. His eyes showed fire. His
brows, that had frowned, now had smoothed themselves. His lips smiled,
though gravely. His color had deepened. His whole personality, that
had been sad and tired, now had become inspired with a profound and
soul-felt happiness.

"Gentlemen all, soldiers and good men," said he, slowly. "In a general
way you know the purpose of this meeting. I am not given to oratory. I
do not intend making any speech to you.

"We are all ex-fighters. Life, once filled with daring and adventure,
has become stale, flat, and unprofitable. The dull routine of business
and of social life is Dead Sea fruit to our lips--dust and ashes. It
cannot hold or entertain us.

"By this I do not mean that war is good, or peace bad. For the vast
majority of men, peace is normal and right. But there must be always
a small minority that cannot tolerate ennui; that must seek risks and
daring exploits; that would rather lay down their lives, today, in
some man-sized exploit, than live twenty-five years longer in the dull
security of a humdrum rut.

"Such men have always existed and probably always will. We are all,
I believe, of that type. Therefore you will all understand me. I will
understand you. And each of you will understand the rest.

"Major Bohannan and I have chosen you and have invited you here
because we believe every man in this room is precisely the kind of
man I have been defining. We believe you are like ourselves, dying
of boredom, eager for adventure; and willing to undergo military
discipline, swear secrecy, pledge honor and risk life itself, provided
the adventure be daring enough, the reward promising enough. If there
is anyone here present who is unwilling to subscribe to what I have
said, so far, let him withdraw."

No one stirred. But a murmur arose, eager, delighted:

"Go on! Go on--tell us more!"

"Absolute obedience to me is to be the first rule," continued the
Master. "The second is to be sobriety. There shall be no drinking,
carousing, or gambling. This is not to be a vulgar, swashbuckling,
privateering revel, but--"

A slight disturbance at the door interrupted him. He frowned, and
rapped on the table, for silence. The disturbance, however, continued.
Someone was trying to enter there against Rrisa's protests.

"I did not bring you up, sir," the Arab was saying, in broken English.
"You cannot come in! How did you get here?"

"I'm not in the habit of giving explanations to subordinates, or
of bandying words with them," replied the man, in a clear, rather
high-pitched but very determined voice. The company, gazing at him,
saw a slight, well-knit figure of middle height or a little less,
in aviator's togs. "I'm here to see your master, my good fellow, not
you!"

The man at the head of the table raised a finger to his lips, in
signal of silence from them all, and beckoned the Arab.

"Let him come in!" he ordered, in Rrisa's vernacular.

"_A, M'almé_" submitted the desert man, standing aside and bowing as
the stranger entered. The Master added, in English:

"If he comes as a friend and helper, uninvited though he be, we
welcome him. If as an enemy, traitor, or spy, we can deal justice to
him in short order. Sir, advance!"

The stranger came to the foot of the table. Men made way for him. He
stood there a moment in silence, dropped his gauntlets on the table
and seemed peering at the Master. Then all at once he drew himself up,
sharply, and saluted.

The Master returned the salute. A moment's silence followed. No man
was looking elsewhere than at this interloper.

Not much could be seen of him, so swaddled was he in sheepskin jacket,
aviator's helmet, and goggles. Leather trousers and leggings completed
his costume. The collar of the jacket, turned up, met the helmet. Of
his face, only the chin and lower part of the cheeks remained visible.

The silence tautened, stretched to the breaking-point. All at once the
master of _Niss'rosh_ demanded, incisively:

"Your name, sir?"

"Captain Alfred Alden, of the R.A.F."

"Royal Air Force man, eh? Are you prepared to prove that?"

"I am."

"If you're not, well--this won't be exactly a salubrious altitude for
you."

"I have my papers, my licenses, my commission."

"With you here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well," answered the Master, "I will examine them in due time.
English, American, or--?"

"I am a Canadian." answered the aviator. "I have seen nearly two
years' active service. I rank as an ace. I bear three wounds and have
been cited several times. I have the Distinguished Service Cross. What
more need I tell you, sir?"

His voice was steady and rang true. The Master nodded approval, that
seemed to echo round the room in a buzz of acceptance. But there were
still other questions to be asked. The next one was:

"How did you come here? It's obvious my man didn't bring you up."

"I came in my own plane, sir," the stranger answered, in a dead hush
of stillness. "It just now landed on the roof of this building. If you
will draw the curtains, there behind you, I believe you can see it for
yourself."

"I heard no engine."

"I volplaned in. I don't say this to boast sir, but I can handle the
average plane as accurately as most men handle their own fingers."

"Were you invited to attend this meeting by either Major Bohannan or
by me?"

"No, sir, I was not."

"Then, why are you here?"

"Why am I here? For exactly the same reason that all the rest are
here, sir!" The aviator swept his arm comprehensively at the ranks of
eagerly listening men. "To resume active service. To get back to duty.
To live, again! In short, to join this expedition and to share all its
adventures!"

"Hm! Either that, or to interfere with us."

"Not the latter, sir! I swear that!"

"How did you know there was going to be an expedition, at all?"
demanded the Master, his brows tensed, lips hard, eyes very keen. The
aviator seemed smiling, as he answered:

"I know many things. Some may be useful to you all. I am offering you
my skill and knowledge, such as they may be, without any thought or
hope of reward."

"Why?"

"Because I am tired of life. Because I want--must have--the freedom of
the open roads, the inspiration of some great adventure! Surely, you
understand."

"Yes, if what you say is true, and you are not a spy. Show us your
face, sir!"

The aviator loosened his helmet and removed it, disclosing a mass of
dark hair, a well-shaped head and a vigorous neck. Then he took off
his goggles.

A kind of communal whisper of astonishment and hostility ran round the
apartment. The man's whole face--save for eyeholes through which
dark pupils looked strangely out--was covered by a close-fitting,
flesh-colored celluloid mask.

This mask reached from the roots of his hair to his mouth. It sloped
away down the left jaw, and somewhat up the cheekbone of the right
side. The mask was firmly strapped in place around the head and neck.

"What does all this mean, sir?" demanded the Master, sharply. "Why the
mask?"

"Is that a necessary question, sir?" replied the aviator, while a buzz
of curiosity and suspicion rose. "You have seen many such during the
war and since its close."

"Badly disfigured, are you?"

"That word, 'disfigured,' does not describe it, sir. Others have
wounds, but my whole face is nothing but a wound. No, let me put it
more accurately--there is, practically speaking, no face at all. The
gaping cavity that exists under this mask would certainly sicken the
strongest men among you, and turn you against me.

"We can't tolerate what disgusts, even if its qualities be excellent.
In exposing myself to you, sir, I should certainly be insuring my
rejection. But what you cannot see, what you can only imagine, will
not make you refuse me."

The Master pondered a moment, then nodded and asked:

"Is it so very bad, sir?"

"It's a thing of horror, incredible, awful, unreal! In the hospital
at Rouen, they called me 'The Kaiser's Masterpiece.' Some of the most
hardened surgeons couldn't look at me, or dress my--wound, let us call
it--without a shudder. Ordinary men would find me intolerable, if they
could see me.

"Unmasked, I bear no resemblance whatever to a man, but rather to some
ghastly, drug-inspired dream or nightmare of an Oriental Dante. The
fact that I have sacrificed my human appearance in the Great Cause
cannot overcome the shrinking aversion that normal men would feel,
if they could see me. I say only this, that my mutilation is
indescribable. As the officer and gentleman I know you to be, you
won't ask me to expose this horror!"




CHAPTER IV


THE MASKED RECRUIT

A little silence lengthened, while the strange aviator continued to
peer out with strangely shining eyes through the holes of his mask.
The effect of that human intelligence, sheltered in there behind that
expressionless celluloid, whose frail thinness they all knew covered
unspeakable frightfulness, became uncanny.

Some of the men eased the tension by blowing ribbons of smoke or
by relighting tobacco that had gone out while the stranger had been
talking. Others shifted, a bit uneasily. Voices began to mutter, pro
and con. The Master suddenly knocked again, for silence.

"I am going to accept this man," said he, sharply. "You notice I
do not put this to a vote, or consult you about it. Nor shall I, in
anything. The prime condition of this whole undertaking, as I was
saying when Captain Alden here arrived, is unquestioning obedience to
my authority.

"No one who is unwilling to swear that, need go any further. You must
have confidence in my plans, my judgment. And you must be willing to
obey. It is all very autocratic, I know, but the expedition cannot
proceed on any other basis.

"You are to go where I will, act as I command, and only regain your
liberty when the undertaking is at an end. I shall not order any man
to go anywhere, or do anything, that I would not do myself. On this
you can rely.

"In case of my death, the authority falls on Major Bohannan. He is
today the only man who knows my plans, and with whom I have had any
discussion. If we both are killed, then you can elect your own leader.
But so long as either of us lives, you have no authority and no
redress. I hope that's perfectly understood. Does any man wish to
withdraw?"

Not one budged. All stood to their decision, hard as rock.

"Very well," said the Master, grimly. "But remember, disobedience
incurs the death penalty, and it will be rigorously enforced. My word
is to be supreme.

"Such being the case, I decide to take this man. His skill as an
aviator cannot be denied. We shall need that. His ability to endure
suffering and still remain efficient seems proved. That may be
valuable; probably will be.

"I shall examine his credentials. If he turns out to be a spy--well,
life will be short, for him."

He addressed himself to the masked aviator, who was still standing in
an attitude of military attention.

"You are now one of us, sir. You become the thirtieth member of a
little group of as brave men, as daring and determined fighters as
can be found in America or in the world--all tried and tempered by the
fires of war; all decorated for conspicuous valor; all ready to follow
me to the ends of the earth and die, if need be; all eager to share in
an undertaking as yet unknown to them, but one that promises to be
the most extraordinary adventure ever undertaken on this planet. You
understand all that, sir?"

"I do!"

"Raise your right hand, sir."

The aviator obeyed.

"All the others, too!"

Every hand went up.

"Swear allegiance to me, fidelity, secrecy, courage, obedience. On the
thing you hold most dear, your honor as fighting-men, swear it!"

The shout that answered him, from every throat, made the eagle's nest
ring with wild echoes. The Master smiled, as the hands sank.

"With men like you," said he, "failure is impossible. The expedition
is to start at once, tomorrow night. No man in it has now any ties
or home or kin that overbalance his ties to me and to the _esprit de
corps_ of our body.

"The past is dead, for you. The future is all a mystery. You are
to live only in the present, day by day. And now for some practical
details.

"The means of transport you do not know. The perils and rewards are
problematical. Of the former there will be enough; as for the latter,
those lie on the knees of the gods. There will be no payment for any
man. Not a cent of money is involved in this service.

"Commissary will be furnished. Each man is to wear his campaign
equipment--his uniform and such kit as he can store in a rucksack.
Bring small-arms and ammunition. In addition, I will furnish bombing
material and six Lewis guns, with ammunition, also other materials of
which I shall now say nothing. These things will be transported to
the proper place without labor on your part. I think I have made the
outlines of the matter reasonably clear to every man present."

"Our orders, sir?" asked a voice with a French accent, down the table.
"Are we to have no precise orders before leaving this room?"

"You are. Each man will receive his own, sealed, before leaving. I
am now about to give them out, in alphabetical rotation. This will
dismiss the meeting. You will withdraw as inconspicuously as you
came. Remember, you are to become as cogs in the machine that I have
devised. At the exact place, hour, minute, and second you are to do
exactly the thing ordered, _and nothing else_. Neglect, disobedience,
or failure will positively not be condoned, but will be punished as I
see fit, even to the death penalty.

"Come forward now, as I call your names, and receive what I shall give
you."

He opened a drawer in the table, took out many small boxes and
arranged them before him. Each box was carefully wrapped in stout
paper, securely tied, and sealed with red wax.

Standing there, firm, impassive, with narrowed eyes, he began reading
the names:


"Adams--Auchincloss--Brodeur--Cracowicz--Daimamoto--Emilio--Frazier--"

As each man's name was uttered he came down along the table, took the
box extended to him, thrust it into his pocket, saluted stiffly, and
withdrew in silence. At the end of a few minutes, no one was left but
the Master, Bohannan, and the man in the celluloid mask.

"Have you no orders for me, sir?" asked the aviator, still erect
in his place at the far end of the table. His eyes shone out darkly
through his shield.

"None, sir."

"All the others--"

"You are different." The Master set hands on his hips, and coldly
studied this strange figure. "The others have had their orders
carefully worked out for them, prepared, synchronized. You have come,
so to speak, as an extemporization, an auxiliary; you will add one
more unit to the flyers in the expedition, of which there are nine
aces, including Major Bohannan here. The others are now on their
way to their lodgings, to study their instructions, to memorize, and
prepare to carry them out. You are to remain here, with Major Bohannan
and with me."

"Until what time, sir?"

"Until we start. You will be under continual surveillance. If you
make any attempt to communicate in any way with anyone outside my
apartment, it will be the last thing you will ever do. You will
receive no other warning. Tomorrow night you will accompany us. Till
then, you remain my--guest."

The aviator nodded.

"Very well, sir," he accepted. "But, my machine?"

"I will attend to your machine."

"I should hate to leave it there on the roof."

"It will not be left on the roof."

"I don't understand, exactly--"

"There will be very many things you do not understand before this
expedition is over and done with. I need say no more."

Sharply he clapped his hands, thrice. In a moment, Rrisa appeared at
the door. The Master spoke a few guttural, aspirated words of Arabic.
Rrisa beckoned the stranger, who obeyed.

At the exit he faced about and sharply saluted. The Master returned
it. Then he vanished, and the door noiselessly closed behind them.

The Master turned to Bohannan.

"Now," said he, "these few last details. Time is growing very short.
Only a few hours remain. To work, Major--to work!"

At this same moment Auchincloss had already arrived at his rooms in
the McAlpine; and there, having carefully locked his door, had settled
himself at his desk with his sealed box before him.

For a moment he studied it under the electric light. Then, breaking
the wax with fingers tensed by eagerness, he tore it open. He spread
the contents on his blotting-pad. There was a small pocket-compass of
the best quality, a plain-cased watch wound up and going, a map and
a folded sheet of paper covered with typewriting. Auchincloss fell to
reading:

GENERAL ORDERS

You are to learn your specific orders by heart, and then destroy this
paper. You are to act on these orders, irrespective of every other
man. You are not to communicate the contents of this paper to any
other. This might upset the pre-arranged plan. You might try to join
forces, assist each other, or exercise some mistaken judgment that
might result in ruin. Each man is to keep his orders an absolute
secret. This is vital.

Each man, like yourself, is provided with a map, a watch, and a
compass. These watches are all self-luminous, all accurately adjusted
to synchronize to the second, and all will run forty-eight hours.

SPECIFIC ORDERS

Tomorrow, proceed inconspicuously to Tenafly, New Jersey, and hire a
room at the Cutter Inn. Carry your kit in a suit-case. At 7:30 p.m.,
go to Englewood. Go up Englewood Avenue toward the Palisades, turn
left (north) along the road near edge of cliff; proceed half a mile
and enter woods at your right. There you will find path marked "A" on
your map. Put on rucksack and discard suit-case, which, of course,
is to have no identifying marks. Proceed along path to point "B," and
from under board you will find there take box with weapon enclosed.
Box will also contain vacuum searchlight and directions for use of
weapon, exact time, direction, and elevation for discharging same, and
further instructions how to proceed. Act on these to the second. If
interfered with, kill; but kill quietly, so as to avoid giving the
alarm.

I expect every man to do his duty to the full. There will be but one
excuse for failure, and that is death.

The Master.




CHAPTER V


IN THE NIGHT

The night was moonless, dark, warm with the inviting softness of late
spring that holds out promises of romance. Stars wavered and wimpled
in the black waters of the Hudson as a launch put out in silence from
the foot of Twenty-seventh Street.

This launch contained four men. They carried but little baggage; no
more than could be stowed in a rucksack apiece. All were in their old
service uniforms, with long coats over the uniforms to mask them. All
carried vacuum-flashlights in their overcoat pockets, and lethal-gas
pistols, in addition to ordinary revolvers or automatics. And all were
keyed to the top notch of energy, efficiency, eagerness. The Great
Adventure had begun.

In the stern of the swift, twenty-four cylinder launch--a racing
model--sat Captain Alden and Rrisa. The captain wore his aviator's
helmet and his goggles, despite the warmth of the night. To appear in
only his celluloid mask, even at a time like this when darkness would
have hidden him, seemed distasteful to the man. He seemed to want to
hide his misfortune as fully as possible; and, since this did no harm,
the Master let him have his way.

The bow was occupied by the Master and by Major Bohannan, with the
Master at the wheel. He seemed cool, collected, impassive; but
the major, of hotter Celtic blood, could not suppress his fidgety
nervousness.

Intermittently he gnawed at his reddish mustache. A cigar, he felt,
would soothe and quiet him. Cigars, however, were now forbidden. So
were pipes and cigarettes. The Master did not intend to have even
their slight distraction coming between the minds of his men and the
careful, intricate plan before them.

As the racer veered north, up the broad darkness of the Hudson--the
Hudson sparkling with city illumination on either hand, with still or
moving ships' lights on the breast of the waters--Bohannan murmured:

"Even now, as your partner in this enterprise--"

"My lieutenant," corrected the Master.

"As second in command," amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly
convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones,
covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of
swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to me,
and avoidable danger."

"It is neither," answered the man at the wheel. "What would you have
done? What better plan could you have proposed?"

"You could have built your own flyer, couldn't you? Since money's no
object to you, and you don't even know, accurately, how much you've
got--nobody can keep track of figures like those--why risk legal
interference and international complications at the start, by--"

"To build the kind of flyer we need would have taken six or seven
months. Not all my money could have produced it, sooner. And absolute
ennui can't wait half a year. I'd have gone wholly stale, and so would
you, and all of them. We'd have lost them.

"Again, news of any such operations would have got out. My plans would
possibly have been checkmated. In the third place, what you propose
would have been tame sport, indeed, as a beginning! Three excellent
reasons, my dear Major, why this is positively the only way."

"Perhaps. But there's always the chance of failure, now. The guards--"

"After your own experience, when that capsule burst in the laboratory,
you talk to me about guards?"

"Suppose one escapes?"

The Master only smiled grimly, and sighted his course up the dark
river.

"And the alarm is sure to be given, in no time. Why didn't you just
buy the thing outright?"

"It's not for sale, at any price."

"Still--men can't run off with three and a half million dollars' worth
of property and with provisions and equipment like that, all ready for
a trial trip, without raising Hell. There'll be pursuit--"

"What with, my dear Bohannan?"

"That's a foolish statement of mine, the last one, I admit," answered
the major, as his companion swung the launch a little toward the
Jersey shore. "Of course nothing can overhaul us, once we're away.
But you know my type of mind weighs every possibility, pro and con.
Wireless can fling out a fan of swift aerial police ahead of us from
Europe."

"How near can anything get to us?"

"I know it all looks quite simple and obvious, in theory.
Nevertheless--"

"Men of your character are useful, in places," said the Master,
incisively. "You are good in a charge, in sudden daring, in swift
attack. But in the approach to great decisions, you vacillate. That's
your racial character.

"I'm beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next in
command. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's not
too late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a special
concession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor."

His hand swung the wheel, sweeping the racer in a curve toward the
Manhattan shore. Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again the
other way.

"I stick!" he growled. "I've said the last word of this sort you'll
ever hear me utter. Full speed ahead--to Paradise--or Hell!"

They said no more. The launch split her way swiftly toward the north.
By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile
appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy
which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys--that of bending
others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of
his fancy.

Some quarter hour the racer hummed upriver. Keenly the Master kept
his lookout, picking up landmarks. Finally he spoke a word to
Captain Alden, who came forward to the engines. The Master's
cross-questionings of this man had convinced him his credentials were
genuine and that he was loyal, devoted, animated by nothing but the
same thirst for adventure that formed the driving power behind them
all. Now he was trusting him with much, already.

"Three quarters speed," ordered the Master. The skilled hand of the
captain, well-versed in the operation of gas engines, obeyed the
command. The whipping breeze of their swift course, the hiss at the
bows as foam and water crumbled out and over, somewhat diminished. The
goal lay not far off.

To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breasting
Spuyten Duyvil. To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of
the cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades were
drawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis
were being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant
steamer-whistles from astern.

A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that an
express was hurling itself cityward. Its muffled roar began to echo
out over the star-flecked waters. The Master threw a scornful glance
at it. He turned in his seat, and peered at the shimmer of the city's
lights, strung like a luminous rosary along the river's edge. Then
he looked up at the roseate flush on the sky, flung there by the
metropolis as from the mouth of a crucible.

"Child's play!" he murmured. "All this coming and going in
crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over
pennies--child's play. Less than that--the blind swarming of ants!
Tomorrow, where will all this be, for us?"

He turned back and thrust over the spokes. The launch drew in toward
the Jersey shore.

"Let the engines run at half-speed," he directed, "and control her now
with the clutch."

"Yes, sir!"

The aviator's voice was sharp, precise, determined. The Master nodded
to himself with satisfaction. This man, he felt, would surely be a
valued member of the crew. He might prove more than that. There might
be stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in case
that should be necessary.

The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward the
cliff. Sounds from shore began to grow audible Afar, an auto siren
shrieked. A dog barked, irritatingly. A human voice came vaguely
hallooing.

Off to the right, over the cliff brow, a faint aura of light was
visible. The eyes of the Master rested on this a moment, brightening.
He smiled again; and his hand tightened a little on the wheel. But all
he said was:

"Dead slow, now, Captain Alden!"

As the cliff drew near, its black brows ate across the sky, devouring
stars. The Master spoke in Arabic to Rrisa, who seized a boat hook
and came forward. Out of the gloom small wharf advanced to meet the
launch. The boat-hook caught; the launch, easing to a stop, cradled
against the stringpiece.

Rrisa held with the hook, while Bohannan and Alden clambered out.
Before the Master left, he bent and seemed to be manipulating
something in the bottom of the launch. Then he stepped to the engine.

"Out, Rrisa," he commanded, "and hold hard with the hook, now!"

The Arab obeyed. All at once the propeller churned water, reversed.
The Master leaped to the wharf.

"Let go--and throw the hook into the boat!" he ordered.


While the three others stood wondering on the dark wharf, the launch
began to draw slowly back into the stream. Already it was riding a bit
low, going down gradually by the bows.

"What now?" questioned the major, astonished.

"She will sink a hundred or two yards from shore, in deep water,"
answered the Master, calmly. "The sea-cock is wide open."

"A fifteen thousand dollar launch--!"

"Is none the less, a clue. No man of this party, reaching the shore
tonight, is leaving any more trace than we are. Come, now, all this is
trivial. Forward!"

In silence, they followed him along the dark wharf, reached a narrow,
rocky path that serpented up the face of the densely wooded cliff,
and began to ascend. A lathering climb it was, laden as they were with
heavy rucksacks, in the moonless obscurity.

Now and then the Master's little searchlight--his own wonderful
invention, a heatless light like an artificial firefly, using no
batteries nor any power save universal, etheric rays in an absolute
vacuum--glowed with pale virescence over some particularly rough bit
of going. For the most part, however, not even this tiny gleam
was allowed to show. Silence, darkness, precision, speed were now
all-requisite.

Twenty-four minutes from leaving the wharf, they stood among a
confused, gigantic chaos of boulders flung, dicelike, amid heavy
timbers on the brow of the Palisades. Off to the north, the faint,
ghostly aura dimly silhouetted the trees. Far below, the jetty river
trembled here, there, with starlight.

They paused a moment to breathe, to shift straps that bound shoulders
not now hardened to such burdens. The Master glanced at the luminous
dial of his wrist-watch.

"Almost to the dot," he whispered. "Seventeen minutes to midnight. At
midnight, sharp, we take possession. Come!"

They trailed through a hard, rocky path among thick oak, pine,
and silver-birch. Now and then the little greenish-white light
will-o'-the-wisped ahead, flickering hither, yon. No one spoke a word.
Every footstep had to be laid down with care. After three minutes'
progress, the Master stopped, turned, held up his hand.

"Absolute silence, now," he breathed. "The outer guards are now within
an eighth of a mile."

They moved forward again. The light was no longer shown, but the
Master confidently knew the way. Bohannan felt a certain familiarity
with the terrain, which he had carefully studied on the large-scale
map he and the Master had used in planning the attack; but the
Master's intimate knowledge was not his. After two and one-half
minutes, the leader stopped again, and gestured at heavy fern-brakes
that could just be distinguished as black blotches in the dark of the
woods.

"The exact spot," he whispered. "Take cover, and follow your memorized
orders!"

He settled down noiselessly into the brakes. The others did likewise.
Utter silence fell, save for the far, vague roar of the city. A
vagrant little breeze was stirring the new foliage, through which a
few stars curiously peeped. The four men seemed far, very far from any
others. And yet--

_Were_ there any others near them? the major wondered. No sign, no
sound of them existed. Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted up
against the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night. A distant
laugh diffused itself through the dark. A dog yapped; perhaps the
same that they had heard barking, a few minutes before. Then came the
faint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.

"They're knocking out the holding-pins," thought the major. "In a few
minutes it'll be too late, _if_ we don't strike now!" He felt a great
temptation to urge haste, on the Master. But, aware of the futility of
any suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any other _faux pas_, he
bridled his impatience and held still.

Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yards
from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal--if
you can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now planned
consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every
ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the _coup_
should be put through--realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a
profound excitement.

His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself up
like a banjo-string about to snap. Steeled in the grim usages of
war though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breaking
stress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspense
before the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and the
lives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves. He
desperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question.
It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fateful
moments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.

The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remained
motionless. If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign
of it. Where might the others of the Legion be? No indication of
them could be made out. No other living thing seemed in the woods
encircling the stockade. Was each man really there and ready for the
predetermined role he was to play?

It seemed incredible, fantastic, to suppose that all these
adventurers, each separate and alone, each having no contact, with
any other, should all have taken their assigned posts. That each, with
luminous watch on wrist, was even now timing himself, to the second,
before striking the single note calculated to produce, in harmony with
all the rest, the finished composition. Such an assumption partook
more of the stuff of an Arabian Nights tale than of stern reality in
this Twentieth Century and on the outskirts of the world's greatest
city.

The Master, crouching, whispered:

"Two minutes more! Keep your eyes on your watches, now. Get your
lethal guns ready! In 120 seconds, you will hear the first capsule
burst. Ten seconds after that, Alden, fire yours. Ten later, yours,
Bohannan. Ten later, yours, Rrisa. Listen hard! Hold steady!"

The silence drew at them like a pain. Rrisa breathed something in
which the words: "_La Illaha ilia Allah_" transpired in a wraith of
sound. Alden nestled closer into the ferns. Bohannan could hardly hold
his poise.

All three now had their capsule pistols ready. The self-luminous
compass and level attached to each gun gave them their exact direction
and elevation. Glimmering watches marked the time, the dragging of the
last few seconds.

The Master drew no weapon. His mind, directing all, observing all, was
not to be distracted by even so small a detail as any personal hand in
the discharge of the lethal gas.

If he felt the strain of the final moment, on which hung vaster
issues than mere life or death, he gave no indication of it. His eyes
remained fixed on the watch-dial at his wrist. They were confident,
those eyes. The vague shimmer of the watch-glow showed them dark and
grave; his face, faintly revealed, was impassive, emotionless.

It seemed the face of a scientist, a chemist who--having worked out
his formula to its ultimate minutiae--now felt utter trust in its
reactions, now was only waiting to observe what he well knew must
inevitably happen.

"Thirty seconds more," he whispered, and fell silent. Presently, after
what seemed half an hour: "Fifteen!"

Another long wait. The Master breathed:

"In just five seconds the first capsule will burst there!" He pointed
with assurance. "In two--in one--"




CHAPTER VI


THE SILENT ATTACK

At the exact instant when the second hand notched to the minute's
edge, and in precisely the spot indicated, a slight, luminous spot
became dimly visible above the trees. The spot took uncertain form
high above the ghost-glow rising from the unseen stockade. For an
instant it hung suspended, pale-greenish, evanescent.

Then, as a faint plop! drifted to the watchers--a sound no louder
than a feeble clack of the tongue--this indefinite luminosity began to
sink, to fade, falling slowly, gradually dissipating itself in the dim
light over the stockade.

The Master nodded, smiling, with never any hint of praise or
approbation. The fulfilment of his order was to him no other than it
is to you, when you drop a pebble into water, to hear the splash of
it. That his plan should be working out, seemed to him a perfectly
obvious, inevitable thing. The only factor that could possibly have
astonished him, just now, would have been the nonappearance of that
slight, luminous cloudlet at the precise spot and moment designated.

Neither Bohannan, Alden, nor Rrisa was watching the slow descent of
the lethal gas. All three had their eyes fixed on their own lethal-gas
pistols and on their watches. At mathematically the correct second,
Bohannan discharged his piece, correctly sighting direction and
elevation.

As he pressed trigger, a light sighing eased itself from the slim
barrel. Something flicked through the leaves; and, almost on the
instant, the phenomenon of the little phosphorescent spot repeated
itself, though in a different place from the first one. Captain
Alden's and Rrisa's shots produced still other blurs of virescence.

Then, as they all waited, crouching, came another and another tiny
explosion, high aloft, at precisely ten-second intervals. Here, there,
they developed, until twenty-nine of these strange, bubble-like things
had burst above and all about the huge enclosure. Then darkness and
silence once more settled down.

Nothing seemed to have happened. Night still reigned, starry with
glimpses of sky through wind-swayed trees. One would have said
everything still remained precisely as it had been before.

Yet presently, within the stockade or near it, a certain uneasy
_mélange_ of sounds began to develop. Here a cry became audible, there
a command. A startled voice called an order, but suddenly fell silent,
half-way through it. The worrying of the dog ceased with eloquent
suddenness. A curse died, unfinished.

And silence, as perfect as the silence of the unseen watchers strung
all about the periphery of the stockade, once more dominated the
night.

For precisely ten minutes, nothing broke that silence--minutes
during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave
confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at
work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike.
So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other
planet attack and conquer the world, noiselessly, gently, irrevocably.

This assault was different from any other ever made since man and man
first began battling together in the dim twilights of the primeval.
Not with shout and cheer did it rush forward, nor yet with venomous
gases that gave the alarm, that choked, that strangled, that tortured.

Silence and concealment, and the invisible blight of sleep, like the
greater numbing that once fell on the hosts of Sennacherib, enfolded
all opposition. All who would have stood against the Legion, simply
sighed once, perhaps spoke a few disjointed words, then sank into
oblivion.

So far as anyone could see, save for the bursting of twenty-nine
insignificant little light-bubbles, in mid-air, nothing at all had
happened. And yet tremendously much had happened, inside the huge
stockade.

Ten minutes to a dot had drifted by, seeming at least six times as
long, when all at once the Master stood up.

"The gas has dissipated enough now," said he, "so that we can advance
in safety. Come!"

The three also arose, half at his command, half from the independent
impulses given them by their watches as these came to the designated
second for the forward movement. The Master blew no whistle, gave no
signal to the many others scattered all through those darkly silent
woods; but right and left, and over beyond the stockade, he knew with
the precision of a mathematical equation every man was at that exact
moment also arising, also obeying orders, also preparing to close
in on the precious thing whereof they meant to make themselves the
owners.

Forward the Master made his way, with the three others of his
immediate escort. Though there no longer existed any need of silence,
hardly a word was spoken. Something vast, imminent, overpowering,
seemed to have laid its finger on the lips of all, to have muted them
of speech.

The vacuum-lights, however, were now freely flashing in the little
party, as it advanced directly toward the stockade. The men clambered
over rocks, through bushes, across fallen logs. Rrisa stopped,
suddenly, played his light on a little bundle of gray fur, and touched
it with a curious finger. It was a squirrel, curled into a tiny ball
of oblivion.

Alden's foot narrowly missed the body of a sleeping robin. An owl,
lodged in the fork of a tree, moved not as the men passed. It, too,
was whelmed in deep, temporary Nirvana.

The party's next find arrested them, with a thrill of genuine
emotion, a triumph that could not be denied some few half-whispered
exclamations of exultation from the Master's three companions. He
himself was the only one who spoke no word. But, like the others, he
had stopped and was pointing the beam of his light on the figure lying
inert among broken bushes.

With his toe he touched this figure. His light picked up the man's
face from the gloom. That face was looking at him with wide-open eyes.
The eyes saw nothing; but a kind of overwhelming astonishment still
seemed mirrored there, caught in the last moment of consciousness as
the man had fallen.

The effect was startling, of that sleeping face, those open eyes, that
lax mouth. The man was breathing easily, peacefully as a tired child.
The Master's brows contracted a little. His lips tightened. Then he
nodded, and smiled the ghost of a smile.

"Lord!" exclaimed Bohannan, half awed by the weirdness of the
apparition. "Staring at us, that way--and all! Is he asleep?"

"Try him in any way your ingenuity may suggest," answered the Master,
while Alden blinked strangely through his eyeholes, and Rrisa in
Arabic affirmed that there is no God but Allah. "Try to force some
sense-impression to his brain. It is sleep, but it is more than that.
The best experiment for any doubting Thomas to employ is just to waken
this guard--if possible."

Bohannan shook his head.

"No," he answered, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself. There's no
going against any of your statements. I'm beginning to find that out,
definitely. Let's be on our way!"

The Master spoke a few quick words of Arabic to his orderly. Rrisa
knelt by the prostrate man. Then, while the Master kept the light-beam
on him, Rrisa unbuckled the guard's belt, with cartridges and holster
containing an ugly snouted gun. This belt the Arab slung round his own
body. He arose. In silence, leaving the unconscious man just as he had
fallen, they once more pushed onward.

Lights were beginning to gleam ahead, now, in what appeared to be a
long, high line. The trees half hid them, but moment by moment they
appeared more distinctly. Meantime, too, the glow over the stockade
was getting stronger. Presently the trees ceased; and there before
them the men saw a wide, cleared space, a hundred feet of empty land
between the woods and a tall, stout fence topped with live wires and
with numerous incandescents.

"Nice place to tackle, if anybody were left to defend it!" commented
Bohannan. None of the others answered. The Master started diagonally
across the cleared space, toward a cluster of little buildings and
stout gate-posts.

Hardly had they emerged from the woods, when, all up and down the
line, till it was broken by the woods at both ends where the stockade
joined its eastern and western wall, other men began appearing. And
all, alike, converged toward the gate.

But to these, the little party of four gave no heed. Other men
absorbed their interest--sleeping men, now more and more thickly
scattered all along the stockade. Save for a slight, saline tang
to the air--an odor by no means unpleasant--nothing remained of the
lethal gas.

But its victims still lay there, prone, in every possible attitude of
complete and overpowering abandonment. And all, as the party of four
passed, were quickly disarmed. Up and down the open space, other
Legionaries were at the same work.

The Master and his companions reached the gate-house first of any
in the party. The gate was massive, of stout oaken planks heavily
strapped with iron. About it, and the gate-house, a good many
guards were lying. All showed evidence of having dropped asleep with
irresistible suddenness.

Some were gaping, others foolishly grinning as if their last sensation
had been agreeable--as indeed it had been--while others stared
disconcertingly. The chin of one showed an ugly burn where his Turkish
cigarette had sagged, and had smoldered to extinction on the flesh.

One had a watch in his hand, while another gripped a newspaper. In the
gate-house, two had fallen face downward on the table that occupied
the center of the rough room; checker-pieces lay scattered from the
game they had been playing. Several men sprawled just outside the
little house, on the platform. Under the incandescents, the effect
grew weird.

Bohannan shuddered, as he glanced from one to another, then up at some
of the approaching men of the expedition. Rrisa affirmed that Mohammed
was indeed the prophet of Allah, and that the ways of the _Nasara_
were most strange.

"Good!" exclaimed the Master, with his first word of approval. Even
his aplomb was a little shaken by the complete success of the attack.
"It's all working like a clock."

"How about disarming these men, sir?" queried Captain Alden.

"No. They fall under the orders of another group."

"The way is clear, then--"

"Absolutely! These men will sleep almost precisely thirty minutes. The
way is clear ahead of us. Forward into the Palisade!"




CHAPTER VII


THE NEST OF THE GREAT BIRD

As the little group of four penetrated into the enclosure which but a
few moments before had been guarded all round its perimeter by a small
army of determined men, more and more of the Legionaries began to
concentrate toward the entrance.

Silently they came, with almost the precision of automata in some
complex mechanical process. All were obeying the Master's will,
because obedience was sweet to them; because it spelled adventure,
freedom, life.

Now and then one stopped, bent, arose with some added burden taken
from a fallen guard. Not one guard was to be injured in any manner.
Human life was not to be taken. But nothing in the way of armament was
to be left, by way of possible danger to the Legion. And already the
telephone-wires had been effectively cut.

All the approaching Legionaries wore rucksacks, and all were in their
respective uniforms, though every man still wore a long coat that
concealed it. A few groups of two appeared, bearing rather heavy
burdens.

The Master smiled again, and nodded, as he paused a moment at the
gate to peer down, along the line of the clearing between stockade and
forest.

"Here come some of the machine-guns," said he. "I shall be vastly
surprised if one man or one single bit of equipment fails to appear on
schedule time. Nothing like system, Bohannan--that, and knowing how to
choose your men!"

He turned, and the other three followed him into the enclosure.
Outside, all was developing according to plans and specifications.
They four were to be pioneers into the jealously guarded space
that for so long had been the mystery of the continent, yes, of the
civilized world.

The whole enclosure was well lighted with a profusion of electric
lamps. At first view, quite a bewildering mass of small buildings
appeared; but second glance showed order in them all. Streets had been
laid out, as in a town; and along these streets stood drafting-sheds,
workshops, storehouses, commissary offices, dwellings for the workers,
guards, and bosses. A well-built cottage on the main, forward-going
road that led from the gate to an inner stockade, was probably
headquarters for the chief engineers.

Not one sign of conscious life appeared. Men were lying here, there,
in the roadways, in the porches, in the shadow of the power-plant
where dynamos were still merrily singing. Few were armed. Most of them
here were workers, judging by their garb and by the tools still in
some hands.

The four pioneers gave them no heed, but pushed steadily on. In the
road lay a couple of pigeons, farther on a sparrow, and still farther
a sleeping dog, showed how complete had been the effect of the lethal
pellets.

The inner stockade was now close. It stood about twice as high as the
outer, was also topped with live wires and lights, and was loopholed
for defense. This formidable barrier was pierced by a small gate,
flanked by two machine-guns. On the gate-post was affixed an elaborate
set of rules regarding those who might and might not enter. The Master
smiled dryly, and opened the gate.

Even from without, the loom of the monstrous airship had been visible.
The eye could hardly at first glance take in the vastness of this
stupendous thing, that overshadowed all the central portion of the
huge enclosure. It gave a sense of power, of swift potentialities, of
speed unlimited. It stood there, tense, ready, waiting, with a hum
of engines audible in its vast heart, a thing almost of life, man's
creation but how illimitably greater than man!

For a moment, as this tremendous winged fabric came to the Master's
view, he halted, and a look of exultation, pride, and joy came over
his face. But only for a moment. Quite at once his dark eyes veiled
themselves with their habitual impassivity. Once more he strode
forward, the others following him.

Now that they were inside the second barrier--where sleeping men were
scattered more thickly than ever--they stood under the very wings of
the most stupendous hydroplane ever conceived by the brain of man or
executed by the cunning of his hand.

That this hydroplane had been almost on the moment of departure for
its trial trip, was proved by the sleepers. Two were on the gangplank
leading up to the entrance door in the fuselage. A number who had been
knocking out the last holding-pins of the last shackles that bound it
to its cradle, had fallen to earth, their sledge-hammers near at hand.

In the pilot-house, a figure had collapsed across the sill of an
observation window. And the engines, purring softly, told that all had
been in readiness for the throwing-in of the clutches that would have
set the vast propellers spinning with roaring speed.

"Yes, they were certainly just on the dot of getting away," said the
Master, nodding as he glanced at his watch. "This couldn't be better.
Gas, oil, stores, everything ready. What more proof do you require, my
dear Bohannan, of the value of exact coordination?"

The major could only answer: "Yes, yes--" He seemed quite amazed by
this extraordinary mechanism--gigantic, weird, unreal in the garish
electric lights. Rrisa was frankly staring, for once shaken out of his
fatalistic Mussulman tranquillity.

As for Captain Alden, he stood there a compact, small figure in his
long coat with the rucksack strapped to his shoulders, peering up with
the eye of the connoisseur. His smile was of contentment absolute.

"My beauty--ah, my beauty!" he was murmuring.

Then, in the presence of this mighty thing, silence fell on all. The
major set hands on hips, blinked, puckered his lips, and silently
whistled. His expression was half incredulous, half enthusiastic.

What Alden was thinking revealed itself by the sparkle of his eyes
through the holes of the mask behind the goggles. Expressionless
though that terribly mutilated face had to remain, you could sense in
the man's whole attitude the exultation of the expert ace as he beheld
the perfect machine.

The droning of the engines came distinctly to them all, a low, steady,
powerful note, beautiful in its steady undertones of strength. Behind
the little group, a few involuntary exclamations of astonishment and
joy became audible, as some of the Legionaries came into the second
enclosure.

Without, blows on metal sharply resounded. The Master smiled again, as
he realized his orders were going on with exact precision.

"That's the wireless they're putting out of commission," thought he,
glancing at his watch again. "No mere untuning of wave-lengths.
Good, old-fashioned hammer-blows! This station won't work again for a
while!"

Bohannan, meantime, was trying to get some general impression of the
giant plane. Not all the Master's descriptions of it, to him, had
quite prepared him for the reality. Though he well knew all the
largest, biggest machines in the world, this stupendous creation
staggered him. By comparison with the Handley-Page, the Caproni, the
D.H.-4, the Gotha 90-120, the Sikorsky, it spread itself as an eagle
spreads beside a pigeon.

It lay in a kind of metallic cradle, almost like a ship ready for
launching on its ways. Ahead of it, metal plates stretched away like
rails, running toward the lip of the Palisades. Its quadruple floats,
each the size of a tugboat and each capable of being exhausted of air,
constituted a potential lifting-force of enclosed vacuums that
very largely offset the weight of the mechanism. It was still a
heavier-than-air machine, but the balance could be made nearly
perfect. And the six helicopters, whose cylindrical, turbine-like
drums gleamed with metallic glitters--three on each side along the
fuselage--could at will produce an absolutely static condition of lift
or even make the plane hover and soar quite vertically.

There the monster lay, outstretching its enormous sextuple wings, each
wing with an area of 376 by 82.5 feet. The non-inflammable celluloid
surfaces shone white as fresh-cut ivory, clean, smooth, unbreakable.
The plane reminded one of some Brobdingnagian dragon-fly, resting for
flight, shimmering with power as it poised for one swift leap aloft
into the night.

Bohannan, still a bit confused, noted the absence of any exhaust from
the speeding engines. This, too, gave a sense of vast, self-contained
power. He saw stupendous propeller-blades, their varnished surfaces
flicking out high-lights as the incandescents struck them. Motionless
these propellers were; but something in their tense, clean sweep
told of the raging cyclone to which they could whip the air, once the
spinning engines should be clutched in on their shafts.

The captain's eyes wandered over the whole enormous construction,
towering there above him. He saw rows of lighted windows, each cased
in shining metal; a V-pointed pilot-house--the same where the still
figure had dropped over the sill of the open window--a high-raised
rudder of artful curve, vast as the broadside of a barn; railed
galleries running along the underbody of the fuselage, between the
floats and far aft of them.

Everything gleamed and flickered with bright metal, varnish, snowy
celluloid. The body of the machine looked capable of housing twice as
many men as the Legion numbered. But everything, after all, was quite
shrunk by the overpowering sweep of the wings. These dwarfed the
fast-gathering group that stood peering up at them, like pygmies under
the pinions of the fabled roc in Sinbad the Sailor's story.

These stupendous wings, the captain now saw, were not braced together
by hampering struts and wires, but seemed cantilevered into position,
giving a clean run to the structure, great simplicity, and the acme of
mechanical beauty. This giant bird of heaven lay in its nest, free of
pattern, powerful beyond any air-mechanism ever built by man, almost
a living thing, on whose back its captors might ride aloft defying man
and nature, to whatsoever goal they chose.

"Everything is ready," said the Master. "That is quite obvious. Let us
get aboard now, with no further delay, and be off!"

He drew a little notebook from his pocket, took a pencil, and faced
the gathering group inside the second stockade.

"Stow your equipment," he directed "according to your orders. Ten
minutes will be enough for you to unload your machine-guns and all
gear, each in the assigned space. Bring out all the sleeping men and
lay them down along the stockade, here. Injure no man. Valdez, are the
take-off gates, over the Palisade, correctly opened?"

A dark, thin man saluted, as he answered with a Spanish accent:

"Yes, sir. Everything is ready, sir."

"Very well. Now, all to work! And then, each to his place, in
engine-room, cabins, or however and where assigned. Come, come!"

As the men trailed up the gangplank, that steeply rose to the sliding
door in the fuselage, the Master checked them on his list. Not one was
absent. He shut the notebook with a snap, and slid it back into his
pocket.

"This goes on well," he commented to the major. "So far, we are within
three minutes, eighteen seconds, of schedule."

The little group of four stood waiting, watching, while the others
carried out all orders, aboard. There was no hesitation, no confusion.
Each had already learned the exact plan of the airship. Each knew
precisely where every door led, what each passageway meant; each
understood perfectly his own post and what to do there.

Two by two, Legionaries came down the gangplank, bearing limp bodies.
These they laid in a row along the stockade, till seventeen had
accumulated. No more came.

A figure appeared in the sliding doorway, and saluted.

"The last sleeper is out, sir," he reported.

The Master nodded, and gestured to his three companions. The group of
four ascended the sharp tilt of the plank and entered the airship. As
they did so, Legionaries hoisted the plank aboard, with its tackle,
and lashed it to the waiting chocks. Others could be heard, in the
penetralia of the vast structure, coming, going, busily at work.

The entrance door slid shut. A bolt shot home. All the Legion was now
aboard, and communication with the ground had been broken.

The four men found themselves in a brightly lighted corridor that led
directly across the fuselage to a similar door on the other side. This
corridor was of some metal, painted a glossy white. Doors opened out
of it, on either hand. Its length was just a few inches over
forty-two feet. Half-way along it, a wider corridor crossed it at right
angles--the main passage of the ship.

The Master led the way toward this median corridor. His tall,
big-shouldered figure swung along, triumphant, impressive in the long
coat, dominant and free. Followed by the other three, he turned to the
left, forward of the ship.

The main corridor, like the other, was flanked by doors. Two or three
stood open, giving glimpses of comfortable staterooms. The men's
footfalls sounded with softened tread on a strip of thick, brown
carpet that made pleasant contrast with the gleaming white walls.
Light from frosted glass circles, flush with walls and ceiling, made
the corridor bright as day.

The Master walked with the confident precision of one who already
had passed that way a score of times. He opened the third door on the
left--it slid into the wall, instead of swinging, thus economizing
space--and all entered what was obviously the main saloon of the giant
plane.

This saloon measured seventeen feet six inches, from corridor to
windows, and twenty-nine fore-and-aft. It was furnished with a
center-table, book-cases, easy-chairs, two commodious sofa-lockers,
and had an excellent carpet. Bohannan noted a Victrola, with many
records.

Like all parts of the ship, its lighting was splendid. Well-curtained
windows gave it a homelike air. At first glance, one would have
thought oneself in a rather luxurious private house; but second
inspection showed all possible construction and furnishings were
of aluminum alloy, of patterns designed to cut weight to the lowest
minimum.

The walls bore lightly framed photographs of men famous in the
annals of flying, from Santos-Dumont and the Wrights to Gruynemer
and Nosworthy; also pictures of famous machines--the Spad, Bristol
Fighter, Sopwith Pup, 120-135, and others. More conspicuous than
any of these was a framed copy of the International Air Commission's
latest condensed rules.

Signs of recent occupancy were not wanting. An extinct cigar lay on
the carpet, where it had fallen from the mouth of some airman swiftly
overtaken by sleep. The table bore an open cigar-box, several packs
of cigarettes with loose "fags" scattered round, and a number of
champagne bottles.

Two of these were opened; one had been emptied. The other had lost
part of its contents. Several champagne glasses stood on the table,
and one lay on its side, where perhaps a falling hand had overset it.
In one of the glasses, a few last, vagrant little bubbles were still
rising from the tall, hollow stem.

"Hm!" grunted the Master contemptuously. "Fools! Well--there'll be no
alcohol aboard this craft!" He loosened the buckles of his rucksack,
and cast the burden on one of the sofa-lockers. The others did as
much.

"Shall we stow the gear in our cabins?" asked Bohannan, gesturing at
the doors that led off the saloon.

"Not yet," answered the Master, glancing at the chronometer that hung
beside the air-rules. "Time enough to get settled, later. Every second
counts, now. We're due to start in seven minutes, you know. Rrisa will
attend to all this. We three have got to be getting forward to the
pilot-house."

Bohannan nodded.

"Let's have some air in here, anyhow," said he, turning toward one of
the windows. "This place is damned hot!"

"We'll need all the heat, soon," the Master commented. "At a few
thousand feet, the engine-exhaust through those radiators won't be any
too much. Forward!"




CHAPTER VIII


THE EAGLE OF THE SKY

He slid open another door. The three men passed through the captain's
cabin and pilot-house. This place measured twelve feet on its longer
axis and nine on its shorter, being of approximately diamond shape
with one point forward in the very nose of the machine, one ending in
a door that gave access to the main, longitudinal corridor, and the
right and left points joining the walls of the backward-sloping prow.
It contained two sofa-lockers with gas-inflated, leather cushions, a
chart-rack, pilot's seat, controls, and instrument-board.

The whole front was a magnificent stretch of double plate-glass, with
warm air between the sheets to keep snow, frost, or dew from obscuring
the vision. Bright light flooded it.

Though one window had been slid partly open--the window on the sill of
which the sleeping aviator had lain--a scent of cigarette-smoke still
permeated the place. The Master sniffed with disgust. Then suddenly,
to the great astonishment of Bohannan, he commanded:

"Bring me that champagne, in the saloon. All of it!"

The major opened wide eyes, but unquestioningly obeyed. Could it be
possible the Master, in this moment of exultation, was about to break
his lifelong rule and drink a toast, in sparkling bubbles, to success
thus far achieved, to the stupendous voyage now about to begin?

Wondering, Bohannan departed. The Master gestured for Captain Alden to
seat himself on one of the lockers. Alden kept complete silence as
he sat down, crossed one leg over the other and began to study the
complex apparatus before him. Most of it was familiar; but some new
factors needed inspection.

The Master peered curiously at him. Surely, this man was odd, unusual.
Most aviators, thus confronted by strange problems, would have grown
loquacious, tried to exhibit their knowledge, asked questions, made
much talk. But Alden held his tongue.

A look of appreciation, of liking, came upon the Master's face. It was
just the suspicion of a look, for in all this strange man's life no
great show of emotion ever had been permitted to mirror itself upon
his countenance. But still, the look was there. He half opened his
lips, as if to speak, then closed them again, and--like Alden--fell to
studying the control apparatus.

All was beautifully arranged, all nicely calculated for instant
use. Not here, as in small machines, could the pilot handle his own
engines, tilt his planes, or manipulate his rudders by hand. That
would have been as absurd to think of, as for the steersman of an
ocean liner to work without the intervention of steam steering-gear.

No, these controls actuated various motors that, using current from
the dynamos, produced the desired action with smooth and certain
promptness. A turn of the wrist, perhaps no more than the touch of
a finger, and the whole vast creation would respond as easily as a
child's toy can be manipulated by a strong man's hand.

Hooded dials, brightly lighted push-buttons, a telephone headpiece and
receiver combined, and switches all lay in easy reach. Here was the
tachometer, that would give to a fraction the revolutions of each
screw per minute; here the altimeter, to indicate height; here the
air-speed indicator, the compass with reflector, the inclinometer, the
motometers--to show the heat in each engine--and there, the switch to
throw on the gigantic searchlight, with the little electric wheel to
control its direction, as accurately as you would point a wand.

Throttle and spark, of course, there were none. All engine control was
by telephone, with the engine-room which lay a little aft of midships.
But the controls of the vacuum apparatus were within easy reach, so
that at will the pilot could exhaust the floats, or fill them.

Here were the starting, stopping, and speed controls of the
helicopters, which were under direct electrical motivation by the
pilot. Here also were the magnetic-anchor release and the air-skid
pump control; here were telephonic connections with the wireless-room
and with the fore-and-aft observation pits, where observers were
already lying on their cushions upon the heavy, metal-reinforced glass
floor-plates.

"This is really very complete," approved the Master. Not Alden, but
he, had been first to speak. The Master spoke half against his own
wish, but a resistless impulse to make some comment, in this moment of
triumph, possessed him.

"Only as expected, sir," replied Alden. The Master bit his lip a
second, and said no more.

Bohannan's return with several champagne bottles in his arms, put an
end to any possible developments the terse conversation might have
had.

"Well, sir," said the major, "here it all is. And I've got glasses
in my pocket--and a corkscrew, sir. It never does to forget the
corkscrew! We'll drink to happy days, eh, sir?"

Already the Celt's mouth was watering for draughts of the precious
liquid. Joy pervaded him that, for once at least, the iron rule of the
Master was to be broken, and that the journey was to begin with proper
libations. The Master's curt syllables, however, instantly dispelled
any illusions he might have entertained on that score.

"Drop them all out that open window, there," commanded the Master.

"What, sir? Good Pommery? Veuve?"

"No argument, Bohannan! Out they go!"

Dismayed, the Celt did the other's bidding, while Alden smiled grimly.
Far below, glass crashed and jangled.

"What's the idea?" demanded the major ruefully.

"You know very well, Major, my ruling on alcohol. It doesn't mix with
any motive power on this trip. Moreover, it's customary to christen
every launching with champagne. We've done it!"

"Well, that's not so bad an idea, at that," Bohannan admitted,
scratching his fiery head. "What name have you given this bus?"

"_Nissr Arrib ela Sema._"

"Come again, sir?"

"Eagle of the Sky, in Arabic. I suppose we'll have to cut that down to
_Nissr_, for everyday use. But at any rate, our craft is christened.
Well, now--"

He settled himself in the pilot's seat, reached forward and drew
toward him a shining metal shaft. Four stout spokes unfolded; and from
these, quadrants of a rim that easily snapped together. The Master
laid one hand easily on the rim of the big steering-wheel, flung his
cap upon a locker, pulled down the telephone headpiece and snapped it
on.

He touched a button. The light died in the pilot-house, leaving only
the hooded glows of the dials, switches, and small levers. Night
seemed suddenly to close in about the vast machine. Till now it
had been forgotten, ignored. But as darkness fingered at the panes,
something of the vastness of sky and air made itself realized;
something of the illimitable scope of this adventuring.

Bohannan slid the window shut and settled himself beside Captain
Alden. He glanced at his wrist-watch, and a thrill of nervous
exultation stabbed him.

"Only two minutes and six seconds more!" he murmured, gnawing at his
mustache and blinking with excitement. Alden remained calm, impassive
as the Master himself, who now, pressing another button, sent a beam
of wonderful, white light lancing through the darkness.

Track, buildings, trees all leaped into vivid relief as he tested the
searchlight control. He shot the beam up, up, till it lost itself,
vaguely, in mist and cloud; then flung it even across the river, where
it picked out buildings with startling detail.

He turned it, finally, square down the launching-way, through the
yawning gates where the track abruptly ended at the brow of the
Palisades--the empty chasm where, if all went right and no mistake
had been made in build, engine-power, or control, the initial leap of
_Nissr Arrib ela Sema_ was to be made.

Came a moment's wait. Faintly the pulsing of the engines trembled
the fabric of _Nissr_. Finely balanced as they were, they still
communicated some slight vibration to the ship. The Master snicked the
switch of the magnetic-anchor release; and now the last bond that held
_Nissr_ to her cradle was broken. As soon as the air-skid currents
should be set going, she would be ready for her flight.

This moment was not long in coming. Another turn of a switch, and all
at once, far below, a faint, continuous hissing made itself audible.
Compressed air, forced through thousands of holes at the bottom of the
floats, was interposing a gaseous cushion between those floats and the
track, just as it could do between them and the earth wherever _Nissr_
should alight.

Suspended thus on a thin layer of air, perhaps no more than a
sixteenth of an inch thick but infinitely less friction-producing than
the finest ball-bearing wheels and quite incapable of being broken,
the ship now waited only the application of the power in her vast
propellers.

"Let in numbers two and four," commanded the Master, suddenly, into
the engine-room telephone. "In five seconds after we start, hook up
one and three; and five later, the other two."

"Aye, aye, sir," came back the voice of Auchincloss, chief engineer.
"Ready, sir!"

Almost at once, the vibration of the engines altered, grew more
marked, seemed to be taking hold of something with strong but easy
effort. Another trembling made itself felt, as two of the giant
screws, connected by reducing-gears with the engine-shafting--all
three engines being geared to one shaft, but any one being capable of
separate running--began to revolve.

From astern, a dull, droning hum mounted, rose, grew rapidly in volume
and power. And, as two more screws began to whirl, the Eagle of the
Sky shook herself slightly. She awoke from slumber. Steadily, smoothly
on her air-cushions she began to move forward down the long, sloping
trackway to the brink of the cliff.

"Lord above!" breathed Bohannan, chewing at his nails. "We're off!"

Neither the Master nor Captain Alden moved, spoke, manifested any
excitement whatever. Both might have been graven images of coolness.
The Celt, however, got up and leaned at the window-jamb, unable to
keep still. He turned suddenly to Alden.

"Come, man!" he exclaimed, half angrily. "Got no heart in you, eh? No
interest? Come along out of that, now, and see what's what!"

He laid hold on the captain, and drew him to the window as the airship
accelerated her plunge along the rails. The hum of the propellers
had now risen to a kind of throaty roar; the craft was shaking with
strange quivers that no doubt would cease if she but once could launch
herself into the air. Under her, in and in, the shining metal rails
came running swiftly and more swiftly still, gleaming silver-like
under the vivid beam of the searchlight.

Wind began to rise up against the glass of the pilot-house; the wind
of _Nissr's_ own making.

Cool as if in his own easy-chair in the observatory, the Master sat
there, hand on wheel. Then all at once he reached for the rising-plane
control, drew it over, and into the telephone spoke sharply:

"Full speed ahead, now! Give her all she's got!"

A shout, was it? Many shouts, cries, execrations! But where? Over
the roar of the propellers, confused sounds won to the men in the
pilot-house. And all at once, by the dim aura of diffused light
reflected from the huge beam, the major saw dim figures running, off
there to the left, among the buildings of the stockade.

"For the Lord's sake!" he cried, amazed, with drooping jaw.
"Men--after us! Look there--_look_!"

The Master remained utterly impassive, eyes keen on the in-rushing
track, now close to its abrupt ending over the vacancy of space.
Captain Alden's pupils narrowed, through the mask-holes, but he said
nothing. Bohannan gripped the captain's shoulder painfully, then
reached for the pistol in his own holster.

"They're on to us!" he vociferated. "Somebody's got wise--they're--"

Little red spurts of fire began to jet, among the buildings; the
crackling of shots started popping, like corn-kernels exploding. Dark
figures were racing for the Palisade gate--the gate where, if any
slightest thing went wrong with track or giant plane, the whole vast
fabric might crash down, a tangled mass of wreckage.

Then it was, that for the first time in all his knowledge of the
Master, Bohannan heard the strange man laugh.

Joyously he laughed, and with keen pleasure. His eyes were blazing, as
he thrust the rising-plane lever sharply up.

More shouts volleyed. From somewhere back there in the body of the
ship, a cry of pain resounded.

Bohannan flung the window-pane to one side, and blazed away like mad
at the attackers.

A shatter of broken glass burst into the pilot-house. Alden, catching
his breath, quivered. He uttered no outcry, but his right hand went
across and clutched his wounded left arm.

"Got you?" cried the major, still pumping lead. He paused, jerked
Alden's automatic from its holster and thrust it into the captain's
hand, now red.

Alden, a bit pale but quite impassive, opened fire through the jagged
hole in the double pane. Accurately the captain fired at dark figures.
One fell. Another staggered; but as the machine swept on, they lost
sight of it.

Men rose up before the rushing airship. One of the great gates began
to swing shut, far at the end of the track. The Master laughed again,
with the wind whipping at his hair. "Full speed ahead!" he shouted
into the telephone.

The _Nissr_ leaped into a swifter course. Then all at once she skidded
clear of the track, slanted upward, breasted the air. Her searchlight
blazed. All along her flanks, fire-jets spangled the night. Cries
echoed from her, from the great stockade.

The Master gave her all the lift the farthest wrench of the levers
would thrust on her. The gate was almost shut now--would she clear it?

Below, track, earth, everything was spinning in and in. Ahead, above,
yawned vastnesses. The Master could no longer see the gate. A second
of taut thrill--

_Crash_!

The _Nissr_ quivered, staggered, yawed away. The forward starboard
float had struck. A faint yell rose as someone, hurled backward by the
shattered _débris_ of the gate, plunged down the cliff.

For half a second, the giant plane reeled over the abyss. Her rush and
fury for that half-second threatened to plunge her, a mangled, flaming
wreck, hundreds of feet down on the black, waiting rocks below the
Palisades.

But engine-power and broad wings, skill of the hand at the levers, and
the good fortune that watches over bold men, buoyed her again.

Suddenly she lifted. Up at a dizzy angle she sped.

A thing of life, quivering, sentient, unleashed, the gigantic Eagle
of the Sky--now in heroic flight toward the greatest venturing ever
conceived by the brain of man--steadied herself, lifted on the wings
of darkness, and, freed from her last bonds, leaped quivering and
triumphant into the night.




CHAPTER IX


EASTWARD HO!

Not all the stern discipline that had been enforced by the
Master--discipline already like a second nature to this band of
adventurous men--could quite prevent a little confusion on board the
Eagle of the Sky.

As the huge machine crashed, plunged, staggered, then righted herself
and soared aloft, shouts echoed down the corridors, shots crackled
from the lower gallery and from a few open ports.

At sound of them, and of faint, far cries from the Palisades, with
a futile spatter of pistol-and rifle-fire, the Master frowned. This
intrusion of disorder lay quite outside his plans. He had hoped for a
swift and quiet getaway. Complications had been introduced. Under his
breath he muttered something as he manipulated the controls.

The major, laughing a bit wildly, leaned from the shattered window and
let drive a few last pot-shots into the dark, at the faint flicker
of lights along the crest of the black cliff. In the gloom of the
pilot-house, his shoulders bulked huge as he fired. Captain Alden,
staggering back, sat down heavily on one of the sofa-lockers.

One or two faint shots still popped, along the cliff, with little
pin-pricks of fire in the dark. Then all sounds of opposition
vanished. The _Nissr_, upborne at her wonderful climbing-angle toward
the clouds painted by her searchlight--clouds like a rippled, moonlit
veil through which peeped faint stars--spiraled above the Hudson and
in a vast arc turned her beak into the south.

Disorder died. Silence fell, save for the whistling of the sudden wind
of the airship's own motion, and for the steadily mounting drone of
the huge propellers.

"Made it all right, by God!" exclaimed Bohannan, excitedly. "No
damage, either. If the floats had smashed when they hit the gate,
there'd have been a devil of an explosion--vacuum collapsing, you
know. Close call, but we made it! Now, if--"

"That will do!" the Master curtly interrupted, with steadfast eyes
peering out through the conning windows. Now that the first _élan_ of
excitement had spent itself, this strange man had once more resumed
his mantle of calm. Upborne on the wings of wondrous power, wings
all aquiver with their first stupendous leap into the night-sky,
the Master--impassive, watchful, cool--seemed as if seated in his
easy-chair at _Niss'rosh_.

"That will do, Major!" he repeated. "None of your extravagance, sir!
No time now for rodomontade!" He glanced swiftly round, saw Captain
Alden by the dim aura of light reflected from the instrument-board.
Blood reddened the captain's left sleeve.

"Wounded, Captain?"

"Only a scratch!"

"Report to Dr. Lombardo. And have Simonds, in charge of the stores,
replace this broken pane."

"Yes, sir!"

Alden saluted with a blood-stained hand, slipped his gun back into its
holster and got up. He swayed a little, with the swinging slide of the
air-liner and with the weakness that nerve-shock of a wound brings.
But coolly enough he slid open the door leading into the main
corridor, and passed through, closing the door after him. Where his
hand touched the metal, red stains showed. Neither man of the pair now
left in the pilot-house made any comments. This was all in the day's
work--this and whatever else might befall.

Spiraling vastly, up, up climbed the giant plane. A colder air nipped
through the broken window. Cloud-wisps began to blur the glass; the
stars began to burn more whitely in a blacker sky.

The Master touched a button at the left side of the steering-post.
Below his feet, as they rested in their metal stirrups, an aluminum
plate silently slid back. An oblong of dim light blurred up through
the heavy plate-glass sheet it had masked.

Glancing down, the Master saw far, far below him a slowly rotating
vagueness of waters black and burnished, of faintly twinkling lights.
Lights and water drew backward, as the rotary motion gave way to a
southern course. The Master slowed the helicopters. A glance at the
altimeter showed him 1,965 feet. The compass in its binnacle gave him
direction.

"Pit number one!" he sharply exclaimed into the phone connecting
therewith.

"Yes, sir!" came back the observer's voice.

"Keep a sharp eye out for _Niss'rosh_! Remember, two red lights
showing there!"

"Yes, sir. I'll report as soon as I pick them up."

The Master, knowing his course thither should be S.E. by S., drew the
liner to that exact angle. Under his skilled touch at the wheel, the
compass needle steadied to the dot. The searchlight lanced its way
ahead, into the vague drift of the smoke arising from New York.

"Sight it, yet?" demanded the Master, presently.

"Yes, sir. Just picked it up. Hold hard, sir!"

Almost at once, the Master also got a glimpse of two tiny pin-pricks
of crimson, high in air above the city-mass. Swiftly _Nissr_ drew
over the building. Far, very far down in the chasm of emptiness,
tiny strings of light--infinitesimal luminous beads on invisible
threads--marked Broadway, Fifth Avenue, countless other streets. The
two red winks drew almost underneath.

Down plunged the searchlight, picking _Niss'rosh_ out of the gloom.
Through the floor-glass, the Master could descry it clearly. He
slowed, circled, playing with vacuum-lift, helicopters, engines, as
if they had been keys of a familiar instrument. Presently the liner
hovered, poised, sank, remained a little over 750 feet above the
observatory on the roof-top.

"Cracowicz!" ejaculated the Master, into the phone again, as his deft
fingers made another connection. A foreign voice answered: "Yes, sir!"
alertly.

"Ready in the lower gallery now, with the winch and tackles!" bade the
Master.

Again came: "Yes, sir!" from the man in charge of the three who
already knew perfectly well what was expected of them. As _Nissr_
slowly turned, a trap opened in the bottom of her lower gallery,
almost directly between the two forward vacuum-floats, and down sped a
little landing nacelle or basket at the end of a fine steel cable.

Swiftly the electric winch dropped the nacelle, containing three men.
It slowed, at their command, through the phone that led up the wire.
With hardly a jar, the basket landed on the roof.

The men jumped out, made fast their tackles to Captain Alden's plane
there, leaped in again and signaled: "Hoist away!"

With noiseless speed the winch gathered in the cable. Up swooped the
nacelle. As it cleared the roof, _Nissr_ purred forward, slid away,
gathered speed over the city where already the alarm had been given.

In four minutes the men had safely landed in the lower gallery once
more, and the plane was being hoisted by davits and made fast on the
upper platform, known as the take-off, which served as a runway for
planes leaving the ship or alighting thereon.

Over the light-spangled city the giant air-liner gathered way.
Three or four searchlights had already begun trying to pick her
up. Quiverings of radiance reached out for her, felt into the void,
whirled like cosmic spokes. The Brooklyn Navy Yard whipped the
upper air for her. Down on Sandy Hook, a slim spear of light stabbed
questingly through the night. Then all at once the monster light on
Governor's Island caught her, dazzling into the Master's eyes.

He only smiled, as he sheered eastward, dropped East River behind and
unloosed the Sky-eagle's course above Brooklyn.

"Just a little fireworks, as a send-off, Major," said he, notching the
speed ahead, ever ahead, till a whipping gale began to beat in at the
broken pane. "They got word of it pretty quick, eh? I suppose they'll
send up a few planes after us."

"_After_ us, yes!" exulted the major. "Faith, they'll be after us, all
right--a devil of a long way after!"

To this the Master gave no answer, but signaled Auchincloss in the
engine-room for full speed. Now a subtle tremor possessed the
vast fabric, mistress of the upper spaces and the night. The
close-compacted lights beneath commenced to sprinkle out into tenuous
dots. The tiny blazing fringe of Coney burned a moment very far
below, then slid away, under the glass flooring. Still heading
sharply upward, with altimeter needle steadily mounting, with the cold
becoming ever greater, the liner flung herself out boldly over the jet
plain of ocean.

Right into the eye of heaven she seemed to point, into a vast and
profound blackness, that, as the Master snicked off the no-longer
needed searchlight, unleashed myriad stars--stars which leaped out of
the velvet night. Already man and the works of man lay far behind. If
there had been any tentative pursuit, the Legionaries knew nothing of
it. Outdistancing pursuit as an eagle distances sparrows, the liner
gloried in her swift trajectory.

The Master nodded, well pleased. Bohannan laughed like a boy, and
holstered his gun. He moved over to the starboard window, out of the
gale. With mocking eyes he watched the futile searchlight at the Hook.

"They've got as much chance of overhauling us as the proverbial
celluloid cat has of catching the asbestos rat," said he. "A clean
getaway, barring the little damage we've taken--this window, and
Alden, and--"

"Better unpack your kit, and settle down," the Master dryly
interrupted him. "Take a look around and see that everything's
shipshape. Be sure the port and starboard watches are chosen.
Everything's been arranged, already, but in dealing with human
beings there's bound to be a little confusion. They aren't
automata--unfortunately. And, Major!"

"Yes, sir?" answered Bohannan, who despite his familiarity with the
Master was now constrained to formality. Resentment sounded in his
voice.

"Send Brodeur to relieve me, in about ten minutes."

"Yes, sir," repeated the Celt. For a moment, standing there in the
gloom of the pilot-house, he eyed the dim, watchful figure at the
wheel. Then he turned, slid the door, and disappeared.

As he walked aft, past the aluminum ladder that led to the upper
galleries, he muttered with dudgeon:

"He rates us two for a nickel, that's plain enough--plain as paint!
Well, all right. I'll stand for it; but there may be others that--"

He left the words unfinished, and went to do the Master's bidding.

Alone, the Master smiled. Wine of victory pulsed in his blood and
brain. Power lay under his hand, that closed with joy upon it. Power
not only over this hardy Legion, but power in perspective over--

"God, if I can do it!" he whispered, and fell silent. His eyes rested
on the instruments before him, their white dials glowing under the
little penthouses of their metal shields. Altitude now showed 2,437
feet, and still rising. Tachometers gave from 2,750 to 2,875 r.p.m.
for the various propellers. Speed had gone above 190 miles per hour.
No sign of man remained, save, very far below through a rift in the
pale, moonlit waft of cloud, a tiny light against a coal-black plain
of sea--the light of a slow, crawling steamer--a light which almost at
once dropped far behind.

Vast empty spaces on all hands, above, below, engulfed _Nissr_. The
Master felt himself alone with air and sky, with power, with throbbing
dreams and visions.

"If it can be done!" he repeated. "But--there's no 'if' to it, at
all. It _can_ be! It _shall_! The biggest thing ever attempted in this
world! A dream that's never been dreamed, before! And if it can't,
well, a dream like that is far more than worth dying for. A dream that
can come true--by God, that shall come true!"

His hands tightened on the wheel. You would have said he was trying to
infuse some of his own overflowing strength into the mechanism that,
whirling, zooning with power, needed no more. The gleam in his eyes,
there in the dark pilot-house, seemed almost that of a fanatic. His
jaw hardened, his nostrils expanded.

This strange man's face was now wholly other than it had been only a
week before, drawn and lined by ennui. Now vast ambitions dominated
and infused it with virile force.

As he held the speeding air-liner to her predetermined course through
voids of night and mystery, he peered with burning eagerness at the
beckoning stars along the world's far, eastern rim.

"Behold now, Allah!" he cried suddenly. "_Labbayk_![1] I come!"

[Footnote 1: _Labbayk_ (I am here) is the cry of all Mohammedan
pilgrims as they approach the holy city of Mecca.]




CHAPTER X


"I AM THE MASTER'S!"

The arrival of Simonds, with the spare window-pane, and of
Brodeur--one of the boldest flyers out of Saloniki in the last months
of the war--broke in upon the Master's reveries. Only a few minutes
were required to mend the window. During this time, the Master
explained some unusual features of control to the Frenchman, then let
him take charge of _Nissr_.

"She's wonderful," said he, as Brodeur settled himself at the wheel.
"With her almost unlimited power, her impeccable controls and her
automatic stabilizers, I hardly see what could happen to her."

"Fire, of course, _m'sieur_," the ace replied, "always has to be
guarded against."

"Hardly on an all-metal liner. Now, here you see--and here--"

He finished his explanations, and, satisfied that all was safe, passed
into his own cabin. Rrisa, he found, had already unpacked his kit, and
had arranged it to perfection. Even a copper bowl of khat, the "flower
of paradise," was awaiting him.

The Master sat down, chewed a few leaves and indulged in a little
time of what the Arabs call _kayf_, or complete relaxation and inner
contemplation--a restful trick he had learned many years ago on the
coast of Yemen. The ticking of the aluminum-cased chronometer, now
marking a little past 2 a.m., soothed him, as did the droning hum of
the propellers, the piping whistle of the ship-made hurricane round
the fuselage, the cradling swing and rock of the air-liner hurling
herself almost due east.

After some quarter-hour of absolute rest, he rang for his Arab
orderly. Rrisa appeared at once. Already he had got himself into his
military uniform, the one he had worn at Gallipoli when the Master had
saved his life. As he stood there in the doorway, he swung his left
foot out and back, with clicking heels, and made a smart salute.

"What does _M'almé_ desire?" asked he, in Arabic.

"I desire to know thy opinion of all this, Rrisa. Tell me, did thy
great prophet, M'hámed, ever ride in such state through the air? Was
Al Burak, his magic horse, on which he traveled to the paradise of the
houris, more swift or mighty than this steed of mine?"

The Master speaking Arabic, weighted every word with its full meaning.

"Tell me, Rrisa, what of all this?"

"Your steed is very swift and very mighty. Your flying ship is very
great," the Arab admitted. "But Allah and his Prophet are greater!
_Allahu akbar!_" (Allah is greatest!)

"Of course. But tell thou me, Rrisa, if I were to appear at Mecca in
my _Nissr Arrib ela Sema_--my Eagle of the Sky--would not thy people
give me great honors?"

"My head is at your feet, _M'almé_, and I am yours to do with as
you will, even to the death, but I implore you, by the beard of the
Prophet, do not do this thing!"

"And why not, Rrisa?"

"You and I, Master, are _akhawat_.[1] Therefore I can speak true
words. You must not go to Mecca. No man of the _Nasara_ may go
there--and live."

[Footnote 1: _Akhawat_ signifies in Arabic the tie of sworn
brotherhood between an Arab and one of different blood.]

"Thou meanest that if we go to Mecca and they capture us, they will
kill us all?"

"Yea, Master. And I too shall die, for being with you, though I count
that as less than nothing."

The Master kept a moment's silence, pondering; while, without, the
voices of empty heaven whistled by, from strut and wire, brace
and stay. The wild mystery of that outer night, excluded by the
close-drawn curtains, contrasted strongly with the light and the warm
comfort of the cabin with its snug berth, its aluminum furniture, its
shining walls where were affixed charts and maps, rules, photographs.

Under the clear, white light, Rrisa anxiously studied his master's
face. Great anxiety had begun to make itself manifest in the Arab's
voice and in his eyes. Another troubled look came, too, as he glanced
at the chronometer.

It struck, sharply. The Arab, contrary to all his habits and training,
spoke first, without being spoken to.

"Master," said he, timorously, "excuse the speech I offer without
waiting. But I must ask. This is my hour of night prayer, and I must
bow to Mecca. Whither, from here, lieth The City?"

The Master raised a hand, glanced at a compass set like a wrist-watch,
peered a moment at one of the charts, and then nodded toward the door
that led into the pilot-house.

Without delay, Rrisa faced that door and prostrated himself. The
ancient cry: "_La Illaha illa Allah! M'hámed rasul Allah!_" was
raised there in the cabin of the rushing Eagle of the Sky--surely the
strangest place where Moslem prayer was ever offered since first the
Prophet's green banner unfurled itself upon the desert air of Araby.

Devoutly Rrisa prayed, then with a "_Bismillah_!" (In the name of
Allah!) arose and faced his master. The latter, wise in Eastern ways,
remained gravely unsmiling. Never in all his dealings with the son
of the East had he by word or look offended against Islam. There was,
however, iron determination in his eyes as he demanded:

"Is it indeed true that in Mecca stands a building called the Ka'aba,
also called _Bayt Ullah_, or Allah's House?"

"Yea, Master, that is true," answered the Arab, with strange eyes.

"And is it indeed covered with a wondrous silken and gold cloth, every
year renewed, known as the _kiswah_?"

"Those words are true."

"All Moslems greatly revere the Ka'aba?"

"It is the center of our mighty faith, Master."

"And thou hast seen it with thine own eyes?"

"With my own eyes, Master, for I am a _Hadji_.[1]" Attentively the
Arab was now watching the Master. Slowly he continued: "Prayer, with
face to Mecca, alms-giving, the keeping of the fast of Ramadan, and
the pilgrimage to the Ka'aba, these are our law. Yea, Master, I have
myself seen the Ka'aba, and more than once!"

[Footnote 1: Title among the Arabs and Moslems in general for one
who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey which every good
Moslem considers necessary for salvation.]

A certain trouble had now grown manifest in Rrisa's eyes. His lips
moved silently, as if still praying; but no words were audible. The
Master pondered a moment more, then demanded:

"Is it true there is a sacred Black Stone in the walls of the Ka'aba,
precious to all followers of the Prophet, from Africa to China and to
the farthest isles? Revered by all the two hundred and thirty million
of your faith?"

"That is true, _M'almé_. I myself have touched and kissed the Black
Stone."

"Mecca, the Ka'aba, and the Black Stone are forbidden to all
heretics?" relentlessly pursued the Master.

"_Wallah_! Yea, so they are to--all who are not of Islam," Rrisa tried
to soften the answer.

"They tell me," persisted the Master, "the Black Stone is in the
western wall of the Ka'aba, about seven feet from the pavement."

"That is a lie!" flared Rrisa, with indignation. "It is in the
northeast corner, at the very corner, Master. It is between four
feet and five from the ground. That, and no other, is the true place,
Master, the place of _Hajar el Aswad!_" (Black Stone.)

"Ah, yes, yes, the books lie," agreed the Master. "And they say, too,
that certain of the Feringi have indeed touched and even kissed the
Black Stone, and still lived."

Rrisa's face clouded. It burned coppery, with a flush of hot blood
under that dark skin. By the clear white light in the cabin, the
Master closely observed him. Idly he broke off a leaf of the khat, and
nibbled at it.

"Is that the truth?" he inquired, pitilessly.

"I must speak truth to you, Master," confessed the Arab, with bitter
shame. "Two of the Feringi--_Nasara_ men like yourself--have indeed
touched and kissed it. Two that we know of. _Shaytan el Kabir_ (the
Great Satan) may have permitted others to do that, but we know of only
two who have done it--and lived."

"Thou meanest one named Burckhardt, and Sir Richard Burton?"

The Arab shuddered at sound of those names, and silently nodded. Then
he burst out:

"Those were their names, _M'almé!_ Those two, disguised as _Hujjaj_,
defiled the Black Stone, which was given by Allah to the first Arabs;
and they both escaped. But many others who have tried--"

"Have died at the hands of thy people?"

"_Bismillah_! Yea!" A flash of pride irradiated the dark face
of Rrisa. His figure drew itself erect. Beneath the veneer of
civilization with which life among the Feringi had overlaid him, the
Master sensed the wild, fierce, free soul of the desert man, to whom
the death of the unbelieving dog is sweet.

"It is well," nodded the Master. Then, suddenly he stood up, faced the
Arab, and bent on him a sternly penetrant look.

"Rrisa," said he, impressively, his voice slow, grave, sonorous, "only
for me thy bones would today be moldering in the trenches at Gallipoli
or maybe rotting in a Turkish grave. The life that is in thee belongs
to me! That is thy ancient law. Is it not true?"

"It is true, Master. _Nahnu malihin._" (We have eaten salt together.)

"And the salt is still in thy stomach?[1]"

[Footnote 1: Some Arab tribes hold that the salt binds protection for
only twenty-four hours and at the end of that time must be renewed,
otherwise it is "not in their stomachs."]

"Aye, Master. You are still _dakhil_ (protected) to me."

"Thou art mine to do with as I will?"

"I am the Master's!"

"Treason to me, Rrisa, is treason to thy holy laws. Surely, such
treason would plunge thy soul far into the depths of Eblis. When thy
time cometh to walk across the burning pit, on the bridge as fine and
sharp as the edge of a simitar, if it be laden with treachery to one
who hath saved thy life and whose salt thou hast eaten, surely it
shall not pass over, but shall fall. Far into the deeps of Jehannum it
shall fall, where the Prophet says: 'Stones and men shall be the fuel
of the everlasting flame!'"

"I am the Master's," repeated Rrisa, with trembling mouth. He raised
his hand to forehead, lips, and heart. "My head is at the Master's
feet!"

"Forget that not, thou!" cried the Master, dominantly. "_Ru'c'h
halla!_" (Go!)




CHAPTER XI


CAPTAIN ALDEN STANDS REVEALED

Hardly had the trembling Arab salaamed and departed in terror of soul,
knowing not what fearful events might be impending, when Bohannan
appeared. The smile on the Master's lips, the sternly calculating
expression in his eyes, faded into something as near astonishment as
this strange man ever felt, when the major exclaimed:

"Well, faith now, what d'you think? The most improbable thing you can
imagine!"

"What may that be, Major?"

"It's not what it may be, it's what it _is_ that's astonishing me.
We've got a stowaway aboard us!"

"Stowaway? Impossible!"

"True, nevertheless. Manderson has just now routed him out of the
starboard storage-room, near the reserve petrol-tank."

"Hm! Who is he?"

Bohannan shrugged stout shoulders.

"Don't know yet. He's still dopy. Just coming out of the effects of
the lethalizing gas."

"Ah, yes, yes, I see. One of the former crew, I suppose. This is
quite inexcusable. That a man should have been overlooked and left
aboard--it won't do, Major. Kloof was responsible for that room. Kloof
will have to suffer. Any other news?"

"Travers, the New Zealander, is wounded."

"Badly?"

"I'm afraid he's hard hit, sir."

"Well, I'll have a look at him and at this stowaway. Where are they,
now?"

"In the lazaret, I suppose you call it. Though what a hospital is,
aboard an air-liner, blest if I know!"

"Sick-bay, we'll call it. Problems rising already. A stowaway--rather
odd, I must say. Still, as a problem, it's not hard to solve. Nothing
simpler than dropping a man overboard."

"You--surely, you wouldn't do that!" ejaculated the major, startled.
His rubicund face grew round with amazement.

"That remains to be seen. Come, let's have a look at him!"

Together they went out into the brightly lighted main corridor, near
the ladder to the upper gallery, turned to the right and walked aft.
A door, just a little abaft the chartroom and, opposite the Master's
cabin, gave a glimpse of the as yet unoccupied smoke-room. Astern
of this, they passed the dining-saloon with its long table and
its swivel-chairs. Beyond several stateroom doors they came to the
transverse corridor at the other side of which, directly facing the
main corridor, the engine-room door opened.

Entering the engine-room, they found themselves in a brightly lighted
compartment fifteen feet wide by twenty-six feet, seven inches long.
This compartment contained six Norcross-Brail engines, each capable
of developing 1,150 H.P. The engines were in charge of Auchincloss and
two assistant engineers, who had all six engines filling the room with
a drowsy drone, like ten billion bees humming themselves to sleep in
some mysterious hive.

So nicely adjusted was every part, so accurately true was every shaft,
bearing, gear, that practically no vibration could be noted. The
voice, in ordinary tones, carried perfectly; and yet in that small
space nearly 7,000 H.P. were being produced and transmitted to the
propellers and to the storage batteries that operated helicopters and
compressed-air system, as well as the lighting-plant of the air-liner.

As the two men entered the engine-room, the Master nodded to
Auchincloss. He stood a moment gazing at the brightly flecked metal of
the engines, the gleaming walls--hollow and filled with noninflammable
helium gas of great lifting power--the men on watch over all this
splendid mechanism. Then he passed between engines No. 4 and No. 5,
toward the aft wall of the compartment.

Four doors opened in the bulkhead, there. Two communicated with
storerooms, one opened into the passage that led to the aft
observation pit, the fourth gave access to the sick-bay. This door the
Master slid back. Followed by the major he passed through.

A small but fully equipped hospital met their eyes. Cots,
operating-table, instrument-cases, sterilizers, everything was
complete. Immaculate cleanliness reigned. On two of the cots, men were
lying.

Beyond, Captain Alden--still fully dressed--was sitting on a white
metal chair. The captain's face was still concealed by the celluloid
mask, but a profound pallor was visible on the lower portion of his
right cheek and along his left jaw. The set of that jaw showed an
invincible obstinacy that bespoke rebellion.

Dr. Lombardo, a dark-skinned Florentine, who had been talking with
Captain Alden, turned at the Master's entrance into the sick-bay.
Already Lombardo had put on a white linen jacket. Though he had not
yet had time to change his trousers, he nevertheless presented a
semi-professional air as he advanced to meet the newcomers.

"I'm glad you're here, sir," said he to the Master. "There's trouble
enough, already."

"Stowaway?" The Master advanced to the nearer cot.

"Yes, sir. Perhaps not voluntarily so. You know how he was found."

"Such oversight is inexcusable!" The Master leaned down and shook the
man by the shoulder. "Come, now!" he demanded. "What's your name?"
Curiously he looked at the stranger, a man of great strength, with
long arms and powerful, prehensile hands that reminded one of an
ape's.

"It's no use questioning him, sir," put in Lombardo, while the major
peered curiously at Alden and at the other cot where a man was lying
with a froth of bright, arterial blood on his lips. Though this man
was suffering torment, no groan escaped him. A kind of gray shadow had
settled about eyes and mouth--the shadow of the death angel's wings.

"It's no use, sir," repeated the doctor. "He hasn't recovered
consciousness enough, yet, to be questioned. When he does, I'll
report."

"Do so!" returned the Master, curtly. "I hardly think we need use much
ceremony in disposing of him." He turned to the other cot. "Well, sir,
how about this man?"

"I'm--all right, sir," weakly coughed the wounded New Zealander. He
tried to bring a hand to his forehead, but could hardly lift it
from the sheet. The doctor, with compressed lips, slightly shook a
negativing head, as the Master raised interrogative brows.

"Serious," Lombardo whispered. "Shot through the right lung. Bullet
still there. Severe internal hemorrhage. I may be able to operate,
with Daimamoto assisting, but only in case the patient rallies. We
really need a nurse, on this expedition. Medically speaking, we're
short-handed. However, I'll do my best, sir."

"I know you will," answered the Master. He stood a moment gazing down
at the New Zealander, with stern face and tight mouth. This man on the
cot had already given much for the expedition, and might give all. Not
without blood and suffering--death, perhaps--was the Master's dream to
come to its fruition. After a moment, the Master turned away. He faced
Captain Alden.

"Your wound not yet dressed?" demanded he.

"No, sir, not yet."

"And why not, pray?"

"He's simply refused all attention, whatever!" put in the doctor.

"I have a reason, sir," Alden proffered.

"No reason can overrule my orders!" the Master exclaimed. "I commanded
you to report to Dr. Lombardo for treatment."

"Nevertheless, sir, I refuse--"

"Insubordination will not be condoned, sir!"

"My reason is valid. When you have heard it, you will understand."

"State your reason, sir!"

"I decline--here."

For a long moment the eyes of the Master met those of Captain Alden,
that strangely peered out at him through the eyeholes of the pink,
celluloid mask. Bohannan and the doctor stood by, curiously observing
this conflict of two wills. Silence came, save for the droning purr
of the engines, the buffeting gusts of wind along the fuselage, the
slight trembling of the gigantic fabric as it hurled itself eastward
through the high air of night.

"This is inexcusable," said the Master, crisply. "I give you one last
chance. Either permit treatment, or consider yourself under arrest."

"Before you proceed to such lengths," the captain replied, "I ask one
favor of you."

"What favor?"

"Two minutes alone with you, sir."

"Come with me!"

The Master turned and left the sick-bay. Alden rose, weakly enough,
and followed him. As the door opened and closed again, the engines
hummed louder, then sank again to their dull murmur. Bohannan remained
with the doctor.

"Well, faith, can you beat that?" exclaimed the major. "There's an
Ethiopian in the woodpile, sure enough. Something strange, here, I'm
thinking! Something damned strange here!"

"Is there anything here that _isn't_?" asked Lombardo, with an odd
laugh, as he turned back to the cot where lay the dying New Zealander.

Alone in his cabin with Captain Alden, the Master faced the
insubordinate member of his crew with an expression of hard
implacability. The captain stood there determinedly confronting him.
His right hand held to the table for support. His left sleeve was
sodden with blood; the left arm, thrust into the breast of his coat,
was obviously numbed, paralyzed.

"Well, sir, what have you to say for yourself?" coldly demanded the
Master.

"I repeat that I cannot--and will not--submit myself to any medical
attention from any member of this expedition."

"This is dangerous ground you're treading!" the Master exclaimed. His
voice had deepened, grown ominous. "You understood perfectly well the
conditions of the undertaking--unquestioning obedience to my orders,
with life-and-death powers in my hands, to punish insubordination."

"I understand all that, sir," answered the captain. "I understand it
now. Nevertheless, I repeat my refusal to obey."

"By Allah! There must be some deep cause here!" ejaculated the Master,
his eyes smoldering. "I intend to work my will, but I am a man of
reason. You are entitled to a hearing state your objection, sir. Speak
up!"

The captain's answer was to raise his right hand and to loosen the
cords securing the celluloid mask. As the Master watched, steadying
his nerves against the shock of what he felt must be a nameless horror
underneath, Alden tore away the mask and threw it upon the table.

"Here is my reason, sir," said he very quietly, "for not permitting
Lombardo, or any other man here, to dress my wound."

"Good God!" exclaimed the Master, shaken clean out of his aplomb. The
shock he had expected had come to him, but in far other guise than
he had counted on. With clenched fists and widening eyes he peered at
Alden.

The face he now suddenly beheld, under the clear white light of the
cabin, was not the hideous, mangled wreck of humanity--The Kaiser's
Masterpiece--he had expected to see.

No--far, and very far from that!

It was the face of a woman. One of the most beautiful women his eyes
ever had rested on.




CHAPTER XII


THE WOMAN OF ADVENTURE

A moment's utter silence followed. The woman, with another gesture,
drew off the aviator's cap she had worn; she pulled away the
tight-fitting toupee that had been drawn over her head and that had
masked her hair under its masculine disguise. With deft fingers she
shook out the masses of that hair--fine, dark masses that flowed down
over her shoulders in streams of silken glory.

"Now you see me as I am!" said she, her voice low and just a little
trembling, but wholly brave. "Now, perhaps, you understand!"

"I--but you--" stammered the Master, for the first time in all his
life completely at a loss, dazed, staggered.

"Now you understand why I couldn't--wouldn't--let Dr. Lombardo dress
my wound."

"By the power of Allah! What does all this mean?" The Master's voice
had grown hoarse, unsteady. "A woman--_here_--!"

"Yes, a woman! The woman your expedition needs and must have, if death
and sickness happen, as happen they will The woman you would never
have allowed to come--the woman who determined to come at all hazards,
even death itself. The woman who--"

"But, Lord Almighty! Your papers! Your decorations!"

"Quite genuine," she answered, smiling at him with dark eyes,
unafraid. Through all his dazed astonishment he saw the wonder of
those eyes, the perfect oval of that face, the warm, rich tints of her
skin even though overspread with the pallor of suffering.

"Madam," said he, trying to rally, "this is past all words No
explanation can make amends for such deception. Still, the secret is
yet yours--and mine. Until I decide what to do, it must be respected."

Past her he walked, to the door, and snapped the catch. She, turning,
leaned against the table and smiled. He saw the gleam of perfect
teeth. A strange figure she made, with loose hair cascading over her
coat, with knickers and puttees, with wounded arm slung in the breast
of her jacket.

"Thank you for your consideration," she smiled. "It is on a par with
my conception of your character."

"Pray spare me your comments," he replied, coldly. He returned to his
desk, but did not sit down there. Against it he leaned, crossed his
arms, and with somewhat lowered head studied her. "Your explanation,
madam?"

"My papers are _en règle_," said she. "My decorations are genuine.
Numbers of women went through the great war as men. I am one of them,
that is all. Many were never discovered. Those who were, owed it to
wounds that brought them under observation. Had I not been wounded,
you would never have known. I could have exercised my skill as a
nurse, without the fact of my sex becoming apparent.

"That was what I was hoping for and counting on. I wanted to serve
this expedition both as a flyer and as a nurse. Fate willed otherwise.
A chance bullet intervened. You know the truth. But I feel confident,
already, that my secret is safe with you."

The light on her forehead, still a little ridged and reddened by the
pressure of the edge of the mask, showed it broad, high, intelligent.
Her eyes were deep and eager with a kind of burning determination. The
hand she had rested on the table clenched with the intensity of her
appeal:

"Let me stay! Let me serve you all! I ask no more of life than that!"

The Master, knotting together the loose threads of his emotion, came a
step nearer.

"Your name, madam!" he demanded.

"I cannot tell you. I am Captain Alfred Alden to you, still. Just
that. Nothing more."

"You continue insubordinate? Do you know, madam, that for this I could
order you bound hand and foot, have you laid on the trap in the lower
gallery, and command the trap to be sprung?"

His face grew hard, deep-lined, almost savage as he confronted
her--the only being who now dared stand against his will. She smiled
oddly, as she answered:

"I know all that, perfectly well. And I know the open Atlantic lies a
mile or two below us, in the empty night. Nevertheless, you shall
not learn my name. All I shall tell you is this--that I am really an
aviator. 'Aviatrix' I despise. I served as 'Captain Alden' for eight
months on the Italian front and twenty-one months on the Western. I am
an ace. And--"

"Never mind about all that!" the Master interrupted, raising his
hand. "You are a woman! You are here under false colors. You gained
admission to this Legion by means of false statements--"

"Ah, no, pardon me! Did I ever claim to be a man?"

"The impression you gave was false, and was calculated to be so. This
is mere quibbling. A lie can be acted more effectively than spoken.
All things considered, your life--"

"Is forfeited, of course. I understand that perfectly well. And
that means two things, as direct corollaries. First, that you lose
a trained flyer and a woman with Red Cross training; a woman you may
sorely need before this expedition is done. Second, you deny a human
being who is just as eager as you are for life and the spice of
adventure, just as hungry for excitement as you or any man here--you
deny me all this, everything, just because a stupid accident of birth
made me a woman!"

Her clenched right fist passionately struck the table at her side.

"A man's world! That's what this world is called; that's what it is!
And you--of all men--are living down to that idea! You--_the Master!_"

The man's face changed color. It grew a little pale, with deepening
lines. He passed a hand over his forehead, a hand that for the first
time trembled with indecision. His strong teeth gnawed at his lower
lip. Never before had he lacked words, but now he found none.

The woman exclaimed, her voice incisive, eager, her eyes burning:

"It is because you _are_ a master of men, and of yourself, that I have
taken this chance! It is because I have heard of your absolute sense
of justice and fair play, your appreciation of unswerving loyalty
and of the heart that dares! Now you understand. I have only one more
thing to say."

"And what is that?"

"If you respect my secret and let me go with you on this great
enterprise, no man aboard the Eagle of the Sky will serve you any more
loyally than I. No man will venture more, endure more, suffer more--if
suffering has to be. I give you my word of honor on that, as a fighter
and--a woman!"

"Your word of honor as--"

"A woman! Do you understand?"

Silence again. Their eyes met. The Master's were first to lower.

"Your life is spared," he answered. "That is a concession to your sex,
madam. Had you been a man, I would inevitably have put you to death.
As it is, you shall live. And you shall remain with us--"

"Thank God for that!"

"Till we reach land. There you must leave _Nissr_."

"I shall not leave it alive," the woman declared, her eyes showing
dilated pupils of resentment, of anger. "I haven't come this far to be
thrown aside like a bit of worthless gear!"

"You and your machine will be cast off, over the first land we touch,"
the Master repeated doggedly. "Whatever information you may give,
cannot injure us, and--"

"Stop! Not another word like that, to me!"

Her eyes were blazing now; her right fist quivered in air.

"You accuse me of treason," she cried. "Oh, what injustice, what--"

"I accuse you of nothing, save of having deceived us all, and of being
very much _déplacée_ here. The deception shall continue, as far as the
others are concerned. You came to us, as a man. You shall go as
one. Your secret shall be absolutely respected, by me. But, madam,
understand one thing clearly."

"What is that?" she demanded, still trembling with indignation.

"The fact that you are a woman has no weight with me, so far as your
persuading me to let you remain of the party may be concerned. Women
have never counted in my life. Their wiles, arts, graces, tears, mean
nothing to me. Their entreaties seem futile. Their arguments appear
like trivial puerilities.

"Other men are sometimes influenced by such. I tell you now, madam, I
shall not be. Your entreaties will have no weight. When the time
comes for you to leave _Nissr_, I trust you will go quietly, with no
distressing scene."

A certain grimness showed in the woman's face, making it sternly
heroic as the face of Medea or Zenobia. She answered:

"Do you think me the type that entreats, that sheds tears, that
exercises wiles?"

"We won't discuss your personality, madam! This interview is drawing
to an end. Until we reach land, nothing can be done. Nothing, but to
look out for your injury. Common humanity demands that your wound be
dressed. Is it a serious hurt?"

"Not compared with the hurt you are inflicting, in banishing me from
the Flying Legion!"

"Come, madam, refrain from extravagant speeches! What is your wound?"

"A clean shot through the left arm, I think, a little below the
shoulder."

"I realize, of course, that to have Dr. Lombardo dress it would reveal
your sex. Could you in any way manage the dressing, yourself?"

"If given antiseptics and bandages, yes."

"They shall be furnished, also a stateroom."

"That will excite comment."

"It may," the Master answered, "but there is no other way. I will
manage everything privately, myself. Then I will let it transpire that
there was some injury to the face, as well, and that the mask had to
be removed. I can let the impression get about that you refused to
allow anyone but me see your mutilated face.

"I can also hint that I have helped you with the dressing, and have
ordered you to keep your stateroom for a while. When it comes time to
leave _Nissr_, I will dispatch you as a messenger. Thus your secret
will remain intact. Besides, no one will dare inquire into anything.
No one ventures to discuss or question any decision of mine."

Something of hard arrogance sounded in the Master's voice. The woman
thanked him, her eyes penetrant, keenly intelligent, even a trifle
mocking. One would have said she was weighing this strange man in
the balance of judgment, was finding him of sterling stuff, yet was
perhaps cherishing a hope, not untinged with malice, that some day a
turn of fate might humble him. The Master seemed to sense a little of
this, and took a milder tone.

"I must compliment you on one thing, madam," said he, with just the
wraith of a smile. "Your acting has been perfection itself. And the
fortitude with which you have borne the discomfort of that mask for
more than a week, to achieve your ends, cannot be too highly praised."

"Thank you," she replied. "I would have stood _that_ a year, to be one
of your Legion! But now--tell me! Isn't there any possibility of your
reversing your decision?"

"None, madam."

"Isn't there anything I can say or do to--"

"Remember, you told me just a minute ago you were not the type of
woman who entreats!"




CHAPTER XIII


THE ENMESHING OF THE MASTER

She fell silent, biting her full lip. Something in her eyes shamed the
man. Not for all his inflexible sternness could he feel that he had
come out a winner in this, their first encounter. A woman--one of the
despised, ignored creatures--had deceived him. She had disobeyed his
orders. She had flatly thrown down the gage of battle to him, that
she would never leave _Nissr_ alive. And last, she had forced him
into planning to disseminate falsehoods among his crew--falsehoods the
secret of which only she shared with him.

Unwilling as this man was to have anything in common with her, he
had been obliged to have something in common--to have much. Something
existed; a bond, even if an unpleasant one, had already stretched
itself between these two--the first secret this man ever had shared
with any woman.

"Captain Alden" smiled a little. The honors of war, so far, lay all in
her camp.

The Master, feeling this to the inner marrows, humiliated, shaken,
yet through it all not quite able to suppress a kind of grudging and
unwilling tribute of admiration, sought to conceal his perturbation
with a stern command:

"Now, madam, I will call my orderly and have you escorted to a
stateroom; have you provided with everything needful for your injury.
I trust it is not causing you any severe pain?"

"Pray don't waste any time or thought on any injury of mine, sir!" the
woman returned.

"Very well, madam! Resume your disguise!"

She tried to sweep up her magnificent hair and secure it upon her
head. But with only one hand available this proved impossible. They
both saw there was no way for her to put on the toupee again.

She smiled oddly, with a half-whimsical, wholly feminine bit of
malice. Her eyes seemed dancing.

"I'm afraid I can't obey you, sir," she proffered. "You can see for
yourself, it can't be done."

A dull, angry flush crept over the Master's rather pale face, and lost
itself in the roots of his thick, black hair. Perfectly well he saw
that he was being cornered in an untenable position of half-command,
half-intimacy. Without apparently exercising any wiles, this woman was
none the less involving him in bonds like those the Lilliputians threw
round sleeping Gulliver.

Anger welled up in his proud heart that anyone--much less a
woman--should thus lower his dignity. But still his manhood dictated
courtesy. He came a few steps nearer, and said:

"I must admit this seems rather an embarrassing situation. Frankly, it
does not tend to ameliorate the relation between us. You have placed
yourself--and me--in a peculiarly compromising position. I must try to
meet it.

"Obviously you cannot expect one so unskilled as I, in things
feminine, to help you in the capacity of lady's maid Therefore only
one thing remains to do. Instead of calling my orderly, and having him
show you your stateroom, I must in some way arrange to get you there,
myself."

"That's kind of you, I'm sure," she answered, half in mockery, half in
gratitude.

"There I will supply you with medical supplies. In some manner or
other you can manage to do up your hair and resume your disguise. You
will remain in your stateroom--under arrest--until such time as you
are cast loose, tomorrow, in your plane."

"Tomorrow?"

"I should say, sometime before night of the day that has already
begun. Food and drink will be brought you, of course."

"That's very good of you, sir." Her smile tantalized. The curt
laconicism of her manner, in the masculine role, had changed to the
softer ways of womankind. Despite himself, the Master was constrained
to admire her ability as an actress.

"Of course you realize," she continued, "that to cast me loose in a
plane, with only one serviceable arm, will be equivalent to committing
cold-blooded murder."

"A mere detail!"

"A mere detail--to murder a woman?"

"Pardon me, you misunderstand. I mean, the manner in which you are to
leave Nissr matters little, so long as you leave. I will see that you
are safely landed--that no harm arrives to you.

"But you--shall not remain with us. Now, kindly stay here. Lock the
cabin door after I have gone, and admit no one until I return. I will
signal you with two triple knocks, thus."

He illustrated the knocks, on the table, and, unlocking the door, left
the cabin in a black humor. The sound of the woman locking the door
after him, the knowledge that he had been obliged to make up a little
code for readmission, angered him as he rarely had been angered.

Self-protection, however, demanded these subterfuges. To let the
secret escape, and to be obliged to admit having been deceived by
a woman, would fatally lower his prestige with the Legionaries. How
could he, if known to be the dupe of a woman, command those hard, bold
men?

Humiliated, yet in his heart thankful that no one had yet penetrated
the secret--as Dr. Lombardo easily might have done, had he laid
forcible hands on "Captain Alden"--the Master set about the necessary
task of himself preparing a stateroom and providing the requisite
medical supplies.

Lombardo asked no questions. His eyes, however, had grown quizzical.
No one else seemed to notice what the Master was about. Each was busy
in his own place, at his own task.

Twenty minutes had passed before all was ready and the Master could
return to his cabin. He rapped as agreed, and was admitted, feeling
his cheeks burn at even the analogy between this clandestine entrance
and some vulgar liaison--a thing he scrupulously had avoided all his
life.

"Come!" he directed. She followed him. Silently he ushered her into
her appointed place. No one had seen them. He followed her into the
little stateroom, closed the door, folded his arms and confronted her
with a grim face.

"Before leaving you, madam," said he, "I wish to repeat that only
your sex has saved you from summary execution. You are guilty of high
crimes and misdemeanors, in the code of this expedition--guilty of
falsehood and deception that might have introduced fatal complications
into my most carefully evolved plan.

"Nevertheless, my code as an officer prohibits any punishment
other than this merely nominal arrest. I must offer you temporary
hospitality. Moreover, if you need any assistance in dressing your
wound, I will give it. Common humanity demands that."

"I don't need anything, thank you," she answered. "I don't ask for
anything, but to stay with the Legion."

"That's a point I must positively decline to argue, madam," he
informed her, shaking his head. "And, since there is nothing more to
say, I wish you a very good night!"

Bowing, he left the stateroom. He heard the door-catch snap. Somehow,
in some way as yet inexplicable to him, that sound caused him another
discomfort. For the first time in his life he had been having private
conversation with a woman--conversation that might almost have been
construed as intimate, since it had held secrets. For the first time
he had felt himself outwitted by a woman, beaten, made mock of. Now he
was being shut away from her.

Inwardly raging as he was, hot, confused, unhorsed, still a strange,
fingering insinuation of something agreeable had begun to waken in
him. The Master, not understanding it at all, or being able to analyze
sensations so foreign to all his previous thought and experience, cut
the Gordian knot of puzzlement by roundly cursing himself, by Allah
and the Prophet's beard, as a fool. And with a vastly disturbed mind
he returned along the white, gleaming corridor--that dipped and swayed
with the swift rush of _Nissr_--back to his own cabin.

There he found the buzzer of his little desk-telephone intermittently
calling him.

"Yes, hello?" he answered, receiver at ear, as he sat down in the
swivel-chair of aluminum with its hydrogen cushion.

The voice of the wireless man, Menendez, reached him. In a soft,
Spanish-accented kind of drawl, Menendez said:

"Just picked up two important radios, sir."

"Well? What are they?"

"International Air Board headquarters, in Washington, has been
notified of our getaway. They have sent out calls for all air-stations
in both America and Europe to put up scout-squadrons to watch for us."

"What else?"

"Two squadrons have been started westward across the Atlantic,
already, to capture or destroy us."

"Indeed? Where from?" The Master spoke coldly. This information, far
from seeming important to him as it had to Menendez, appeared the
veriest commonplace. It was nothing but what he had expected and
foreseen. He smiled grimly as he listened to the radio man's answer:

"One squadron has started from Queenstown. The other from the
Azores--from St. Michaels."

"Anything else?"

"Well, sir, now and then I can get a few words they're sending from
plane to plane--or from plane to headquarters. They mean business.
It's capture or kill. They're rating us as pirates."

"Very well. Anything really important?"

"Nothing else, sir."

"Keep me informed, if any real news comes in. But don't disturb me
with trifles!"

The Master hung up the receiver, sat back in his chair and stretched
his long, powerful legs under the desk. He set both elbows on the arms
of the chair, joined his finger-tips and sank his lips upon them.

"I'd better be rigging that vibratory apparatus before long," he
reflected. "But still, there's no immediate hurry. Time enough for all
that. Lots of time."

His thoughts wandered from _Nissr_ and the great adventure, from the
coming attackers, from the vibratory apparatus, yes from the goal of
all this undertaking itself, back to "Captain Alden." The _who_ and
_why_, the _whence_ and _whither_ of this strange woman urgently
intruded on his mind; nor by any effort of the will could he exclude
these thoughts.

For a long time, while _Nissr_ roared away eastward, ever eastward
into the night, he sat there, sunk in a profound revery.

"A woman," he whispered, finally, the words lingering on his lips. "A
woman, eh? Strange--very strange!"

Resolutely he forced himself to consider the plans he had laid out;
his success thus far; the means he meant to take with the attacking
squadrons; the consummation of his whole campaign so vast, so
overpowering in its scope.

But through it all, persisted other thoughts. And these, he found, he
could not put away.

The buzzer of the desk-telephone again recalled him to himself.
"Hello, hello?"

"I have to report that a third squadron has been ordered into the air,
from Monrovia," announced Menendez.

"Very well! Anything else?"

"No, sir."

The Master hung up the receiver, arose, and seemed to shake himself
from the kind of torpor into which his thoughts of the woman had
plunged him.

"Enough of this nonsense!" growled he. "There's work to be
done--_work_!"

With fresh energy he flung himself into the task of planning how to
meet and to repel the three air-fleets now already on the westward
wing to capture or annihilate the Flying Legion.




CHAPTER XIV


STORM BIRDS

The first slow light of day, "under the opening eyelids of the morn,"
found the Master up in the screened observation gallery at the tip of
the port aileron. Here were mounted two of the six machine-guns that
comprised _Nissr's_ heavier armament; and here, too, were hung a dozen
of the wonderful life-preservers--combination anti-gravity turbines
and vacuum-belt, each containing a signal-light, a water-distiller and
condensed foods--that, invented by Brixton Hewes, soon after the close
of the war, had done so much to make air-travel safe.

Major Bohannan was with the Master. Both men, now in uniform,
showed little effect of the sleepless night they had passed. Wine of
excitement and stern duties to perform, joined with powerful bodies,
made sleeplessness and labor trivialities.

For an hour the two had been standing there, wrapped in their long
military overcoats, while _Nissr_ had swooped on her appointed ways,
with hurtling trajectory that had cleft the dark. Somewhat warmed by
piped exhaust-gases though the glass-enclosed gallery had been, still
the cold had been marked; for without, in the stupendous gulf of
emptiness that had been rushing away beneath and all about them, no
doubt the thermometer would have sunk below zero.

_Nissr's_ altitude was now very great, ranging between 17,500 and
21,000 feet, so as to take advantage of the steady eastward setting
wind in the higher air-lanes. A hard, frozen moonlight, from the
steely disk sinking down the western sky, had slashed ink-black
shadows of struts and stanchions across the gallery, and had flung
_Nissr's_ larger shadow down the hungering abysses of the sky that
yawned beneath.

That shadow had danced and quivered at fantastic speed across dazzling
moonlit fields of cloud, ever keeping pace with the Sky Eagle, now
leaping across immense and silent drifts of white, now plunging,
vanishing into black abysses that showed the ocean spinning backward,
ever backward toward the west.

With the coming of dawn, the shadow had faded, and the watchers' eyes
had been turned ahead for some first sight of the out-riders of
the attacking fleets. Bohannan, a little nervous in spite of his
well-seasoned fighting-blood, had smoked a couple of cigars in the
sheltered gallery, pacing up and down with coat-collar about his ears
and with hands thrust deep in pockets. The Master, likewise muffled,
had refused all proffers of tobacco and had contented himself with a
few khat leaves.

Silence had, for the most part, reigned between them. Up here in the
gallery, conversation was not easy. The hurricane of _Nissr's_ flight
shrieked at times with shrill stridor and with whistlings as of a
million witches bound for some infernal Sabbath on the Matterhorn. A
good deal of vibration and of shuddering whipped the wing-tip, too;
all was different, here, from the calm warmth, comfort, and security
of the fuselage.

The men seemed standing on the very pinion-feathers of some fabled
roc, sweeping through space. Above, below, complete and overwhelming
vacancy clutched for them. The human is not yet born who can stand
thus upon the tip of such a plane, and feel himself wholly at ease.

As darkness faded, however, and as approaching dawn began to burn
its slow way up the stupendous vaults of space above the eastern
cloud-battlements--battlements flicked with dull crimson, blood-tinged
blotches, golden streaks and a whole phantasmagoria of shifting
hues--something of the oppression of night fell from the two men.

"Well, we're still carrying on. Things are still going pretty much
O.K., sir," proffered the major, squinting into the East--the cold,
red East, infinitely vast, empty, ripe with possibilities. "A good
start! Close to a thousand miles we've made; engines running to a
hair; men all fitting into the jobs like clockwork. Everything all
right to a dot, eh?"

The Master nodded silently, keeping dark eyes fixed on the horizon of
cloud-rack. Above, the last faint prickings of stars were fading. The
moon had paled to a ghostly circle. Shuddering, _Nissr_ fled, with
vapory horizons seemingly on her own level so that she appeared at the
bottom of an infinite bowl. Bohannan, feeling need of speech, tried to
be casual as he added:

"I don't feel sleepy. Do you? Seems like I'd never want to sleep
again. Faith, this _is_ living! You've got us all enthused. And your
idea of putting every man-jack in uniform was bully! Nothing like
uniforms--even a jumble of different kinds, like ours--to cement men
together and give them the _esprit de corps._ If we go through as
we've begun--"

The Master interrupted him with a cold glance of annoyance. The Celt's
exuberance jarred on his soul. Since the affair with "Captain Alden,"
the Master's nerves had gone a little raw.

Bohannan rallied bravely.

"Of course," he went on, "it was unfortunate about that New Zealand
chap going West. He looked like a right good fellow. But, well--_c'est
la guerre!_ And I know he wouldn't have chosen a finer grave than the
bottom of the Atlantic, where he's sleeping now.

"By the way, how did Alden come out? Much hurt, was he? I know, of
course, he didn't go back to the sick-bay. So he couldn't have been
badly wounded, or he would be--"

"The Arabs have a saying, my dear fellow," dryly answered the Master,
"that one ear is worth ten thousand tongues. Ponder it well!"

The major's look of astonishment annoyed the Master, even while it
hurt him. He took scant pleasure in rebuffing this old friend; but
certainly "Captain Alden" would not bear discussing. Feeling himself
in a kind of _impasse_ regarding Alden, and fearing some telltale
expression in his eyes, the Master swung up his binoculars and once
more swept the cloud-horizons from northeast to southeast.

"We ought to be sighting some of the attackers, before long," judged
he. "I'm rather curious to see them--to see flies attacking an eagle.
I haven't had a real chance of testing out the neutralizers. Their
operation, in actual practice, ought to be interesting."

He tried to speak coldly, impersonally; but he well realized a certain
strained quality in his voice. Even now, in the hour of impending
attack, his thoughts could not remain wholly fixed on the enemy
which--so the wireless informed him--lay only a little beyond the
haze-enshrouded, burning rim of cloudland.

Despite every effort of the will, he kept mentally reverting to
the midships port stateroom containing the woman. He could not keep
himself from wondering how she was getting on. Her wound, he hoped--he
felt confident--could not be serious.

Had it been, of course, the woman would have asked some further aid.
And since the moment when he had left her, no word had come to him.
More than once, temptation had whispered: "Go to her! She has deceived
you, and you are master here. But, above all, you are a man!"

Twice he had all but yielded to this inner voice. But he had not
yielded. Another and a sterner voice had said: "She is an interloper.
She has no rights. Why give her another thought?"

This voice had prevailed. The Master had told himself only a few hours
more remained, at all events, before the woman should be cast off and
abandoned in whatever strange land might befall--probably Morocco, or
it might be the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro on the western fringes
of the Sahara. After that, what responsibility for her safety or her
welfare would be his? Why, he had none, even now!

"But, man," the small voice insinuated, "she came to you on an errand
of mercy, to nurse and care for such as might fall ill or be wounded.
It was not wholly the desire for adventure that led her to deceive
you. Her motive was high and fine!"

"A curse on all women!" retorted the other voice. "Away with her!" And
this sterner voice again prevailed. Still, at thought that sometime
during the day now close at hand he was to see the last of this woman
who had stood there before him in his cabin, with dark eyes looking
into his, with eager, oval face upturned to his, with all that glory
of lustrous hair a flood about her shoulders, something unknown,
unwonted, fingered at the latchets of his heart.

He realized that he felt strange, uneasy, uprooted from his sober
aplomb. Unknown irritations possessed him. Under his breath he
muttered an Arabic cynicism about woman, from the fourth chapter of
the Koran: "Men shall have the preeminence above women, because Allah
hath caused the one of them to excel the other!"

Then came the philosophical reflection:

"Man, you were seeking new sensations, new experiences, to stir your
pulses. This woman has given you many. She has served her purpose. Now
let her go!"

Thus, seeming to have reached a certain finality of decision, he
dismissed her again from his mind--for perhaps the twentieth time--and
with new care once more began studying the gold-edged, shining clouds
where now a dull, broad arc of molten metal had burned its way out of
the mists.

The Master slid colored ray-filters over his binoculars, to shield
his eyes from the direct dazzle of the rising sun, and swept that
incandescent arc. Suddenly he drew a sharp intake of breath.

"Sighted something, eh?" demanded the major, already recovered from
the snub administered.

"See for yourself, Major, what you make of it! Right in the sun's eye,
and off to southward--all along that fantastic, crimson cloud-castle."

Bohannan's gaze narrowed through his own glasses. Bracing his powerful
legs against the quivering jar of the aileron, he brushed the horizon
into his eager vision. The glasses steadied. There, of a truth, black
midges had appeared, coming up over the world's rim like a startled
covey of quail.




CHAPTER XV


THE BATTLE OF VIBRATIONS

Two, five, a dozen, now a score of tiny specks dotted the mist,
some moving right across the broadening face of the sun itself. As
_Nissr's_ flight stormed eastward, and these gnats drove to the west,
their total rate of approach must have been tremendous; for even as
the men watched, they seemed to find the attackers growing in bulk.
And now more and ever more appeared, transpiring from the bleeding
vapors of dawn.

"Looks like business, sir!" exclaimed the Celt, his jaw hard.

"Business, yes."

"Bad business for us, eh?"

"It might be, if we had only the usual means of defense. Under
ordinary circumstances, our only game would be to turn tail and run
for it, or cut away far to the south--or else break out a white flag
and surrender. But--"

"That must be the Azores air-fleet," judged Bohannan. "The others
couldn't have made so much westing, in this time. Faith, what a
buzzing swarm of mosquitoes! I had no idea there were that many planes
on the Azores International Air Board station!"

"There are many things you have no idea of, Major," replied the
Master, sharply. "That, however, is immaterial. Yes, here come the
fringes of attack, all right enough. I estimate forty or fifty in
sight, already; and there must be a few hundred back of those, between
here and land, north and south. Technically, we're pirates, you know."

"Pirates?" demanded the major, lowering his glass.

The Master nodded.

"Yes," he answered. "That's what the wireless tells us. We'll get
short shrift if--my apparatus fails."

"How do they make us out pirates?" Bohannan ejaculated. It was not
fear that looked from his blue eyes, but a vast astonishment. His
ruddy face, amazed under the now strengthening light of day, brought a
smile to the Master's lips.

"What else are we, my dear fellow?" the Master queried. "To seize a
ship--a water-ship or one of the air matters nothing--and to overpower
the crew, kill or wound a few, throw them outboard and sail away,
comes pretty near constituting piracy. Of course the air-rules and
laws aren't wholly settled yet; but we're in a fair way of giving the
big-wigs a whacking precedent to govern the future. I fancy a good
many cases will be judged as _per_ the outcome of this expedition.

"We're pirates all right--if they catch us. And they _will_ catch
us if they get within gunshot. The next few minutes will settle that
question of whether they're going to, or not!"

"Nice, comforting prospect!" muttered the Celt. "What do they do
with pirates, anyhow, these days? They can't hang us at the yard-arm,
because airships don't have 'em. Of course they might stage a
hanging-bee with this Legion dangling from the wings, but that would
be pretty hard to manage. It'll be shooting, eh?"

"Probably, if my neutralizer fails."

"You're cheerful about it! The neutralizer may be all right, in its
way, but personally I'm rather strong for these!" He laid a hand on
the breech of the Lewis machine-gun mounted in the gallery, its grim
muzzle pointed out through a slit in the colloid screen. "The six guns
we've got aboard, in strategic positions, look like good medicine
to _me_! Wouldn't it be the correct thing to call the gun-crews and
limber up a little? These chaps aren't going to be all day in getting
here, and when they do--"

"I admire your spirit, Major," interrupted the other, with undertones
of mockery, "but it's of the quality that, after all, can't accomplish
anything. It's the kind that goes against artillery with rifles.
Six guns against perhaps six hundred--and we're not built for rapid
maneuvering. That swarm could sting us a thousand times while we were
giving them the first round. No, no, there's nothing for it now, but
the neutralizer!"

"My will is made, anyhow," growled Bohannan. "Faith, I'm glad it is!"

The Master gave no reply, but took from the rail the little phone that
hung there, and pressed a button, four times. He cupped the receiver
at his ear.

"You, Enemark?" asked he, of the man at the neutralizer far down in
the penetralia of the giant air-liner. "Throw in the first control.
Half-voltage, for three minutes. Then three-quarters, for two; and
then full, with all controls. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" came the crisp voice of Enemark. "Perfectly!"

The Master hung up the receiver, and for a moment stood brooding.
An intruding thought had once more forced itself into his brain--a
thought of "Captain Alden." In case of capture or destruction, what
of the woman? Something very like a pang of human emotion pierced
his heart. Impatiently he thrust the thought aside, and turned with a
quiet smile to Bohannan.

The major, red with excitement and impatience, still had a hand on the
machine-gun. He was patting it slightly, his face eloquent of longing
and regret.

"Still pinning your faith to steel-jacketed streams of bullets,
are you, as against ion-jacketed streams of vibrations?" the Master
rallied him. "We shall see, immediately, whether you're right or _I_
am! Bullets are all well enough in their place, Major, but electrons
are sometimes necessary. Vibrations, Major--I pin my faith to
vibrations."

"Vibrate all you want to!" exclaimed the Celt, irefully, his eyes on
the thickening swarm of flyers, some of them now plainly visible in
detail against the aching smears of color flung across the eastern
reaches of cloudland. "Vibrate away; but give me _this_!" He fondled
the gleaming gun as if it had been a pet. "I tell you frankly, if
I were in charge here, I'd let the vibrations go to Hell and begin
pumping lead. I'd have all gun-crews at stations, and the second we
got in range I'd open with all six Lewises!"

"Yes, and Nissr would go crumpling down, a minute later, a blazing
sieve fore-and-aft--wings, tanks, fuselage, everything riddled
with thousands of bullets. Vibration is the trick, I tell you. It's
everything.

"All life is vibration. When it ceases, that is death--and even dead
matter vibrates. All our senses depend on vibration. Everything we
feel, see, hear, taste, comes to our knowledge through vibrations.
And the receptive force in us is vibration, too. The brain is just one
great, central ganglion for the taking in of vibrations.

"The secret of life, of the universe itself, is vibration. If we
understood all about that, the cosmos would have no secrets from us.
So now--ah, see there, will you? See, Major, and be convinced!"

He pointed eastward, into the blazing sunrise. The out-fling of his
arm betrayed more human emotion than he had yet shown. Exultation
leaped to his usually impassive eyes. Surely, had not this
expedition--which he had hoped would give surcease from ennui and stir
the pulses--had it not already yielded dividends? Had it not already
very richly repaid him?

"See there, now!" he cried again, and gripped the rail with nervous
hands.

"Lord above!" ejaculated the major, squinting through his binoculars.


"Astonished, eh?" demanded the Master, smiling with malice. "Didn't
think it would work, did you? Well, which do you choose now,
Major--bullets or vibrations?"

"This--this is extraordinary!" exclaimed Bohannan. His glasses
traveled to and fro, sweeping the fringelike fan of the attackers,
still five or six miles away. "Faith, but this is--"

The binoculars lowered slowly, as Bohannan watched a falling plane.
Everywhere ahead there in the brazier of the dawn, as the two men
stood watching from the wind-lashed gallery of the on-roaring liner,
attackers were dropping. All along the line they had begun to fall,
like ripe fruit in a hurricane.

Not in bursts of flame did they go plunging down the depths, gyrating
like mad comets with long smoke-trailers and redly licking manes of
fire. Not in shattered fragments did they burst and plumb the abyss.
No; quite intact, unharmed, but utterly powerless they fell.

Some spiraled down, like dead leaves twirling in autumnal breezes,
with drunken yaws and pitches. Others in long slants volplaned toward
the hidden sea, miles below the cloud-plain. A few pitched over and
over, or slid away in nose-dives and tail-spins. But one and all, as
they crossed what seemed an invisible line drawn out there ahead of
the onrushing Eagle of the Sky, bowed to some mysterious force.

It seemed almost as if _Nissr_ were the center of a vast sphere that
moved with her--a sphere through which no enemy could pass--a sphere
against the intangible surface of which even the most powerful engines
of the air dashed themselves in vain.

And still, as others and still others came charging up to the attack
like knights in joust, they fell. One by one the white wool cushions
of the cloud, gold-broidered by the magic needles of the sun, received
them. One by one they faded, vanished, were no more.

So, all disappeared. Between a hundred and a hundred and twenty-five
planes were silently, swiftly, resistlessly sent down in no more
than twenty minutes, while the watchers stood there in the gallery,
fascinated by the wondrous precision and power of this new and
far-outflung globe of protection.

And again the blood-red morning sky grew clear of attackers. Again,
between high heaven's black vault and the fantastic continent of cloud
below, nothing remained but free vacancy. The Master smiled.

"Vibrations, my dear Major!" said he. "Neutralize the currents
delivered by the magnetos of hostile planes to their spark-plugs, and
you transform the most powerful engines into inert matter. Not all the
finely adjusted mechanism in the world, nor the best of petrol, nor
yet the most perfect skill is worth _that_," with a snap of the strong
fingers, "when the spark dies.

"My device is the absolute ruler of whatever spark I direct it
against. Our own ignition is screened; but all others within the
critical radius become impotent. So you recognize, do you not, the
uselessness of machine-guns? The groundlessness of any fears about the
Air Patrol's forces?"

"Lord, but this is wonderful!" Bohannan ejaculated. "If we'd only had
this in the Great War, the Hun would have been wiped out in a month!"

"Yes, but we didn't have it," the Master smiled. "I've just finished
perfecting it. Put the last touches on it hardly twenty-four hours
ago. If there's ever another war, though--ah, see there, now! Here
comes one lone, last attacker!"

He pointed. Far at the edge of empty cloudland, now less blood-stained
and becoming a ruddy pink under the risen sun, a solitary aerial
jouster had grown visible.

The last attacker appeared a feeble gnat to dance thus alone in the
eye of morning. That one plane should, unaided, drive on at _Nissr's_
huge, rushing bulk, seemed as preposterous as a mosquito trying
to lance a rhinoceros. The major directed a careful lens at this
survivor.

"He has his nerve right in his baggage with him," announced the Celt.
"Sure, he's 'there.' There can be no doubt he's seen the others fall.
Yet--what now? He's turning tail, eh? He's on the run?"

"Not a bit of it! He's driving straight ahead. That was only a dip and
turn, for better air. Ah, but he's good, that fellow! There's a man
after my own heart, Major. Maybe there's more than one, aboard that
plane. But there's one, anyhow, that's a real man!"

The Master pondered a moment, then again picked up the phone.

"Enemark?" he called. "That you?"

"Hello! Yes, sir! What orders, sir?"

"Cut off the ray! Quick, there!"

"Yes, sir!" And through the phone the Master heard the _snick_ of a
switch being hastily thrown.

"What's the idea, now?" demanded the major, astonished. "Going to let
that plane close in on us, and maybe riddle us?"

The Master smiled, as he made answer:

"I'll chance the bullets, this time. There's a _man_ on board that
plane. A _man_! And we--need men!"

The Master smiled, as he made answer:

"I'll chance the bullets, this time. There's a man on board that
plane. A man! And we--need men!"




CHAPTER XVI


LECLAIR, ACE OF FRANCE

Swooping, rising, falling like a falcon in swift search of quarry, the
last plane of the Azores squadron swept in toward the on-rushing Eagle
of the Sky.

Undismayed by the swift, inexplicable fall of all its companions, it
still thrust on for the attack. In a few minutes it had come off the
port bows of the giant air-liner, no more than half a mile distant.
Now the watchers saw it, slipping through some tenuous higher
cloud-banks that had begun to gather, a lean, swift, wasplike
speedster: one of the Air Control Board's--the A.C.B.'s--most rapid
aerial police planes. The binoculars of the Master and Bohannan drew
the machine almost to fingers' touch.

"Only one man aboard her, with a machine-gun," commented the Master,
eyes at glass, as he watched the flick of sunlight on the attacker's
fuselage, the dip and glitter of her varnished wings, the blur of her
propellers. Already the roaring of her exhaust gusted down to them.

"Ah, see? She's turning, now. Banking around! We may catch a burst of
machine-gun fire, in a minute. Or, no--she's coming up on our tail,
Major. I think she's going to try and board us!"

"You going to let her?" protestingly demanded Bohannan. His hand
twitched against the butt of the Lewis. "In two seconds I could sight
an aft gun, sir, and blow that machine Hell-for-leather!"

"No, no--let that fellow come aboard, if he wants," the Master
commanded. And with eager curiosity in his dark eyes, with vast wonder
what manner of human this might be who--all alone after having seen
more than a hundred comrades plunge--still ventured closing to grips,
the Master watched.

The air-wasp was already swerving, making a spiral glide, coming up
astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched--and as a score
of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed--the
lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging
swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk
stooping at quarry.

A moment she kept pace with the air-liner's whirring rush. She
hovered, dropped with a wondrous precision that proved her rider's
consummate skill, made a perfect landing on the long take-off that
stretched from rudders to wing observation galleries, atop the liner.

Forward on _Nissr_ the wasp ran on her small, cushioned wheels. She
stopped, with jammed-on brakes, and came to rest not forty feet abaft
the Eagle's beak.

Quite at once, without delay, the little door of the pilot-pit in the
wasp's head swung wide, and a heavily-swaddled figure clambered out.
This figure stood a moment, peering about through goggles. Then with a
free, quick stride, he started forward toward the gallery where he had
seen Bohannan and the Master.

The two awaited him. Confidently he came into the wind-shielded
gallery on top of _Nissr's_ port plane. He advanced to within
about six feet, stopped, gave the military salute--which they both
returned--and in a throaty French that marked him as from Paris,
demanded:

"Which of you gentlemen is in command, here?"

"_Moi, monsieur!_" answered the Master, also speaking French. "And
what is your errand?"

"I have come to inform you, in the name of the A.C.B.'s law,
recognized as binding by all air-traffic, that you and your entire
crew are under arrest."

"Indeed? And then--"

"I am to take charge of this machine at once, and proceed with it as
per further instructions from International Aerial headquarters at
Washington."

"Very interesting news, no doubt," replied the Master, unmoved. "But I
cannot examine your credentials, nor can we negotiate matters of such
importance in so off-hand a manner. This gallery will not serve. Pray
accompany me to my cabin?"

"_Parfaitement, monsieur!_ I await your pleasure!"

The stranger's gesture, his bow, proclaimed the Parisian as well as
his speech. The Master nodded. All three proceeded in silence to
the hooded companion-way at the forward end of the take-off, that
sheltered the ladder. This they descended, to the main corridor.

There they paused, a moment.

"Major," said the Master, "pardon me, but I wish to speak to
our--guest, alone. You understand."

The major's glance conveyed a world of indignant protest, but he
obeyed in silence. When he had withdrawn into the smoke-room, where
a brooding pipe would ill divert his mind from various wild
speculations, the Master slid open his own cabin door, and extended a
hand of welcome toward it.

"_Après vous, monsieur!_" said he.

The A.C.B. officer entered, his vigorous, compact figure alive with
energy, intelligence. The Master followed, slid the door shut and
motioned to a chair beside the desk. This chair, of metal, was itself
placed upon a metal plate. The plate was new. At our last sight of the
cabin, it had not been there.

Taking off goggles and gauntlets, and throwing open his sheepskin
jacket, the Frenchman sat down. The Master also plate was new. At our
last sight of the cabin, it had not been there.

Taking off goggles and gauntlets, and throwing open his sheepskin
jacket, the Frenchman sat down. The Master also sat down at the desk.
A brief silence, more pregnant than any speech, followed. Each man
narrowly appraised the other. Then said the newcomer, still in that
admirable French of his:

"You understand, of course, _n'est-ce pas?_ that it is useless to
offer any resistance to the authority of the A.C.B."

"May I take the liberty of inquiring what your credentials may be, and
with whom I have the great pleasure of speaking?" returned the Master.
His eyes, mirroring admiration, peered with some curiosity at the
dark, lean face of the Frenchman.

"I," answered the other, "am Lieutenant André Leclair, formerly of
the French flying forces, now a commander in the International Air
Police."

"Leclair?" demanded the Master quickly, his face lighting with a
glad surprise. "Leclair, of the Mesopotamian campaign? Leclair, the
world-famous ace?"

"Leclair, nothing else. I deprecate the adjectives."

The Master's hand went out. The other took it. For a moment their grip
held, there under the bright white illumination of the cabin--for,
though daylight had begun fingering round the drawn curtains, the
glow-lamps still were burning.

The hand-clasp broke. Leclair began:

"As for you, monsieur, I already know you, of course. You are--"

The Master raised a palm of protest.

"Who I am does not matter," said he. "I am not a man, but an idea. My
personality does not count. All that counts is the program, the plan I
stand for.

"Many here do not even know my name. No man speaks it. I am quite
anonymous; quite so. Therefore I pray you, keep silent on that matter.
What, after all, is the significance of a name? You are an ace, an
officer. So am I."

"True, very true. Therefore I more keenly regret the fact that I must
place you under arrest, and that charges of piracy in the high air
must be lodged against you."

"Thank you for the regret, indeed," answered the Master dryly. Save
for the fact that this strange man never laughed and seldom smiled,
one would have thought the odd twinkle in his eye prefaced merriment.
"Well, what now?"

The Frenchman produced a silver cigarette-case, opened it and extended
it toward the man now technically his prisoner. As yet he had said no
word concerning the tremendous execution done the air police forces.
His offer of the cigarettes was as calm, as courteous as if they two
had met under circumstances of the most casual amity. The Master waved
the cigarettes away.

"Thank you, no," said he. "I never smoke. But you will perhaps pardon
me if I nibble two or three of these khat leaves. You yourself, from
your experience in Oriental countries, know the value of khat."

"I do, indeed," said the other, his eyes lighting up.

"And may I offer you a few leaves?"

"_Merci_! I thank you, but tobacco still satisfies." The Frenchman
lighted his cigarette, blew thin smoke, and cast intelligent, keen
eyes about the cabin. Said he:

"You will not, of course, offer any resistance. I realize that I am
here among a large crew of men. I am all alone, it is true. You could
easily overpower me, throw me into the sea, and _voilà_--I die. But
that would not be of any avail to you.

"Already perhaps a hundred and fifty air police have fallen this
morning. It is strange. I do not understand, but such is the fact.
Nevertheless, I am here, myself. I have survived--survived, to convey
organized society's message of arrest. Individuals do not count.
They are only representatives of the mass-power of society. _N'est-ce
pas?_"

"Quite correct. And then--"

"Sooner or later you must land somewhere for petrol, you know. For
_essence_, eh? Just as sea-pirates were wiped out by the coming of
steam-power, which they had to adopt and which forced them to call
at ports for coal, so air-pirates will perish because they must have
essence. That is entirely obvious. Have I the honor of your signed
surrender, my dear sir, including that of all your men?"

"Just one question, please!"

"A thousand, if you like," smiled the Parisian, inhaling smoke. His
courtesy was perfect, but the glint of his eye made one think of a
tiger that purrs, with claws ready to strike.

"What," demanded the Master, "is your opinion of the peculiar and
sudden fall of all your companions?"

"I have no opinion as to that. Strange air-currents, failure of
ignition due to lack of oxygen--how do I know? A thousand things may
happen in the air."

"Not to more than a hundred planes, all in a half-hour."

The Frenchman shrugged indifferent shoulders and smiled.

"It does not signify, in the least," he murmured. "I am here. That
suffices."

"Do you realize that I, perhaps, have forces at my command which may
negative ordinary conditions and recognized laws?"

"Nothing can negative the forces of organized society. I repeat my
request, _monsieur_, for your unconditional written surrender."

The Master's hand slid over the desk and rested a moment on a button
there. A certain slight tremor passed through the Frenchman's body.
Into his eyes leaped an expression of wonder, of astonishment. His
mouth quivered, as if he would have spoken; but he remained dumb.
The hand that held his cigarette, resting on his knee, relaxed; the
cigarette fell, smoldering, to the metal plate. And on the instant the
fire in it died, extinguished by some invisible force.

"Are you prepared to sign a receipt for this airship, if I deliver her
over to you, sir?" demanded the Master, still speaking in French. He
smiled oddly.

No answer. A certain swelling of the Frenchman's throat became
visible, and his lips twitched slightly, but no sound was audible. A
dull flush mounted over his bronzed cheek.

"Ah, you do not answer?" asked the other, with indulgent patronage.
"I assume, however, that you have the authority to accept my surrender
and that of my crew. I assume, also, that you are willing to sign for
the airship." He opened a drawer, took a paper, and on it wrote a few
words. These he read over carefully, adding a comma, a period.

Leclair watched him with fixed gaze, struggling against some strange
paralysis that bound him with unseen cords of steel. The Frenchman's
eyes widened, but remained unblinking with a sort of glazed fixity.
The Master slid the paper toward him on the desk.

"_Voilà, monsieur!_" said he. "Will you sign this?"

A shivering tremor of the Frenchman's muscles, as the ace sat there so
strangely silent and motionless, betrayed the effort he was making
to rise, to lift even a hand. Beads of sweat began to ooze on his
forehead; veins to knot there Still he remained seated, without power
to speak or move.

"What? You do not accept?" asked the Master, frowning as with
puzzlement and displeasure. "But, _allons donc!_ this is strange
indeed. Almost as strange as the fact that your whole air-squadron,
with the sole exception of your own plane, was dropped through the
clouds.

"I have no wish unnecessarily to trouble your mind. Let me state the
facts. Not one of those machines was precipitated into the sea. No
life was lost. Ah, that astonishes you?"

The expression in the Frenchman's face betrayed intense amazement,
through his eyes alone. The rest of his features remained almost
immobile. The Master smiling, continued:

"The fleet was dropped to exactly one thousand feet above the sea.
There the inhibition on the engines was released and the engines began
functioning again. So no harm was done. But not one of those machines
can rise again higher than one thousand feet until I so choose.

"They are all hopelessly outdistanced, far down there below the
cloud-floor. Midges could catch a hawk as readily as _they_ could
overhaul this Eagle of the Sky.

"Nowhere within a radius of twenty-five miles can any of those planes
rise to our level. This is curious, but true. In the same way, on much
the same principle, though through a very different application of it,
you cannot speak or move until I so desire. All your voluntary muscles
are completely, even though temporarily, paralyzed. The involuntary
ones, which carry on your vital processes, are untouched.

"In one way, _monsieur_, you are as much alive as ever In another you
are almost completely dead. Your fleet has enjoyed the distinction of
having been the very first to serve as the object of a most important
experiment. Likewise, your own person has had the honor of serving
as material for another experiment, equally important--an experiment
whose effect on your body is similar to that of the first one on the
air-fleet.

"You can hear me, perfectly. You can see me. I ask you to watch me
closely. Then consider, if you please, the matter of placing me under
arrest."

His hand touched a small disk near the button he had first pressed;
a disk of some strange metal, iridescent, gleaming with a peculiar
greenish patina that, even as one watched it, seemed to blend into
other shades, as an oil-scum transmutes its hues on water.

Now a faint, almost inaudible hum began to make itself heard. This hum
was not localized. One could not have told exactly whence it came. It
filled the cabin with a kind of soft murmuring that soothed the senses
like the drowsy undertone of bees at swarm.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the pupils of Leclair's eyes began
to dilate with astonishment. Immovable though he still remained, the
most intense wonder made itself apparent in his look. Even something
akin to fear was mirrored in his gaze. Again his lips twitched. Though
he could form no word, a dry, choking gasp came from his throat.

And there was cause for astonishment; yes, even for fear. A thing
was beginning to take place, there in the brightly lighted cabin of
_Nissr_, such as man's eye never yet had beheld.

The Master was disappearing.




CHAPTER XVII


MIRACLES, SCOURGE OF FLAME

His form, sitting there at the desk--his face wearing an odd
smile--had already begun to grow less distinct. It seemed as if the
light surrounding him had faded, though everywhere else in the cabin
it still gleamed with its accustomed brilliance. And as this light
around him began to blur into a russet dimness, forming a sort of
screen between him and visibility, the definition of his outlines
began to melt away.

The Master still remained visible, as a whole; but the details of him
were surely vanishing. And as they vanished, faintly a high-light, a
shadow, a bit of metal-work showed through the space where he sat.
He seemed a kind of dissolving cloud, through which now more and more
clearly objects beyond him could be distinguished. Impossible though
this seemed, it was indubitably true.

As he disappeared, he kept speaking. The effect of that undiminished
voice, calm, slow, resonant, issuing from that disintegrating vapor,
stirred the hair on the captive Frenchman's neck and scalp.

"Vibration, _mon cher monsieur_," said he, "is everything. According
to the researches of the Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris--no doubt you,
yourself, have studied there, _n'est-ce pas?_--vibration of the first
octave from 2 to 8 per second, give us no sense-impression. From the
fourth to the fifteenth octave, 16 to 32,768 per second, we get sound.
The qualities of the 16th to the 24th are--or have been, until I
investigated--quite unknown. The 25th to the 35th, 33, 554, 432 to 34,
859, 738, 868 vibrations per second, give us electricity. Thence to
the 45th, again unknown.

"The 4th to the 48th give us heat. The 49th gives light The 50th,
chemical rays, vibrating 1, 125, 899, 906, 842, 624 per second. The
51st to the 57th have never been touched by anyone save myself. The
X-ray group extends from the 58th to the 61st octave. The 62d, with 4,
611, 686, 427, 889, 904 vibrations per second, is a field where only
I have worked. And beyond these, no doubt, other octaves extend with
infinite possibilities.

"You will note, _monsieur_," he continued, while the dun penumbra
still more and more withdrew him from Leclair's sight, "that great
lacunae exist in the scale of vibratory phenomena. Some of the
so-called lower animals take cognizance of vibrations that mean
nothing to us. Insects hear notes far above our dull ears. Ants are
susceptible to lights and colors unseen to our limited eyes. The
emperor-moth calls its mate--so says Fabre--by means of olfactory
vibrations totally uncomprehended by us. The universe is full of hues,
tones, radiant phenomena that escape us, because our senses are not
attuned to them."

Steadily he spoke, and steadily the humming drone that filled the
cabin kept its undertones that lulled, that soothed. The Frenchman,
staring, hardly breathed. Rigid he sat and pale, with sweat now slowly
guttering down his face, his jaws clamped hard and white.

"If the true nature of the universe could suddenly be revealed to our
senses," went on the Master, now hardly more than a dull blur, "we
could not survive. The crash of cosmic sound, the blaze of strange
lights, the hurricane forces of tempestuous energies sweeping space
would blind, deafen, shrivel, annihilate us like so many flies swept
into a furnace. Nature has been kind; she has surrounded us with
natural ray-filters of protection."

His voice now seemed issuing from a kind of vacancy. Save for a slight
darkening of the air, nothing was visible of him. He went on:

"With our limited senses we are, in a way, merely peeping out
of little slits in an armored conning-tower of life, out at the
stupendous vibratory battles of the cosmos. Other creatures, in other
planets, no doubt have other sense-organs to absorb other vibratory
ranges. Their life-experiences are so different from ours that
we could not possibly grasp them, any more than a blind man could
understand a painting.

"Nor could those creatures understand human life. We are safe in
our own little corner of the universe, comfortably sheltered in our
vestments of clay. And what we cannot understand, though it is all
perfectly natural, we call religion, the supernatural, God."

From a great vacancy, the Master's words proceeded. Leclair, tugging
in vain at the bonds that, invisible yet strong as steel, held him
powerless, stared with wild eyes.

"There is no supernatural," said the now disembodied voice. "What
we call spirit, psychic force, hypnosis, spiritualism, the fourth
dimension, is really only life on another scale of vibration. If we
could see the whole scale, we would recognize it as a vast, coherent,
perfectly natural and rational whole, in which we human beings fill
but a very insignificant part. That, monsieur, is absolutely true!

"I have investigated, I have ventured along the coasts of the unknown
vibratory sea, and even sailed out a little way on the waters of
that unknown, mysterious ocean. Yet even I know nothing. What you are
beholding now is simply a slightly new form of vibratory effect. The
force that is holding you paralyzed on that chair is still another. A
third, sent down the air-squadron. And--there are many more.

"I am not really vanishing. That is but an illusion of your senses,
unable to penetrate the screen surrounding me. I am still here, as
materially as ever. Illusion, _mon cher monsieur_, yet to you very
real!"

The voice seemed moving about. The Frenchman now perceived something
like a kind of moving blur in the cabin. It appeared a sort of hole of
darkness, in the light; and yet the light shone through it, too.


Every human eye has a blind spot in the retina. When things pass over
this blind spot, they absolutely vanish; the other eye supplies the
missing object. To the French ace it seemed that his eyes were all
blind spots, so far as the Master was concerned. The effect of this
vacancy moving about, shifting a chair, stirring a book, speaking to
him like a spirit disembodied, its footfalls audible but its own self
invisible, chilled the captive's blood. The Master said:

"Now I have totally disappeared from your eye or any other material
eye. I cannot even see myself! No doubt dwellers on some other planet
would perceive me by some means we cannot imagine. Yet I am materially
here. You feel my touch, now, on your shoulder. See, now I put out the
lights; now I draw aside this curtain, and admit the golden morning
radiance. You see that radiance, but you do not see me.

"A miracle? _Pas du tout!_ Nothing but an application of perfectly
natural laws. And so--well, now let us come back to the matter under
discussion. You have come hither to arrest me, _monsieur_. What do
you think of arresting me, now? I am going to leave that to your own
judgment."

His voice approached the desk. The chair moved slightly, and gave
under his weight. Something touched the button on the desk. Something
pressed the iridescent metal disk. The humming note sank, faded, died
away.

Gradually a faint haze gathered in the chair. Dim, brownish fog
congealed there. The chair became clouded with it; and behind that
chair objects grew troubled, turbid, vague.

The ace felt inhibitions leaving him. His eyes began to blink; his
half-opened mouth closed with a snap; a long, choking groan escaped
his lips.

"_Nom de Dieu_" he gulped, and fell weakly to rubbing his arms and
legs that still prickled with a numb tingling. "_Mais, nom de Dieu!_"

The Master, now swiftly becoming visible, stood up again, smiled,
advanced toward his guest--or prisoner, if you prefer.

A moment he stood there, till every detail had grown as clear as
before this astounding demonstration of his powers. Then he stretched
forth his hand.

"Leclair," said he, in a voice of deep feeling, "I know and appreciate
you for a man of parts, of high courage and devotion to duty in the
face of almost certain death. The manner in which you came ahead, even
after all your companions had fallen--in which you boarded us, with
the strong probability of death confronting you, proves you the kind
of man who wins and keeps respect among fighting men.

"If you still desire my arrest and the delivery to you of this
air-liner, I am at your complete disposal. You have only to sign the
receipt I have already written. If--" and for a moment the Master
paused, while his dark eyes sought and held the other's, "if,
_monsieur_, you desire to become one of the Flying Legion, and to take
part in the greatest adventure ever conceived by the mind of man, in
the name of all the Legion I welcome you to comradeship!"

"_Dieu_!" choked the lieutenant, gripping the Master's hand. "You mean
that I--I--"

"Yes, that you can be one of us."

"Can that be true?"

"It is!"

The Master's right hand closed firmly on Leclair's. The Master's other
hand went out and gripped him by the shoulder.

To his feet sprang the Frenchman. Though still shaken and trembling,
he drew himself erect. His right hand loosened itself from the
Master's; it went to his aviator's helmet in a sharp salute.

"_J'y suis! J'y reste!_" cried he. "_Mon capitaine!_"

The day passed uneventfully, at high altitudes, steadily rushing
into the eye of the East. In the stillness and solitude of the upper
air-lanes, _Nissr_ roared onward, invincibly, with sun and sky above,
with shining clouds piled below in swiftly retreating masses that spun
away to westward.

Far below, sea-storm and rain battled over the Atlantic. Upborne on
the wings of the eastward-setting wind, _Nissr_ felt nothing of such
trivialities. Twice or thrice, gaps in the cloud-veil let dim ocean
appear to the watchers in the glass observation pits; and once
they spied a laboring speck on the waters--a great passenger-liner,
worrying toward New York in heavy weather. The doings of such, and of
the world below, seemed trivial to the Legionaries as follies of dazed
insects.

No further attack was made on _Nissr_, nor was anything seen of any
other air-squadron of International Police. The wireless picked up,
however, a cross-fire of dazed, uncomprehending messages being hurled
east and west, north and south--messages of consternation, doubt,
anger.

The world, wholly at a loss to understand the thing that had come upon
it, was listening to reports from the straggling Azores fleet as it
staggered into various ports. Every continent already was buzzing with
alarm and rage. In less than eighteen hours the calm and peaceful ways
of civilization had received an epoch-making jar. All civilization was
by the ears--it had become a hornet's nest prodded by a pole no one
could understand or parry.

And the Master, sitting at his desk with reports and messages piling
up before him, with all controls at his finger-tips, smiled very
grimly to himself.

"If they show such hysteria at just the initial stages of the game,"
he murmured, "what will they show when--"

The Legion had already begun to fall into well-disciplined routine,
each man at his post, each doing duty to the full, whether that
duty lay in pilot-house or cooks' galley, in engine-room or pit, in
sick-bay or chartroom. The gloom caused by the death and burial at
sea of Travers, the New Zealander, soon passed. This was a company
of fighting men, inured to death in every form. And death they had
reckoned as part of the payment to be made for their adventuring.
This, too, helped knit the fine mass-spirit already binding them
together into a coherent, battling group.

A little after two in the afternoon, _Nissr_ passed within far sight
of the Azores, visible in cloud-rifts as little black spots sown
on the waters like sparse seeds on a burnished plate of metal. This
habitation of man soon slipped away to westward, and once more nothing
remained but the clear, cold severity of space, with now and then a
racing drift of rain below, and tumbling, stormy weather all along the
sea horizons.

The Master and Bohannan spent some time together after the Azores had
been dropped astern and off the starboard quarter. "Captain Alden"
remained in her cabin. She reported by phone, however, that the wound
was really only superficial, through the fleshy upper part of the
left arm. If this should heal by first intention, as it ought, no
complications were to be expected.

Day drew on toward the shank of the afternoon. The sun, rayless,
round, blue-white, lagged away toward the west, seeming to sway in
high heaven as _Nissr_ took her long dips with the grace and swiftness
of a flying falcon. Some time later the cloud-masses thinned and broke
away, leaving the world of waters spread below in terrible immensity.

As the African coast drew near, its arid influences banished vapor.
Now, clear to the up-curving edge of the world, nothing could be seen
below save the steel-gray, shining plains of water. Waves seemed not
to exist. All looked smooth and polished as a mirror of bright metal.

At last, something like dim veils of whiteness began to draw and
shimmer on the eastern skyline--the vague glare of the sun-crisped
Sahara flinging its furnace ardor to the sky. To catch first sight
of land, the Master and Bohannan climbed the ladder again, to the
take-off, and thence made their way into the starboard observation
gallery. There they brought glasses to bear. Though nothing definite
could yet be seen through the shrouding dazzle that swaddled the
world's rim, this fore-hint of land confirmed their reckonings of
latitude and longitude.

"We can't be more than a hundred and fifty miles west of the
Canaries," judged the major. "Sure, we can eat supper tonight in an
oasis, if we're so minded--with Ouled Naïls and houris to hand round
the palm-wine and--"

"You forget, my dear fellow," the Master interrupted, "that the first
man who goes carousing with wine or women, dies before a firing-squad.
That's not the kind of show we're running!"

"Ah, sure, I did forget!" admitted the Celt. "Well, well, a look at a
camel and a palm tree could do no harm. And it won't be long, at this
rate, before--"

A sudden, violent concussion, far aft, sent a quivering shudder
through the whole fabric of the giant liner. Came a swift burst of
flame; black, greasy smoke gushed from the stern, trailing on the
high, cold air. Long fire-tongues, banners of incandescence, flailed
away, roaring into space.

Shouts burst, muffled, from below. A bell jangled madly. The crackle
of pistol-fire punched dully through the rushing swiftness.

With a curse the major whirled. Frowning, the Master turned and
peered. _Nissr_, staggering, tilted her beak sharply oceanward. At a
sick angle, she slid, reeling, toward the burnished, watery floor that
seemed surging up to meet her.

A hoarse shout from the far end of the take-off drew the Master's eyes
thither. With strange agility, almost apelike in its prehensile power,
a human figure came clambering up over the outer works, clutching at
stays, wires, struts.

Other shouts echoed thinly in the rarefied, high air. The climber
laughed with savage mockery.

"I've done for _you_!" he howled exultantly. "Fuel-tanks afire--you'll
all go to Hell blazing when they explode! But first--I'll get the boss
pirate of the outfit--"

Swiftly the clutching figure scrabbled in over the rail, dropped
to the metal plates of the take-off--now slanting steeply down and
forward--and broke into a staggering run directly toward the gallery
where stood Bohannan and the Master.

At the little ladder-housing sounded a warning shout. The head and
shoulders of Captain Alden became visible there. In Alden's right hand
glinted a service-revolver.

But already the attacker--the stowaway--had snatched a pistol from his
belt. And, as he plunged at full drive down the take-off platform, he
thrust the pistol forward.

Almost at point-blank range, howling maledictions, he hurled a
murderous fusillade at the Master of the now swiftly falling Eagle of
the Sky.




CHAPTER XVIII


"CAPTAIN ALDEN" MAKES GOOD

The crash of shattered glass mingled with the volley flung by the
murderously spitting automatic of the stowaway. From the forward
companion, at the top of the ladder, "Captain Alden" fired--one shot
only.

No second shot was needed. For the attacker, grunting, lunged forward,
fell prone, sprawled on the down-slanting plates of the take-off
platform. His pistol skidded away, clattering, over the buffed metal.

"As neat a shot as the other's was bad," calmly remarked the Master,
brushing from his sleeve some glittering splinters of glass. A lurch
of _Nissr_ threw him against the rail. He had to steady himself there,
a moment. Down his cheek, a trickle of blood serpented. "Yes, rather
neat," he approved.

He felt something warm on his face, put up his hand and inspected red
fingers.

"Hm! A sliver from that broken shield must have cut me," said he, and
dismissed it wholly from his mind.

Major Bohannan, with chromatic profanity, ran from the gallery.
"Captain Alden" drew herself up the top rounds of the ladder, emerged
wholly from the companion and likewise started for the wounded
interloper. Both, as they ran aft toward the fallen man, zigzagged
with the pitch and yaw of the stricken airship, slipped on the plates,
staggered up the incline.

And others, from the aft companion, now came running with cries, their
bodies backgrounded by the leaping flames and smoke that formed a wake
behind the wounded Eagle of the Sky.

Before the major and Alden could reach the stowaway, he rallied. Up
to hands and knees he struggled. He dragged himself away to starboard.
Trailing blood, he scrambled to the rail.

The major snatched his revolver from its holster. Up came the
"Captain's" gun, once more.

"No, no!" the Master shouted, stung into sudden activity. "Not that!
Alive--take him alive!"

The stowaway's answer was a laugh of wild derision; a hideous, shrill,
tremulous laugh that rose in a kind of devilish, mockery on the air of
that high level. For just a second the man hung there, swaying, at the
rail. Beyond him, up the tilt of the falling _Nissr_, brighter flames
whipped back. Came a burst of smoke, another concussion, a shuddering
impact that trembled through the whole vast air-liner. White-hot
fire ribboned back and away, shredded into little, whirling gusts of
incandescence that dissolved in black smoke.

"Take me alive, eh?" the stowaway shouted, madly. "Ha-ha! I see you!
You're all dead men, anyhow! I'll go first--show you I'm not afraid!"

With astonishing agility he leaped. Hands on rail, with a last supreme
burst of the energy that innervated his dying body, he vaulted clear.
Out and away he hurled himself. Emptiness of space gathered him to its
dizzy, vacant horror.

The Master, quite unmindful of the quickening bloodstream down his
face and neck, looked sharply--as if impersonally interested in some
problem of ballistics--at the spinning, gyrating figure that with
grotesque contortions plummeted the depths.

Over and over, whirling with outflung arms and legs, dropped the
stowaway. Down though _Nissr_ herself was plunging, he fell faster.
Swiftly his body dwindled, shrinking to a dwarf, an antlike thing, a
black dot. Far below on the steely sea-plain, a tiny bubble of white
leaped out, then faded. That pinpoint of foam was the stowaway's
grave.

"Very good," approved the Master, unmoved. He lurched against the
rail, as a sudden maneuver of the pilot somewhat flattened out the
air-liner's fall. The helicopters began to turn, to buzz, to roar
into furious activity, seeking to check the plunge. The major came
staggering back. But quicker than he, "Captain Alden" was at the
Master's side.

"He shot you?" the woman cried, pointing.

"Bah! A splinter of glass!" And the Master shook off the blood with
a twitch of his head. "That was a neat bull's-eye you made on him,
Captain. It saves you from punishment for forgetting you were under
arrest; for climbing the ladder and coming above-decks. Yes--I've got
to rescind my order. You're at liberty. And--"

"And I stay with the expedition, sir?" demanded Alden, her hand going
out in an involuntary gesture of appeal. For the first time, she
was showing eagerness of a feminine sort. But she suppressed it,
instantly, and stood at attention. "If I have done you any service,
sir, reward me by letting me stay!"

"I will see. There may be no expedition to stay with. Now--"

"Life-belts, sir? And take to the small planes?" came a voice from
the companion-way. The face of Manderson--of him who had found the
stowaway--appeared there. Manderson looked anxious, a trifle pale.
Aft, more figures were appearing. In spite of the iron discipline of
the Legion, signs of disorder were becoming evident. "We're hard hit,
sir," Manderson reported. "Every man for himself, now? Orders, sir?"

"My orders are, every man back to his post!" cried the Master, his
voice a trumpet-call of resolution. "There'll be no _sauve qui peut_,
here!" He laid a hand on the butt of his pistol. "Back, every man of
you!"

Came another dull, jarring explosion. _Nissr_ reeled to port. The
Legionaries trickled down the companion-ladders. From somewhere below
a cry rose: "The aft starboard float--it's gone! And the stabilizer--"

Confused sounds echoed. _Nissr_ sagged drunkenly, lost headway and
slewed off her course, turning slowly in the thin, cold air. Her
propellers had been shut off; all the power of her remaining engines
had now been clutched into the helicopter-drive.

The Master, indifferently smearing off the blood from his neck, made
his way toward the forward companion. He had to hold the rail with one
hand, for now the metal plates of the observation gallery were sharply
canted. _Nissr_ had got wholly out of control, so far as steerage-way
was concerned; but the rate of her fall seemed to have been a trifle
checked.

Alden and the major followed their chief to the companion. All three
descended the ladder, which hung inward and away from them at a sharp
angle. They reached the strangely inclined floor of the main corridor,
and, bracing themselves against the port wall, worked their way aft.

Not all the admirable discipline of the Legion could prevent some
confusion. Such of the men as were on duty in pilot-house, pits,
wireless, or engine-room were all sticking; but a number of off-duty
Legionaries were crowding into the main corridor. Among them the
Master saw Leclair and Rrisa. No one showed fear. The white feather
was not visible; but a grim tension had developed. Death, imminent,
sobers the boldest.

From the engine-room, shouts, orders, were echoing. The engine-room
door flung open. Smoke vomited--thick, choking, gray. Auchincloss
reeled out, clutching at his throat.

"What chance?" the Master cried, staggering toward him.

"If--the fire spreads to the forward petrol-tanks, none!" gasped the
chief engineer. "Aft pit's flooded with blazing oil. Gorlitz--my God!"

"What about Gorlitz?"

"Burned alive--to a crisp! I've got four extinguishers at work. Two
engines out of commission. Another only limping! And--"

He crumpled, suddenly, dropping to the metals. The Master saw through
the clinging smoke, by the dimmed light of the frosted disks, that the
skin of the engineer's face and hands was cooked to a char.

"If he's breathed flame--" began the major. Alden knelt beside him,
peered closely, made a significant, eloquent gesture.

"Volunteers!" shouted the Master, plunging forward.

Into the fumes and smother, half a dozen men fought their way. From
the bulkheads they snatched down the little fire-grenades. The Master
went first. Bohannan was second, with Rrisa a close third. Leclair in
his forward rush almost stumbled over Alden. The "Captain," masked and
still unrecognized as a woman by any save the Master, was thrust back
from the door by the Celt, as she too tried to enter.

"No, not you!" he shouted. "You, with only one arm--faith, it's worse
than useless! Back, you!" Then he and many plunged into the blazing
engine-room.

Thus they closed with the fire-devil now licking ravenous tongues
about the vitals of _Nissr_.




CHAPTER XIX


HOSTILE COASTS

An hour from that time, the air-liner was drifting sideways at low
altitudes, hardly five hundred feet above the waves. A sad spectacle
she made, her wreckage gilded by the infinite splendors of the sun now
lowering toward the horizon. Her helicopters were droning with all the
force that could be flung into them from the crippled power-plant. Her
propellers--some charred to mere stumps on their shafts--stood starkly
motionless.

Oddly awry she hung, driven slowly eastward by the wind. Her rudder
was burned clean off; her stern, warped, reeking with white fumes that
drifted on the late afternoon air told of the fury that had blazed
about her. Flames no longer roared away; but the teeth of their
consuming rage had bitten deep. Where the aft observation pit had
been, now only a twisted net of metal-work remained, with all the
plate-glass melted and cracked away. The body of Gorlitz, trapped
there, had mercifully fallen into the sea. That ghastly thing, at any
rate, no longer remained.

Four Legionaries were in the pilot-house: the Master, Bohannan,
Leclair, and "Captain Alden." For the most part, they held silence.
There was little for them to say. At length the major spoke.

"Still sagging down, eh?" he commented, his eyes on the needle of the
altimeter. "Some situation! Two men dead and others injured. Engines
crippled, propellers the same, and two floats so damaged we couldn't
stay on the surface if we came down. Well, by God!"

Leclair looked very grim.

"I regret only," said he in broken English, "that the stowaway escaped
us. Ah, _la belle exécution_, if we had him now!"

The Master, at the starboard window, kept silence. No one sat at the
wheel. Of what use could it have been? The Master was looking far
to eastward, now with the naked eye, now sweeping the prospect with
binoculars. He was studying the African coast, clearly in sight as a
long, whitish line of sand with a whiter collar of foamy surf, fifteen
miles away.

A few gulls had begun to show--strange, small gulls, yellow-beaked
and swift. Off to northward, a native dhow was beating down-wind with
full-bellied lateen sail, with matting over its hatches. Heat was
beginning to grow intense, for no longer was _Nissr_ making a gale
that cooled; no longer was she at high, cold levels. Africa, the
tropics, had suddenly become real; and the sudden contrast oppressed
them all.

Through the shimmering, quivering air, an arid pallor extended up the
eastern sky; a pale, milky illumination, dull-white over the desert,
that told of the furnace into which _Nissr_ was drifting--if indeed
she could survive till she reached land. The glasses showed tawny
reaches of sand, back a little from the coast; and beyond these, low
hills, or rather rolling dunes, lay empurpled by vibrant heat-hazes.

"It won't be much like navigating over that Hell-spot, three or four
miles in the air," muttered Bohannan. He looked infinitely depressed.
The way he gnawed at his red mustache showed how misadventure had
raveled his nerve.

No one answered him. Leclair lighted a cigarette, and silently
squinted at Africa with eyes long inured to the sun of that land of
flame. Alden, at the other window, kept silence, too. That masked
face could express no emotion; but something in the sag of the woman's
shoulders, the droop of her head, showed how profound and intense was
her suffering.

"Faith, are we going to make it, chief?" asked the major, impatiently.
Not his the temperament that can wait in silence. He made a singular
figure as he lounged there at the pilot-house window, huge elbows
on the sill. One hand was wrapped in bandages, well saturated with
croton-oil. Chars and burns on his uniform showed where blazing petrol
from the final explosion had spattered him.

His eyes, like the Master's, were bloodshot, inflamed. Part of his red
crop of hair had been singed off, and all his eyelashes were gone,
as well as half his bushy red brows. But the ugly set of his jaw, the
savage gleam of his eyes showed that no physical pain was depressing
him. His only trouble was the thought that perhaps the expedition of
the Flying Legion had ended before it had really begun.

"What chance, sir?" he insisted. "It's damned bad, according to my way
of thinking."

"What you think and what you say won't have any weight with this
problem of aerial flotation," the Master curtly retorted. "If we make
land, we make it, that's all, sir." He relapsed into silence. Leclair
muttered, in Arabic--his words audible only to himself--an ancient
Islamic proverb: "Allah knows best, and time will show!" Then, after a
moment's pause, the single word: "Kismet!"

Silence again, in which the Master's brain reviewed the stirring
incidents of the past hour and a half--how the stowaway had evaded
Dr. Lombardo's vigilance and (thoroughly familiar with every detail
of _Nissr_) had succeeded in making his way to the aft port fuel-tank,
from which he had probably drained petrol through a pet-cock and
thereafter set it afire; how the miscreant had then scrambled up the
aft companion-ladder, to shoot down the Master himself; and how only
a horrible, nightmare fight against the flames had saved even this
shattered wreck of the air-liner.

It had all been Kloof's fault, of course, and Lombardo's. Those
two had permitted this disaster to befall, and--yes, they should be
punished, later. But how? The Master's mind attacked this problem.
Each of the four Legionaries in the pilot-house was busy with his own
thoughts.

On and on toward the approaching shores of Africa drifted the wounded
Eagle of the Sky, making no headway save such as the west wind
gave her. Steadily the needle of the altimeter kept falling. The
high-pitched drone of the helicopters told that the crippled engines
were doing their best; but even that best was not quite enough.

Like a tired creature of the air, the liner lagged, she sank. Before
half the distance had been covered to that gleaming beach, hardly six
hundred feet lay between the lower gallery of _Nissr_ and the long,
white-toothed waves that, slavering, hungered for her gigantic body
and the despairing crew she bore.

Suddenly the Master spoke into the engine-room telephone.

"Can you do any better?" exclaimed the chief. "This is not enough!"

"We're doing our best, sir," came the voice of Frazier, now in charge.

"If you can possibly strain a point, in some way, and wring a little
more power out of the remaining engines--"

"We're straining them beyond the limit now, sir."

The Master fell silent, pondering. His eyes sought the dropping
needle. Then the light of decision filled his eyes. A smile came to
his face, where the deep gash made by the splinter of glass had been
patched up with collodion and cotton. He plugged in on another line,
by the touch of a button.

"Simonds! Is that you?"

"Yes, sir," answered the quartermaster, in charge of all the stores.

"Have you jettisoned everything?"

"All we can spare, sir. All but the absolute minimum of food and
water."

"Overboard with them all!"

"But, sir--"

"And drop the body of Auchincloss, too. This is no time for
sentiment!"

"But--"

"My order, sir!"

Five minutes later, cases, boxes, bales, water-tanks, began spinning
from open ports and down through the trap-door in the lower gallery.
Then followed the seared corpse of Auchincloss, a good man who had
died in harness, fighting to the end. Those to whom the duty was
assigned of giving his metal-weighted body sea burial turned away
their eyes, so that they might not see that final plunge. But
the sound of the body striking the waves rocketed up to them with
sickening distinctness.

Lightened a little, _Nissr_ seemed to rally for a few minutes. The
altimeter needle ceased its drop, trembled and even rose _.275_
degrees.

"God! If we only had an ounce more power!" burst out the major, his
mouth mumbling the loose ends of that flamboyant mustache. The Master
remained quite impassive, and made no answer. Bohannan reddened,
feeling that the chief's silence had been another rebuff. And on,
on drifted _Nissr_, askew, up-canted, with the pitiless sunlight
of approaching evening in every detail revealing--as it slanted in,
almost level, over the far-heaving infinitudes of the Atlantic--the
ravages wrought by flame.

Bohannan could not long be silent. The exuberance of his nature burst
forth with a half-defiant:

"If _I_ were in charge, which I'm not, I'd stop those damned
helicopters, let her down, turn what power we've got into the
remaining propellers, and taxi ashore!"

"And probably sink, or break up in the surf, on the beach, there!"
curtly rejoined the Master. "Ah! _What_?"

His binoculars checked their sweep along the coast, which in its
absolute barrenness looked a place of death for whatever might have
life there.

"You see something, _mon capitaine?_" asked Leclair, blowing smoke
from his cigarette. "Allow me also to look! Where is it?"

"Just to north of that gash--that wady, or gully, making down to the
beach. You see it, eh?"

Slowly the French ace swept the glasses along the surf-foamed fringes
of that desolation. Across the lenses no tree flung its green promise
of shade. No house, no hut was visible. Not even a patch of grass
could be discerned. The African coast lay stretched out in ivory
nakedness, clean, bare, swept and garnished by simooms, by cruel heat,
by the beatings of surf eternal.

Back of it extended an iron hinterland, savage with desert spaces of
sun-baked, wrinkled earth and sand here and there leprously mottled
with white patches of salt and with what the Arabs call _sabkhàh_,
or sheets of gypsum. The setting sun painted all this horror of
desolation with strange rose and orange hues, with umbers and pale
purples that for a moment reminded the Master of the sunset he had
witnessed from the windows of _Niss'rosh_, the night his great plan
had come to him. Only eight days ago, that night had been; it seemed
eight years!

Carefully Leclair observed this savage landscape, over which a
brilliant sky, of luminous indigo and lilac, was bending to the vague
edge of the world. Serious though the situation was, the Frenchman
could not repress a thought of the untamed beauty of that scene--a
land long familiar to him, in the days when he had flown down these
coasts on punitive expeditions against the rebellious Beni Harb clans
of the Ahl Bayt, or People of the Black Tents. Africa, once more seen
under such unexpected circumstances, roused his blood as he peered at
the crude intensity of it, the splendid blaze of its seared nakedness
under the blood-red sun-ball now dropping to rest.

All at once his glass stopped its sweep.

"Smoke, my Captain!" he exclaimed. "See, it curls aloft like a lady's
ringlet. And--beyond the wady--"

"Ah, you see them, too?"

The major's glass, held unsteadily in his unbandaged hand, was now
fixed on the indicated spot, as was "Captain Alden's."

"I see them," the Master answered. "And the green flag--the flag of
the Prophet--"

"The flag, _oui, mon capitaine!_ There are many men, but--"

"But what, Lieutenant?"

"Ah, do you not see? No horses. No camels. That means their oasis is
not far. That means they are not traveling. This is no nomadic moving
of the Ahl Bayt. No, no, my Captain. It is--"

"Well, what?"

"A war-party. What you in your language call the--the reception
committee, _n'est-ce pas?_ Ah, yes, the reception committee."

"And the guests?" demanded the major.

"The guests are all the members of the Flying Legion!" answered the
Frenchman, with another draw at his indispensable cigarette.




CHAPTER XX


THE WAITING MENACE

"Ah, sure now, but that's fine!" exclaimed the major with delight, his
eyes beginning to sparkle in anticipation. "The best of news! A little
action, eh? I ask nothing better. All I ask is that we live to reach
the committee--live to be properly killed! It's this dying-alive that
kills _me_! Faith, it tears the nerves clean out of my body!"

"That is a true Arab idea, Major," smiled Leclair. "To this extent you
are brother to the Bedouin. They call a man _fatis_, as a reproach,
who dies any other way than fighting. May you never--may none of
us--ever suffer the disgrace of being _fatis_!"

"There's not much danger of that!" put in the Master. "That's a big
war-party, and we're drifting ashore almost exactly where they're
waiting. From the appearance of the group, they look like Beni Harb
people--'Sons of Fighting' you know--though I didn't expect we'd sight
any of that breed so far to westward."

"Beni Harb, eh?" echoed the Frenchman, his face going grim. "Ah,
_mes amis_, it is with pleasure I see that race, again!" He sighted
carefully through his glass, as _Nissr_ sagged on and on, ever closer
to the waves, ever nearer the hard, sun-roasted shores of Africa.
"Yes, those are Beni Harb men. _Dieu_! May it be Sheik Abd el Rahman's
tribe! May I have strength to repay the debt I owe them!"

"What debt, Lieutenant?" asked the chief.

Leclair shrugged his shoulders.

"A personal matter, my Captain! A personal debt I owe them--with
interest!"

"You will have nearly a score and a half of good fighting men to help
you settle your account," smiled the Master. Then, to Bohannan: "It
looks now, Major, as if you'd have a chance to try your sovereign
remedy."

"Faith! Machine-guns, eh?"

"Yes, provided we get near enough to use them."

"No vibrations this time, eh?" demanded the Celt, a bit of
good-humored malice in his voice. "Vibrations are all very well in
their way, sir, but when it comes to a man-to-man fight--"

"It's not that, Major," the chief interrupted. "We haven't the
available power, now, for high-tension current. So we must fall back
on lesser means.

"You, sir, and Lieutenant Leclair, get the six gun-crews together at
their stations. When we drift in range, give the Beni Harb a few trays
of blanks. That may scatter them without any further trouble. We want
peace, but if it's got to be war, very well. If they show real fight,
rake them hard!"

"They will show fight, surely enough, mon capitaine," put in Leclair,
as he and the major made their way to the oddly tiptilted door leading
back into the main corridor. "I know these folk. No blank cartridges
will scatter that breed. Even the Turks are afraid of them. They have
a proverb: 'Feed the Beni Harb, and they will fire at Allah!' That
says it all.

"Mohammed laid a special curse on them. I imagine your orderly, Rrisa,
will have something to say when he learns that we have Beni Harb as
opponents. Now, sir, we shall make all haste to get the machine-guns
into action!"

Major Bohannan laughed with more enjoyment than he had shown since
_Nissr_ had left America. They both saluted and withdrew. When the
door was closed again, a little silence fell in the pilot-house, the
floor of which had now assumed an angle of nearly thirty degrees.
The droning of the helicopters, the drift of the sickly white smoke
that--rising from _Nissr's_ stern--wafted down-wind with her, the
drunken angle of her position all gave evidence of the serious
position in which the Flying Legion now found itself. Suddenly the
Master spoke. His dismissal of Bohannan and Leclair had given him the
opportunity he wanted.

"Captain Alden," said he, bruskly, with the unwillingness of
a determined man forced to reverse a fixed decision. "I have
reconsidered my dictum regarding you."

"Indeed, sir?" asked the woman, from where she stood leaning against
the sill of the slanted window. "You mean, sir, I am to stay with the
Legion, till the end?"

"Yes. Your service in having shot down the stowaway renders it
imperative that I show you some human recognition. You gained
admission to this force by deception, and you broke parole and escaped
from the stateroom where I had imprisoned you. But, as you have
explained to me, you heard the explosion, you heard the outcry of
pursuit, and you acted for my welfare.

"I can weigh relative values. I grant your request. The score is wiped
clean. You shall remain, on one condition."

"And what is that, sir?" asked "Captain Alden," with a voice of
infinite relief.

"That you still maintain the masculine disguise. The presence of a
woman, as such, in this Legion, would be a disturbing factor. You
accept my terms?"

"Certainly! May I ask one other favor?"

"What favor?"

"Spare Kloof and Lombardo!"

"Impossible!"

"I know their guilt, sir. Through their carelessness in not having
discovered the stowaway and in having let him escape, the Legion came
near sudden death. I know _Nissr_ is a wreck, because of them. Still,
we need men, and those two are good fighters. Above all, we need
Lombardo, the doctor I ask you to spare them at least their lives!"

"That is the woman's heart in you speaking, now," the chief answered,
coldly. His eyes were far ahead, where the war-party was beginning
to debouch on the white sands along the shore--full three hundred
fighting-men, or more, well armed, as the tiny sparkles of sunlight
flicking from weapons proved. As _Nissr_ drew in to land, the Beni
Harb grew visible to the naked eye, like a swarm of ants on the desert
rim.

"The woman's heart," repeated the Master. "That is your only fault and
weakness, that you are a woman and that you forgive."

"You grant my request?"

"No, Captain. Nor can I even discuss it. Those two men have cut
themselves off from the Legion and signed their own death warrant.
The sentence I have decided on, must stand. Do not speak of this to me
again, madam! Now, kindly withdraw."

"Yes, sir!" And Alden, saluting, approached the door.

"One moment! Send Leclair back to me. Inform Ferrara that he is to
command the second gun-crew."

"Yes, sir!" And the woman was gone.

Leclair appeared, some moments later. He suspected nothing of the
subterfuge whereby the Master had obtained a few minutes' conversation
alone with "Captain Alden."

"You sent for me, sir?" asked the Frenchman.

"I did. I have some questions to ask you. Others can handle the guns,
but you have special knowledge of great importance to me. And first,
as an expert ace, what are our chances of making that shore, sir, now
probably five miles off? In a crisis, I always want to ask an expert's
opinion."

Leclair peered from under knit brows at the altimeter needle and the
inclinometer. He leaned from the pilot-house window and looked down at
the waves, now hardly a hundred feet below, their foaming hiss quite
audible. From those waves, red light reflected as the sun sank,
illuminated the Frenchman's lean, brown features and flung up wavering
patches of illumination against the pilot-house ceiling of burnished
metal, through the tilted windows that sheerly overhung the water.

"_Eh bien_--" murmured Leclair, noncommittally.

"Well, can we make it, sir?"

The ace inspected the vacuum-gauges, the helicopter tachometers, and
shrugged his shoulders.

"'_Fais tout, toi-même, et Dieu t'aidera_,'" he quoted the cynical old
French proverb. "If nothing gives way, there is a chance."

"If we settle into the sea, do you think that with our damaged floats
we can drive ashore without breaking up?"

"I do not, my Captain. There is a heavy sea running, and the surf is
bad on the beach. This Rio de Oro coast is cruel. Have you our exact
position?"

"Almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, half-way between Cape Bojador
to north of us, and Cape Blanco, to south."

"Yes, I understand. That brings us to the Tarmanant region of the
Sahara. Fate could not have chosen worse for us. But, _c'est la
guerre_. All I regret, however, is that in a crippled condition we
have to face a war-party of the Beni Harb. Were we intact, and a match
for them, how gladly would I welcome battle with that scum of Islam!
Ah, the _canaille_!"




CHAPTER XXI


SHIPWRECK AND WAR

"You call them dogs, eh?" asked the chief. "And why?"

"What else are such apostate fanatics? People who live by robbery and
plunder--people who, if they find no gold in your money-belt, will rip
your stomach open to see if you've swallowed it! People who boast
of being _harami_ (highwaymen), and who respect the _jallah_
(slave-driver)!

"People who practice the barbaric _thar_, or blood-feud! People who
torture their victims by cutting off the ends of their fingers before
beheading or crucifying them! People who glory in murdering the
'idolators of Feringistan,' as they call us white men! Let me advise
you now, my Captain, when dealing with these people or fighting them,
never use your last shot on them. Always keep a mercy-bullet in your
gun!"

"A mercy-bullet?"

"For yourself!"

The Master pondered a moment or two, as _Nissr_ drifted on toward the
now densely massed Arabs on the beach, then he said:

"You seem to know these folk well."

"Only too well!"

The Master's next words were in the language of the desert:

"_Hadratak tet kal'm Arabi?_" (You speak Arabic?)

"_Na'am et kal'm!_" affirmed the lieutenant, smiling. And in the same
tongue he continued, with fluent ease: "Indeed I do, _Effendi_. Yes,
yes, I learned it in Algiers and all the way south as far as the
headwaters of the Niger.

"Five years I spent among the Arabs, doing air-work, surveying the
Sahara, locating oases, mapping what until then were absolutely
unknown stretches of territory. I did a bit of bombing, too, in the
campaign against Sheik Abd el Rahman, in 1913."

"Yes, so I have heard. You almost lost your life, that time?"

"Only by the thickness of a _semmah_ seed did I preserve it," answered
the Frenchman. "My mechanician, Lebon, and I--we fell among them on
account of engine trouble, near the oasis of Adrar, not far from here.
We had no machine-gun--nothing but revolvers. We stood them off for
seven hours, before they rushed us. They captured us only because our
last cartridges were gone."

"You did not save the mercy-bullet that time, eh?"

"I did not, _Effendi._ I did not know them then as I do now. They
knocked us both senseless, and then began hacking our machine to
pieces with their huge _balas_ (yataghans). They thought our plane was
some gigantic bird.

"Superstition festers in their very bones! The giant bird, they
believed, would ruin their date crops; and, besides, they thirsted for
the blood of the Franks. As a matter of fact, my Captain, these people
do sometimes drink a little of the blood of a slaughtered enemy."

"Impossible!"

"True, I tell you! They destroyed our plane with fire and sword,
reviled us as pigs and brothers of pigs, and named poor Lebon 'kalb
ibn kalb,' or 'dog and son of a dog.' Then they separated into two
bands. One band departed toward Wady Tawarik, taking Lebon. They
informed me that on the morrow they would crucify him on a cross of
palm-wood, head downward."

"And they executed Lebon?"

Leclair shrugged his shoulders.

"I suppose so," he answered with great bitterness. "I have never
seen or heard of him since. As for me, they reserved me for some
festivities at Makam Jibrail. During the next night, a column of
Spanish troops from Rio de Oro rushed their camp, killed sixty or
seventy of the brown demons, and rescued me. Since then I have lusted
revenge on the Beni Harb!"

"No wonder," put in the chief, once more looking at the beach, where
now the war-party was plainly visible to the naked eye in some detail.
The waving of their arms could be distinguished; and plainly glittered
the blood-crimson sunset light on rifle-barrels, swords, and javelins.
The Master loosened his revolver in its holster. "About twenty minutes
from now, at this rate," he added, "some of the Beni Harb will have
reason to remember you."

"Yes, and may Jehannum take them all!" exclaimed the Frenchman,
passionately. His eyes glowered with hate as he peered across the
narrowing strip of waves and surf. "Jehannum, where every time their
skins are burned off, as the Koran says, new ones will grow to be
burned off again! Where 'they shall have garments of fire fitted upon
them and boiling water poured upon their heads, and they shall be
beaten with maces of iron--"

"And their tormentors shall say unto them: 'Taste ye the pain of
burning!'" the Master concluded the familiar quotation with a
smile. "Waste no time in wishing the Beni Harb future pain, my dear
Lieutenant. Jehannum may indeed reserve the fruit of the tree Al
Zakkum, for these dogs, but our work is to give them a foretaste of
it, today. Kismet seems to have willed it that you and the Beni Harb
shall meet again. Is it not a fortunate circumstance, for you?"

"Fortunate, yes," the Frenchman answered, his eyes glowing as they
estimated the strength of the war-party, now densely massed along the
shining sands, "But, thank God, there are no women in this party! That
would mean that one of us would have to kill a woman--for God help
a woman of Feringistan caught by these _jinnee_, these devils of the
waste!"

Silence again. Both men studied the Beni Harb. The Frenchman judged,
reverting to his native tongue: "Certainly more than three hundred
of these 'abusers of the salt,' my Captain. And we are hardly thirty.
Even if we reach land, we must soon sink to earth. Without food,
water, anything--_ce n'est pas gai, hein?_"

"No, it is not gay," the chief answered. "But with machine-guns--"

"Machine-guns cannot fight against the African sun, against famine,
thirst, delirium, madness. Well--'blessed be certainty,' as the Arabs
say."

"You mean death?"

"Yes, I mean death. We always have that in our grasp, at any
rate--after having taken full toll of these devils. I should not
mind, so much, defeat at the hands of the nobler breed of the Arabian
Peninsula. There, in the _Ruba el Khali_[1] itself, I know a chivalric
race dwells that any soldier might be proud to fight or to rule over.
But these Shiah heretic swine--ah, see now, they are taking cover
already? They will not stand and fight, like men!"

[Footnote 1: _Ruba el Khali_ (The Empty Abodes), a name applied by
the Arabs to the Peninsula, especially the vast inner region never
penetrated by any white man.]

Scornfully he flung a hand at the Beni Harb. The fringes of the
tribe were trickling up the sands, backward, away, toward the line
of purple-hazed dunes that lined the coast. More and more of the
war-party followed. Gradually all passed up the wady, over the dunes
and vanished.

"They are going to ambush us, my Captain," said Leclair. "'In rice,
strength; in the Beni Harb, manhood!'"

Nearer the land, ever sagging down but still afloat--though now at
times some of the heavier surges broke in foam over the rail of the
lower gallery--the Eagle of the Sky drifted on, on. Hardly a half-mile
now lay between air-liner and shore. Suddenly the Master began to
speak:

"Listen, Lieutenant! Events are at a crisis, now. I will speak very
plainly. You know the Arabs, good and bad. You know Islam, and all
that the Mohammedan world is. You know there are more than 230,000,000
people of this faith, scattered from Canton to Sierra Leone, and
from Cape Town to Tobolsk, all over Turkey, Africa, and Arabia--an
enormous, fanatic, fighting race! Probably, if trained, the finest
fighting-men in the world, for they fear neither pain nor' death. They
welcome both, if their hearts are enlisted!"

"Yes, yes, I know! Their Hell yawns for cowards; their Paradise opens
to receive the brave! Death is as a bride to the Moslem!"

"Fanatics all, Lieutenant! Only a few white men have ever reached
Mecca and returned. Bartema, Wild, and Joseph Pitt succeeded, and so
did Hurgronje, Courtelmont, Burton, and Burckhardt--though, the Arabs
admit only the two last.

"But how many hundreds have been beheaded or crucified? No pilgrimage
ever takes place without a few such victims. A race of this type is a
potential world-power of incalculable magnitude. Men who will die for
Islam and for their master without a quiver--"

"My Captain! What do you mean?"

The lieutenant's eyes had begun to fill with flame. His hand tightened
to a fist.

"_Mon Dieu_, what do you mean? Can it be possible you dream of ruling
the races of Islam?"

Something whined overhead, from the beach now only about a
quarter-mile distant. Then a shot from behind the dunes cracked out
across the crumbling, hissing surf.

"Ah," laughed Leclair, "the ball has opened, eh? Well this is now no
time for talk, for empty words. I think I understand you, my Captain;
and to the death I stand at your right hand!"

Their palms met and clasped, a moment, in the firm grip of a compact
between two strong men, unafraid. Then each drew his pistol, crouching
there at the windows of the pilot-house.

"Hear how that bullet sang?" questioned the Frenchman. "It was
notched--a notched slug, you understand. That is a familiar trick with
these dog-people of the Beni Harb. Sometimes, if they have poison,
they dip the notched slug in that too. And, ah, what a wound one
makes! Dum-dums are a joke beside such!"

Another shot sounded. Many cracked out along the dune. All up and down
the crest of the tawny sand-hills, red under the sun now close to the
horizon, the fusillade ran and rippled. On _Nissr_, metal plates rang
with the impact of the slugs, or glass crashed. The gigantic Eagle of
the Sky, helpless, received this riddling volley as she sagged ashore,
now almost in the grip of the famished surf.

"Yes, the ball is opening!" repeated Leclair, with an eager laugh. His
finger itched on the trigger of his weapon; but no target was visible.
Why waste ammunition on empty sand-dunes?

"Let it open!" returned the chief. "We'll not refuse battle, no, by
Allah! Our first encounter with Islam shall not be a surrender! Even
if we could survive that, it would be fatal to this vast plan of
mine--of ours, Lieutenant. No, we will stand and fight--even till
'certainty,' if Allah wills it so!"

A sudden burst of machine-gun fire, from the upper starboard gallery,
crashed out into the sultry, quivering air. The kick and recoil of the
powerful Lewis sent a fine, swift shudder through the fabric of the
wounded Eagle.

"There goes a tray of blanks," said the Master. "Perhaps that will
rout them out, eh? Once we can get them on the run--"

Leclair laughed scornfully.

"Those dog-sons will not run from blanks, no, nor from shotted
charges!" he declared. "Pariahs in faith, despoilers of the Haram--the
sacred inner temple--still this breed of _Rafaz_ (heretic) is bold.
Ah, 'these dogs bare their teeth to fight more willingly than to eat.'
It will come to hot work soon, I think!"

Keenly he scanned the dunes, eager for sight of a white _tarboosh_,
or headgear, at which to take a pot-shot. Nothing was visible but
sand--though here, there, a gleam of steel showed where the Arabs had
nested themselves down in the natural rampart with their long-barreled
rifles cuddled through carefully scooped rifts in the sand.

Again the machine-gun chattered. Another joined it, but no dust-spurts
leaped from the dune, where now a continual play of fire was leaping
out. The Beni Harb, keenly intelligent, sensed either that they
were being fired at with blanks, or that the marksmanship aboard the
air-liner was execrable. A confused chorus of cries and jeers drifted
down from the sand-hills; and all at once a tall, gaunt figure in a
brown and white striped burnous, with the hood drawn up over the head,
leaped to sight.

This figure brandished a tremendously long rifle in his left hand. His
right was thrust up, with four fingers extended--the sign of wishing
blindness to enemies. A splendid mark this Arab made. The Master drew
a fine bead on him and fired.

Both he and Leclair laughed, as the Arab pitched forward in the sand.
Unseen hands dragged the warrior back, away, out of sight. A slug
crashed through the upper pane of the port window, flattened itself
against the main corridor door and dropped to the sofa-locker.

The Master reached for the phone and switched in the connection with
the upper starboard gallery.

"Major Bohannan!" he ordered. "No more blanks! The real thing,
now--but hold your fire till we drift over the dune!"

"Drift over!" echoed Leclair. "But, _monsieur_, we'll never even make
the beach!"

"So?" asked the chief. He switched to the engine-room.

"Frazier! Lift her a little, now! Rack everything--strain
everything--break everything, if you must, but lift her!"

"Yes, sir!" came the engineer's voice. "I'll scrap the engines, sir,
but I'll do that!"

Almost as if a mocking echo of the command and the promise, a dull
concussion shuddered through _Nissr_. The drone of the helicopters
sank to a sullen murmur; and down below, waves began combing angrily
over the gallery.

"Ah, _nom de Dieu_!" cried Leclair, in sudden rage at seeing his
chance all gone to pot, of coming to grips with the hated Beni Harb.
From the penetralia of the air-liner, confused shouts burst forth. The
upper galleries grew vocal with execrations.

Not one was of fear; all voiced disappointment, the passion of baffled
fury. Angrily a boiler-shop clatter of machine-guns vomited useless
frenzy.

Wearily, like a stricken bird that has been forced too long to wing
its broken way, the Eagle of the Sky--still two hundred yards from
shore--lagged down into the high-running surf. Down, in a murderous
hail of fire she sank, into the waves that beat on the stark,
sun-baked Sahara shore.

And from hundreds of barbarous throats arose the killing-cry to
Allah--the battle-cry of Beni Harb, the murder-lusting Sons of War.




CHAPTER XXII


BELEAGUERED

"La Illaha illa Allah! M'hámed rasul Allah!" Raw, ragged, exultant, a
scream of passion, joy, and hate, it rose like the voice of the desert
itself, vibrant with wild fanaticism, pitiless and wild.

The wolflike, high-pitched howl of the Arab outcasts--the robber-tribe
which all Islam believed guilty of having pillaged the Haram at Mecca
and which had for that crime been driven to the farthest westward
confines of Mohammedanism--this war-howl tore its defiance through the
wash and reflux of the surf.

The pattering hail of slugs continued to zoon from the sand-hills,
bombarding the vast-spread wings and immense fuselage of Nissr. For
the most part, that bombardment was useless to the Beni Harb. A good
many holes, opened up in the planes, and some broken glass, were about
the Arabs' only reward.

None of the bullets could penetrate the metal-work, unless making a
direct hit. Many glanced, spun ricochetting into the sea, and with a
venomous buzzing like huge, angry hornets, lost themselves in quick,
white spurts of foam.

But one shot at least went home. Sheltered though the Legion was,
either inside the fuselage or in vantage-points at the gun-stations,
one incautious exposure timed itself to meet a notched slug. And a cry
of mortal agony rose for a moment on the heat-shimmering air--a cry
echoed with derision by fifteen score barbarians behind their natural
rampart.

There was now no more shooting from the liner. What was there to shoot
at, but sand? The Arabs, warned by the death of the gaunt fellow in
the burnous, had doffed their headgear. Their brown heads, peeping
intermittently from the wady and the dunes, were evasive as a mirage.

The Master laughed bitterly.

"A devil of a place!" he exclaimed, his blood up for a fight, but all
circumstances baffling him. A very different man, this, from the calm,
impersonal victim of ennui at _Niss'rosh_, or even from the unmoved
individual when the liner had first swooped away from New York. His
eye was sparkling now, his face was pale and drawn with anger; and the
blood-soaked cotton and collodion gave a vivid touch of color to
the ensemble. That the Master had emotions, after all, was evident.
Obvious, too, was the fact these emotions were now fully aroused.
"What a devil of a place! No way to get at those dog-sons, and they
can lie there and wait for _Nissr_ to break up!"

"Yes, my Captain, or else starve us where we lie!" the lieutenant put
in. "Or wait for thirst and fever to do the work. Then--rich plunder
for the sons of theft!"

"Ah, Leclair, but we're not going to stay here, for any such
contingency!" exclaimed the chief, and turned toward the door. "Come,
_en avant_! Forward, Leclair!"

"My Captain! You cannot charge an entrenched enemy like that, by
swimming a heavy surf, with nothing but revolvers in hand!"

"Can't, eh? Why not?"

"The rules of war--"

"To Hell with the rules of war!" shouted the Master, for the first
time in years breaking into profanity. "Are you with me, or are you--"

"Sir, do not say that word!" cried the Frenchman, reddening ominously.
"Not even from you can I accept it!"

The Master laughed again, and strode out into the main corridor, with
Leclair close behind him.

"Men!" he called, his voice blaring a trumpet-call to action.
"Volunteers for a shore-party to clean out that kennel of dogs!"

None held back. All came crowding into the spacious corridor, its
floor now laterally level but sloping toward the stern, as _Nissr's_
damaged aft-floats had filled and sunk.

"Revolvers and lethal pistols!" he ordered. "And knives in belts! Come
on!"

Up the ladder they swarmed to the take-off gallery. Their feet rang
and clattered on the metal rounds. Other than that, a, strange silence
filled the giant air-liner. The engines now lay dead. _Nissr_ was
motionless, save for the pitch and swing of the surf that tossed her;
but forward she could no longer go.

As the men came up to the top gallery, the hands of the setting sun
reached out and seized them with red ardor. The radiance was half
blinding, from that sun and from light reflected by the heavily
running waves, all white-caps to shore. On both aileron-tips, the
machine-guns were spitting intermittently, worked by crews under the
major and Ferrara, the Italian ace.

"Cease firing!" ordered the Master. "Simonds, you and Prisrend deal
out the lethal guns. Look alive, now!"

Sheltering themselves from the patter of slugs behind stanchions and
bulwarks, the Legionaries waited. The sea wind struck them with hot
intensity; the sun, now almost down, flung its river of blood from
ship to horizon, all dancing in a shimmer of heat.

By the way _Nissr_ was thumping her floats on the bottom, she seemed
about to break up. But, undismayed, the Legionaries armed themselves,
girt on their war-gear and, cool-disciplined under fire, waited the
order to leap into the sea.

Not even the sight of a still body in the starboard gallery--a body
from under which a snaky red line was crawling, zigzagging with each
pitch of the liner--gave them any pause. This crew was well blooded,
ready for grim work of give-and-take.

"A task for me, sir!" exclaimed "Captain Alden," pointing at the body.
The Master refused.

"No time for nursing, now!" he negatived the plea. "Unless you choose
to remain behind?"

"Never, sir!"

"Can you swim with one arm?"

"With both tied!"

"Very well! All ready, men! Overboard, to the beach! There, dig in
for further orders. No individual action! No charge, without command!
Overboard--come on--who follows me?"

He vaulted the rail, plunged in a white smother, surged up and struck
out for shore. Rrisa was not half a second behind him. Then came
all the others (save only that still figure on the buffed metals), a
deluge of leaping, diving men.

The surf suddenly became full of heads and shoulders, vigorous arms,
fighting beachward. Strong swimmers every one, the Legion battled its
way ashore, out from under _Nissr's_ vast-spreading bulk, out from
under her forward floats. Not one Legionary but thrilled with the
killing-lust, the eager spur of vengeance for Kloof, first victim of
the Beni Harb's attack.

Along the dune, perhaps five hundred yards back of the beach, very
many heads now appeared. The Arabs well knew themselves safe from
attack, so long as these hated white swine of _Ajam_[1] were in the
breakers. Golden opportunity to pick them off, at ease!

[Footnote 1: Arabs divide the world into two categories; themselves,
and _Ajam_, or all non-Arabs.]

A long, ragged line of desert men appeared, in burnouses and
_benishes_, or loose floating garments, and all heavily armed. The
last bleeding rays of the sunset flickered on the silver-mounted
rifles as they spat fire into the heat-quivering air.

All about the swimmers, waterspouts jetted up. Two men grunted,
flailed wild arms and sank, with the water about them tinged red as
the sunset. Another sank face downward, a moment, then with only one
arm, continued to ply for land, leaving a crimson trail behind.

None of the untouched Legionaries took any heed of this, or stopped
their furious swimming to see what damage had been done or to offer
help. Life was at stake. Every second in the breakers was big with
death. This was stern work, to be put through with speed. But the
faces of the swimming men grew hard to look upon.

The Master and Leclair were first to touch foot to the shelving
bottom, all churned up by the long cavalry-charges of the sea-horses,
and to drag themselves out of the smother. Rrisa and Bohannan
came next, then Enemark, and then the others--all save Beziers and
Daimamoto, French ace and Japanese surgeon, whose work was forever
at an end. Enemark, engineer and scientist, shot through the left
shoulder, was dragged ashore, strangling, by eager hands.

"Down! Down!" shouted the Master. "Dig in!"

Right well he knew the futility, the suicidal folly of trying to
charge some three hundred entrenched men with a handful of panting,
exhausted soldiers armed only with revolvers.

"Take cover!" his cry rang along the beach. They obeyed. Under a
galling fire that flung stinging sand into their faces and that took
toll of two more Legionaries, wounded, the expedition dug for its very
life.

The best of strategy! The only strategy, the Master knew, as--panting
a little, with thick, black hair glued by sea-water to his head--he
flattened himself into a little depression in the sand, where the
first ripple of the dunes began.

Hot was the sand, and dry. Withered camel-grass grew in dejected tufts
here, there, interspersed with a few straggles of half a. A jackal's
skull, bleached, lay close to the Master's right hand. Its polish
attested the care of others of its kind, of hyenas, and of vultures.
Just so would a human skull appear, in no long time, if left to
nature's tender ministrations. Out of an eyehole of the skull a dusty
gray scorpion half crawled, then retreated, tail over back, venomous,
deadly.

Death lurked not alone in sea and in the rifles of the inhabitants of
this harsh land, but even in the crawling things underfoot.

The Master paid no heed to shriveled grass, to skull, or scorpion.
All his thoughts were bent on the overcoming of that band of Islamic
outcasts now persistently pot-shotting away at the strange flying
men from unknown lands "that faced not Mecca nor kept Ramadan"--men
already hidden in swiftly scooped depressions, from which the sand
still kept flying up.

"Steady, men!" the Master called. "Get your wind! Ready with the
lethal guns! Each gun, one capsule. Then we'll charge them! And--no
quarter!"

Again, silence from the Legion. The fire from the dunes slackened.
These tactics seemed to have disconcerted the Beni Harb. They had
expected a wild, only half-organized rush up the sands, easily to be
wiped out by a volley or two from the terribly accurate, long-barreled
rifles. But this restraint, this business-like entrenching reminded
them only too forcibly of encounters with other men of the
Franks--the white-clad Spanish infantry from Rio de Oro, the dreaded
_piou-pious_, zouaves, and _Légion Etrangère_ of the French.

Firing ceased, from the Beni Harb. Silence settled on both sides. From
the sea, the noise of waves breaking along the lower works of _Nissr_
mingled with the hiss and refluent slither of the tumbling surf on the
gleaming beach. For a while peace seemed to have descended.

A purple shade settled over the desert. The sun was nearly gone,
now, and dusk would not be long in closing its chalice down over the
light-wearied world. Leclair, entrenched beside the Master, whispered:

"They do not understand, these dog-brothers--may Allah make their
faces cold!" He grinned, frankly, with sparkling eyes and white teeth.
"Already we have their beards in our hands!"

The Master's only answer was to draw from his pocket an extra lethal
gun, hand it over and, in a whisper, hastily instruct the Frenchman
how to use it. Then he cried, loudly:

"Ready, men! Fire!"

All along the line, the faint, sighing hiss of the strange weapons
sounded. Over the top of the dune little, almost inaudible explosions
began taking place as--_plop! plop! plop!_--the capsules burst. Not
now could their pale virescence be seen; but the Master smiled again,
at realization that already the lethal gas was settling down upon the
horde of Shiah outcasts.

To Leclair he whispered in Arabic an ancient saying of the desert
folk: "'Allah hath given skill to three things, the hands of the
Chinese, the brains of the Franks, the tongues of the Arabs!'" He
added: "When the gas strikes them, they would think the Frankish brain
more wonderful than ever--if they could think at all!"

He slid his hand into the breast of his jacket, pulled a little cord
and drew out a silver whistle, the very same that he had used at
Gallipoli. As he slid it to his lips, they tautened. A flood of
memories surged over him. His fighting-blood was up, like that of
all the other Legionaries in that hasty trench-line along the white
sand-drifts.

A moment's silence followed. Outwardly, all was peace. No sound but
the waves broke the African stillness. A little sand-grouse, known as
_kata_ by the Arabs, came whirring by. Far aloft, a falcon wheeled,
keen-eyed for prey. Once more the deadly scorpion peeped from the
skull, an ugly, sullen, envenomed thing.

The Master held up the silver whistle, glinting in the last sun-glow.
They saw it, and understood. All hearts thrilled, tightening with
the familiar sense of discipline. Fists gripped revolver-butts; feet
shuffled into the sand, getting a hold for the quick, forward leap.

Keenly trilled the whistle. A shout broke from some twenty-five
throats. The men leaped up, forward, slipping, staggering in the fine
sand, among the bunches of dried grass. But forward they drove, and
broke into a ragged, sliding charge up the breast of the dunes.

"Hold your fire, men! Hold it--then give 'em Hell!" the Master
shouted. He was in the first wave of the assault. Close by came
Rrisa, his brown face contracted with fanatic hate of the Beni Harb,
despoilers of the Haram sanctuary.

There, too, was "Captain Alden," grim with masked face. There was
Bohannan, Leclair--and pistol-barrels flickered in the evening glow,
and half the men gripped knives in their left hands, as well. For this
was to be a killing without quarter, to the very end.




CHAPTER XXIII


A MISSION OF DREAD

Panting, with a slither of dry sand under their laboring feet, the
Legionaries charged. At any second, a raking volley might burst from
the dunes. The lethal pellets--so few in this vast space--might not
have taken effect. Not one heart there but was steeling itself against
ambush and a shriveling fire.

Up they stormed. The Master's voice cried, once more: "Give 'em Hell!"

He was the first man to top the dune, close to the wady's edge. There
he checked himself, revolver in mid-air, eyes wide with astonishment.
This way and that he peered, squinting with eyes that did not
understand.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" ejaculated Leclair, at his side.

"_Wallah_!" shouted Rrisa, furiously. "Oh, may Allah smite their
faces!"

Each man, as he leaped to the rampart top, stood transfixed with
astonishment. Most of them cried out in their native tongues.

Their amazement was well-grounded. Not an Arab was to be seen. Of all
those Beni Harb, none remained--not even the one shot by the Master.
The sand on the dune was cupped with innumerable prints of feet in
rude _babooshes_ (native shoes), and empty cartridges lay all about.
But not one of the Ahl Bayt, or People of the Black Tents, was
visible.

"Sure, now, can you beat that?" shouted Bohannan, exultantly, and
waved his service cap. "Licked at the start! They quit cold!"

Sheffield, at his side, dropped to the sand, his heart drilled by a
jagged slug. The explosion of that shot crackled in from another line
of dunes, off to eastward--a brown, burnt ridge, parched by the tropic
sun of ages.

Sweating with the heat and the exertion of the charge, amazed at
having found--in place of windrows of sleeping men--an enemy still
distant and still as formidable as ever, the Legionaries for a moment
remained without thought or tactics.

Rrisa, livid with fury and baffled hate, flung up wild arms and began
screaming the most extravagant insults at the still invisible nomads,
whose fire was now beginning again all along their line.

"O rejected ones, and sons of the rejected!" the Arab howled. "O hogs
and brothers of hogs!" He fell to gnawing his own hand, as Arabs will
in an excess of passion. Once more he screamed: "O Allah, deny not
their skin and bones to the eternal flame! O owls, oxen, beggars,
cut-off ones! Oh, give them the burning oil, Allah! The cold faces!
Oh, wither their hands! Make them _kusah_! (beardless). Oh, these
swine with black livers, gray eyes, beards of red. Vilest that ever
hammered tent-pegs, goats of El Akhfash! O Beni Harb![1]"

[Footnote 1: Beni Harb, or Sons of Battle, by a change in the
aspiration of the "H," becomes "Sons of Flight, or Cowardice."]

The Master gripped his furious orderly, and pushed him back, down the
slope.

"No more of that, Rrisa!" he commanded, fiercely. "These be old
woman's ways, these screamings! Silence, _Bismillah_!"

He hailed the others.

"They score, the first round! Their game is to retreat, if they're
suspicious of any ruse or any attack from us. They're not going
to stand and fight. We can't get near enough to them to throw the
remaining lethal capsules over. And we can't chase them into the
desert. Their plan is to hold us here, and pick us off one by
one--wipe us out, without losing a man!

"Dig in again! That's our only game now. We're facing a situation
that's going to tax us to the utmost, but there's only one thing to
do--dig in!"

Life itself lay in digging, death in exposure to the fire of
those maddeningly elusive, unseen Bedouins. Like so many dogs the
Legionaries once more fell to excavating, with their knives and their
bare hands, the sun-baked sand that slithered back again into their
shallow trench almost as fast as they could throw it out.

A ragged fire from the Beni Harb lent speed to their efforts. Dead men
and wounded could now have no attention. Life itself was all at stake.

In their rude trench they lay at last, sweating, panting, covered
with sand and dust, with thirst beginning to take hold on them, and
increasing swarms of flies--tiny, vicious, black things, all sting and
poison--beginning to hum about them. On watch they rested there, while
dull umbers of nightfall glowered through the framework of _Nissr_,
tossing in the surf. Without much plan, wrecked, confronted by what
seemed perils unsurmountable, the Flying Legion waited for the coming
of dark to respite them from sniping.

The Master, half-way along the line with Leclair, Rrisa, the major and
"Captain Alden," mentally took stock of losses thus far sustained. The
wounded were: Alden, Bohannan (burned), Enemark and himself. The dead:
Kloof, Sheffield, Beziers, Travers, Gorlitz, Auchincloss, Daimamoto.

Twenty-four living remained, including Leclair. The mortality, in
about eighteen hours, had been twenty percent. At this rate the Master
understood the Flying Legion was slated for very speedy destruction.

"It's touch-and-go now," he pondered. "We've got to annihilate these
infernal Bedouins, repair the liner and get ahead, or--but there's no
'or' in this! None, at all!"

As dark settled down over the Sahara, the leprous patches of white,
saline earth took on a ghostly pallor. The light of the southern stars
began to glow with soft radiance. A gigantic emptiness, a rolling
vacancy of sea and earth--brine-waves to rear of the Legion,
sand-waves ahead--shrank the party to seeming insignificance.

A soft, purple tapestry of night unrolled across the desert; the wind
died, and the suffocating breath of overheated sands began to emanate
from the baked earth. And ever more and more pestiferously the
infernal torment of the flies increased.

Inflamed with chagrin, rage, and grief for the lost comrades, the
Legionaries lay in waiting. No conversation ran along the line.
Silence held them--and their own thoughts. Wounds had been dressed as
well as they might be. Nothing remained but to await the Master's next
command.

"Captain Alden's" suggestion that Kloof, still lying aboard in the
liner, should be seen to, met a rebuff from the Master. Living or
dead, one man could not now endanger the lives of any others. And that
danger still lay in any exposure was proved by the intermittent firing
from the Arab lines.

The Beni Harb were obviously determined to hold back any possibility
of a charge, or any return to the protection of the giant flying-ship.
Bullets whimpered overhead, spudded into the sand, or pinged against
metal on the liner. Parthian fighters though these Beni Harb were,
they surely were well stocked with munitions and they meant stern
business.

"And stern business is what they shall have, once the dark is
complete," the Master pondered. "It is annihilation for them or for
us. There can be no compromise, nor any terms but slaughter!"

One circumstance was favorable--the falling of the wind. Had it risen,
kicking up a harsher surf, _Nissr_ must have begun to break. But as
the cupped hand of night, closing over the earth, had also shut away
the wind, the air-liner was now resting more easily. Surf still
foamed about her floats and lower gallery--surf all spangled with the
phosphorescence that the Arabs call "jewels of the deep"--but unless
some sudden squall should fling itself against the coast, every
probability favored the liner taking no further damage.

In silence, save for the occasional easing of positions along the
trench, the Legionaries waited. Strange dim colors appeared along
the desert horizons, half visible in the gloom--funeral palls of dim
purple, with pale, ghostly reflections almost to mid-heaven.

Some of the men had tobacco and matches that had escaped being wet;
and cigarettes were rolled, passed along, lighted behind protections
that would mask the match-gleam from the enemy. The comforting aroma
of smoke drifted out on the desert heat. As for the Master, from time
to time he slipped a khat leaf into his mouth, and remained gravely
pondering.

At length his voice sounded along the trench.

"Men of the Flying Legion," said he, "this situation is grave. We
can't escape on foot, north or south. We are without provisions or
water. The nearest white settlement is Rio de Oro, about a hundred
miles to southward; and even if we could reach that, harassed by the
Beni Harb, we might all be executed there, as pirates. We must go
forward or die right here on this beach.

"In any kind of a straight fight, we are hopelessly out-classed. There
are about three hundred men against twenty-four of us, some of whom
are wounded. Even if we took life for life, the Bedouins would lose
less than ten percent, and we'd be wiped out. And we couldn't expect
to take life for life, charging a position like theirs in the
night. It can't be a stand-up battle. It's got to be science against
savagery, or nothing."

A murmur of approval trickled along the sands. Confidence was
returning. The Legionaries' hearts tautened again with faith in this
strange, this usually silent and emotionless man whose very name was
unknown to almost all of them.

"Just one other word," the Master continued, his voice calm, unshaken,
quite impersonal. "If science fails, do not allow yourselves to be
captured. The tortures of Hell await any white man taken by these
fanatics. Remember, always keep one mercy-bullet--for yourselves!"

Another little silence. Then the chief said:

"I am going to take two men and undertake what seems a preposterous
attack. I need only two. I shall not call for volunteers, because you
would all offer yourselves. You must stay here."

"In case my plan succeeds, you are to come at my call--three long
hails. If my plan fails, Major Bohannan will command you; and I know
you will all fight to the last breath and to the final drop of blood!"

"Don't do this thing, sir!" the major protested. "What chance of
success has it? These desert men can see, where a white man is blind.
They can scent danger as a hunting-dog scents the spoor of game.
You're simply throwing your life away, and we need that life!"

"I will take Lieutenant Leclair, who knows these people," the Master
continued, paying no heed, "and Rrisa, who is of their kin. You
others, all sit tight!"

A chuckling laugh, out there on the vague sands, seemed to mock him.
It burst into a raw, barking cachinnation, that somehow stirred the
blood with shrinking horror.

"One of the Sahara Sanitary Corps," remarked Leclair, dryly. "A hyena.
Well may he laugh! Feasting enough for him and his before this dance
is over!"

A gleam of fire, off to the left where the farther dunes approached
the sea, suddenly began to show. All eyes turned toward it. The little
fire soon grew into a leaping flame, its base hidden by sand-mounds.

No Arabs were visible there, but they had surely lighted it, using
driftwood from the beach. Up into the purple-velvet night whirled
sparks and fire-tongues; red smoke spiraled on the vagrant desert
breeze.

"A signal-fire, Master!" whispered Rrisa. "It will be seen in far
oases. If it burn two hours, that will mean an enemy with great
plunder. Others of the Beni Harb will come; there will be gathering of
the tribes. That fire must not burn, _M'almé!_"

"Nor must the Beni Harb live!" To the major: "Collect a dozen lethal
guns and bring them to me!"

When the guns were at hand, the Master apportioned them between
Leclair, Rrisa, and himself. With the one apiece they already had,
each man carried five of the guns, in pockets and in belt. The small
remaining stock of lethal pellets were distributed and the weapons
fully loaded.

"In three minutes, Major," said the Master, "we leave these lines.
Ten minutes after that, open a scattering fire, all along the trench.
Shoot high, so as to be sure we are not hit."

"Ah, a barrage, sir?" the major exclaimed.

"Not in the least. My purpose is quite different. Never mind, but
listen to my orders. Keep up that fire sparingly, for five minutes.
Then cease. And keep silent till we return.

"Remember, I will give three long hails when we start to come back.
Those will warn you not to shoot if you see dim figures in the night.
Either we shall be back in these lines by nine o'clock, or--"

"Or we will go after you!" came the voice of "Captain Alden," with
a little catch of anxiety not at all masculine. Something in the
femininity of her promise stirred the Master's heart a second, but he
dismissed it.

"Either we shall return by nine, or never," he said calmly.

"Let me go, then!" whispered Alden. "Go, in place of you! You are more
needed than I. Without you all these men are lost. Without me--they
would not miss me, sir!"

"I cannot argue that point with you, Captain. We start at once." He
turned to Rrisa, and in Arabic said:

"The road we are about to take may lead thee to Paradise. A
sand-adder, a scorpion, or a bullet may be the means. Dost thou stand
firm with me?"

The Arab stretched out a thin, brown hand to him in the dark.

"Firm as my faith, Master!" he replied. "Both to help you, and to
destroy the _beni kalb_ (dog-sons), I would pass through Al Araf, into
Eblis! What will be, must be. No man dieth except by permission of
Allah, according to what is written on the scrolls of the angel, Al
Sijil.

"I go with you, Master, where you go, were it to Jehannum! I swear
that by the rising of the stars, which is a mighty oath. _Tawakkàl al
Allah!_" (Place reliance on Allah!)

"By the rising of the stars!" repeated Leclair, also in Arabic. "I too
am with you to the end, _M'almé!_"

The Master assured himself that his night-glasses with the megaphotic
reflectors were in their case slung over his shoulder. He looked once
more to his weapons, both ordinary and lethal, and likewise murmured:

"By the rising of the stars!"

Then said he crisply, while the fire-glow of Leclair's strongly
inhaled cigarette threw a dim light on the tense lines of his wounded
face:

"Come! Let us go!"

Leclair buried his cigarette in the warm earth.

Rrisa caught up a handful of sand and flung it toward the unseen
enemy, in memory of the decisive pebbles thrown by Mohammed at the
Battle of Bedr, so great a victory for him.

Then he followed the Master and Leclair, with a whispered:

"_Bismillah wa Allahu akbar_![1]"

[Footnote 1: In the name of Allah, and Allah is greatest!]

Together, crawling on their bellies like dusty puff-adders of the
Sahara itself, the three companions in arms--American, French,
Arab--slid out of the shallow trench, and in the gloom were lost to
sight of the beleaguered Flying Legion.

Their mission of death, death to the Beni Harb or to themselves, had
begun.




CHAPTER XXIV


ANGELS OF DEATH

In utter silence, moving only a foot at a time, the trio of
man-hunters advanced. They spaced themselves out, dragged themselves
forward one at a time, took advantage of every slightest depression,
every wrinkle in the sandy desert-floor, every mummy-like acacia and
withered tamarisk-bush, some sparse growth of which began to mingle
with the halfa-grass as they passed from the coast-dunes to the desert
itself.

Breathing only through open mouths, for greater stillness, taking care
to crackle no twig nor even slide loose sand, they labored on, under
the pale-hazed starlight. Their goal was vague. Just where they
should come upon the Beni Harb, in that confused jumble of dunes and
_nullahs_ (ravines) they could not tell; nor yet did they know the
exact distance separating the Legion's trenches from the enemy. All
was vague mystery--a mystery ready at any second, at any slightest
alarm, to blaze out death upon them.

None the less, stout-hearted and firm of purpose, they serpented their
painful way prone on the hot, dusty bosom of the Sahara. Fate for them
and for all the Legion, lay on so slight a thing as the stirring of
a twig, the _tunk_ of a boot against a bleached camel's skull, the
possibility of a sneeze or cough.

Even the chance scaring-up of a hyena or a vagrant jackal might betray
them. Every breath, every heartbeat was pregnant with contingencies of
life and death.

Groveling, they slipped forward, dim, moving shadows in a world of
brown obscurity. At any moment, one might lay a hand on a sleeping
puff-adder or a scorpion. But even that had been fore-reckoned. All
three of them had thought of such contingencies and weighed them.
Not one but had determined to suppress any possible outcry, if thus
stricken, and to die in absolute silence.

What mattered death for one, if two should win to the close range
necessary for discharging the lethal capsules? What mattered it even
for two, if one should succeed? The survivors, or the sole survivor,
would simply take the weapons from the stricken and proceed.

After what seemed more than an hour, though in fact it was but the ten
minutes agreed on with Bohannan, off behind them toward the coast a
sudden staccato popping of revolvers began to puncture the night. Up
and down the Legionaries' trench it pattered, desultory, aimless.

The three men engaged in the perilous task of what the Arabs call
_asar_, or enemy-tracking, lay prone, with bullets keening high
overhead. As the Master looked back, he could see the little spurts of
fire from that fusillade.

The firing came from more to the left than the Master had reckoned,
showing him that he had got a little off his bearings. But now he took
his course again, as he had intended to do from the Legion's fire; and
presently rifle work from the Arabs, too, verified, his direction.

The Master smiled. Leclair fingered the butt of his revolver.

Rrisa whispered curses:

"Ah, dog-sons, may you suffer the extreme cold of El Zamharir! Ah, may
_Rih al Asfar_, the yellow wind (cholera), carry you all away!"

The racket of aimless firing continued a few minutes, underneath the
mild effulgence of the stars. It ceased, from the Legion's trenches at
the agreed moment; and soon it died down, also from the Arabs'. Quiet
rose again from the desert, broken only by the surf-wash on the
sand, the far, tremulous wail of a jackal, the little dry skitter of
scorpions.

The three scouts lay quiet for ten minutes after the volleying had
ceased. Silence settled over the plain; but, presently, a low moaning
sound came indistinctly from the east. It lasted only a moment, then
died away; and almost at once, the slight wind that had been blowing
from the sea hushed itself to a strange calm.

Rrisa gave anxious ear. His face grew tense, but he held his peace.
Neither of the white men paid any heed to the slight phenomenon. To
them it meant nothing. For all their experience with the desert, they
had never happened to hear just that thing. The Arab, however, felt a
stab of profound anxiety. His lips moved in a silent prayer to Allah.

Once more the Master raised his hand in signal of advance. The three
man-stalkers wormed forward again. They now had their direction,
also their distance, with extreme precision; a simple process of
triangulation, in which the glow of the beach-fire had its share, gave
them the necessary data.

Undaunted, they approached the camp of the Beni Harb; though every
moment they expected to be challenged, to hear the crack of an
alarm-rifle or a cry to Allah, followed by a deadly blast of slugs.

But fortune's scale-pan dipped in their direction, and all held still.
The sun-baked desert kept their secret. Onward they crawled, now over
sand, now over cracked mud-flakes of saline deposit where water had
dried at the bottom of a _ghadir_. All was calm as if the spirit of
rest were hovering over the hot, fevered earth, still quivering from
the kiss of its great enemy, the sun.

"Peace, it is peace until the rising of the morn!" a thought came to
the Master's mind, a line from the chapter Al Kadr, in the Koran. He
smiled to himself. "False peace," he reflected. "The calm before the
storm!" Prophetic thought, though not as he intended it!

On and on the trio labored, soundlessly. At last the chief stopped,
held up his hand a second, lay still. The others glimpsed him by the
starlight, nested down in a shallow depression of the sand. They crept
close to him.

"Lieutenant," he whispered, "you bombard the left-hand sector, toward
the fire and the sea. Rrisa, take the right-hand one. The middle is
for me. Fire at will!"

Out from belts and pockets came the lethal pistols. With
well-estimated elevation, the attackers sighted, each covering his
own sector. Hissing with hardly audible sighs, the weapons fired their
stange pellets, and once again as over the woods on the Englewood
Palisades--really less than twenty-four hours ago, though it seemed
a month--the little greenish vapor-wisps floated down, down, sinking
gently on the Sahara air.

This attack, they knew, must be decisive or all would be hopeless. The
last supply of capsules was now being exhausted. Everything had been
staked on one supreme effort. Quickly the attackers discharged their
weapons; then, having done all that could be done, lay prone and
waited.

Once again that hollow moaning sound drifted in across the baked
expanse of the Sahara--a strange, empty sound, unreal and ominous.
Then came a stir of sultry breeze, from the east. It strengthened;
and a fine, crepitant sliding of sand-particles became audible. Rrisa
stirred uneasily.

"Master," he whispered, "we should not delay. If the _jinnee_ of the
waste overtake us, we may be lost."

"The _jinnee_ of the waste?" the Master answered, in a low tone. "What
nonsense is this?"

"The simoom, Master--the storm of sand. We call it the work of evil
spirits!"

The Master made no reply, save to command silence.

For a time nothing happened in the Arabs' camp. Then came a little
stir, off there in the gloom. A sound of voices grew audible. The name
of Allah drifted out of the all-enveloping night, to them, and that of
his Prophet. A cry: "_Ya Abd el Kadir_--" calling on a patron saint,
died before the last word, "_Jilani_," could find utterance. Then
silence, complete and leaden, fell with uncanny suddenness.

The Master laughed, dryly. He touched Leclair's arm.

"Strong medicine for the Beni Harb, Lieutenant," said he. "Their own
_imams_ (priests) have strong medicine, too, but not so strong as that
of the cursed sons of Feringistan. Sleep already lies heavy on the
eyelids of these sons of Allah. And a deeper sleep shall soon overcome
them. Tell me, Lieutenant, can you kill men wholesale?"

"Yes, my Captain."

"Sleeping men, who cannot resist you? Can you kill them
scientifically, in masses, without anger?"

"How do you know now, my Captain, that it will not be in anger?"
And the Frenchman half eased himself up on hands and knees, peering
forward into the night. "After what these Beni Harb--or their close
kin--have done to me and to poor Lebon--listen! What was that?"

"What do you mean?"

"That far, roaring noise?"

"It is nothing! A little wind, maybe; but it is nothing, nothing!
Come, I am ready for the work!"

The Master stood up. Rrisa followed suit. No longer crawling, but
walking erect, they advanced. They still used caution, careful to make
no noise; but confidence had entered into them. Were not the Arabs all
asleep?

The white men's faces were pale and drawn, with grim determination for
the task that lay ahead--the task of converting the Beni Harb's camp
into a shambles. The Arab's face, with white-rimmed eyes and with
lips drawn back from teeth, had become that of a wild animal. Rrisa's
nostrils were dilated, to scent out the enemy. He was breathing hard,
as if he had run a mile.

"They are near, now, _Ya M'almé!_" said he. "They are close at hand,
these _nakhawilah_! (pariahs). Allah, the high, the great, hath
delivered them into our hands. Verily there is no power or might but
Allah. Shall I scout ahead, Master, and spy out the camp?"

"No, Rrisa. I send no man where I will not gladly go myself. All three
of us, forward!"

Again they advanced, watchful, revolvers in hands, ready for any
sudden ambush. All at once, as they came up over a breastwork of hard
clay and gravel that heaved itself into rolling sands, the camp of the
Beni Harb became visible. Dim, brown and white figures were lying all
about, distorted in strange attitudes, on the sand beyond the ridge.
There lay the despoilers of the Haram, the robber-tribe of Sheik Abd
el Rahman, helpless in blank unconsciousness.

The Master laughed bitterly, as he strode forward into the camp, the
long lines of which stretched vaguely away toward the coast where the
fire was still leaping up against the stars, now paled with a strange
haze.

Starlight showed weapons lying all about--long rifles and primitive
flint-locks; _kanat_ spears of Indian male-bamboo tipped with steel
and decorated with tufts of black ostrich-feathers; and _jambiyehs_,
or crooked daggers, with wicked points and edges.

"Save your fire, men," said the Master picking up a spear. "There
are plenty of means, here, to give these dogs the last sleep, without
wasting good ammunition. Choose the weapon you can handle best, and
fall to work!"

With a curse on the heretic Beni Harb, and a murmur of thanks to Allah
for this wondrous hour, Rrisa caught up a short javelin, of the kind
called _mirzak_. The lieutenant chose a wide-bladed sword.

"Remember only one thing, my brothers in arms!" exclaimed the Master.
"But that is most vital!" He spoke in Arabic.

"And what may it be?" asked the Frenchman, in the same tongue.

"I do not know whether old Sheik Abd el Rahman is with this party or
not, but if either of you find him, kill him not! Deliver him to me!"

"Listen, Master!" exclaimed Rrisa, and thrust the point of his javelin
deep into the sand.

"Well, what now, Rrisa?"

"Shall we, after all, kill these sleeping swine-brothers?"

"Eh, what? Thy heart then, hath turned to water? Thou canst not kill?
They attacked us--this is justice!"

"And if they live, they will surely wipe us out!" put in the
Frenchman, staring in the gloom. "What meaneth this old woman's
babble, son of the Prophet?"

"It is not that my heart hath turned to water, nor have the fountains
of mine eyes been opened to pity," answered Rrisa. "But some things
are worse than death, to all of Arab blood. To be despoiled of arms
or of horses, without a fight, makes an Arab as the worm of the earth.
Then he becometh an outcast, indeed! 'If you would rule, disarm'," he
quoted the old proverb, and added another: "'Man unarmed in the desert
is like a bird shorn of wings.'"

"What is thy plain meaning in all this?" demanded the chief.

"Listen, _M'almé_. If you would be the Sheik of Sheiks, carry away
all these weapons, and let these swine awaken without them. They would
drag their way back to the oases and the black tents, with a story
the like of which hath never been told in the Empty Abodes. The Sahara
would do homage, Master, even as if the Prophet had returned!"

"_Lah_! I am not thinking of the Sahara. The goal lies far beyond--far
to eastward."

"Still, the folk are Arabs there, too. They would hear of this, and
bow to you, my _M'almé_!"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I can take no chances, Rrisa. The land, here
and to the eastward, might all arise against us. The tribes might come
against us like the _rakham_, the carrion-vultures. No, we must kill
and kill, so that no man remaineth here--none save old Abd el Rahman,
if Allah deliver him into our hands!"

"That is your firm command, Master?"

"My firm command!"

"To hear the Master is to obey. But first, grant me time for my
_isha_, my evening prayer!"

"It is granted. And, Rrisa, _there_ is the _kiblah_, the direction of
Mecca!"

The Master pointed exactly east. Rrisa faced that way, knelt,
prostrated himself. He made ablution with sand, as Mohammed allows
when water cannot be found. Even as he poured it down his face, the
strangely gusting wind flicked it away in little whirls.




CHAPTER XXV


THE GREAT PEARL STAB

The Master began to feel a peculiar anxiety. Into the east he peered,
where now indeed a low, steady hum was growing audible, as of a
million angry spirits swarming nearer. The stars along that horizon
had been blotted out, and something like a dark blanket seemed to be
drawing itself across the sky.

"My Captain," said the lieutenant, "there may be trouble brewing,
close at hand. A sand-storm, unprotected as we are--"

"Men with stern work to do cannot have time to fear the future!"

Leclair grew silent. Rrisa alone was speaking, now. With a call of
"_Ya Latif!_" (O Merciful One!) he had begun the performance of his
ceremony, with rigid exactness. He ended with another prostration and
the usual drawing down of the hands over the face. Then he arose, took
up his javelin again, and with a clear conscience--since now his rites
had all been fulfilled--cried aloud:

"Now, Master, I am ready for the work of helping Azraël, the
death-angel, separate the souls and bodies of these Shiah heretics!"

A sudden howling of a jackal startled Rrisa. He quivered and
stood peering into the night, where now the unmistakable hum of
an approaching sand-storm was drawing near. His superstitious soul
trembled with the old belief of his people that creatures of the
dog breed can see Azraël, invisible to human eyes. At thought of
the death-angel standing nigh, his heart quaked; but rage and hate
inspired him, and he muttered:

"Fire to your bellies, broiling in white flame! Fuel of Jehannum, may
Eblis be your bed, an unhappy couch! Spawn of Shaytan (Satan), boiling
water to cool your throats! At Al Hakkat (judgment day) may the
_jinnee_ fly away with you!"

"To work, men!" cried the Master. "There is great work to do!"

As if in answer to his command, a blustering, hot buffet of wind
roared down with amazing suddenness, filling the dark air with a
stinging drive of sand. The fire by the beach flailed into long
tongues of flame, throwing black shadows along the side of the wady.
No stars were now visible. From empty spaces, a soughing tumult leaped
forth; and on the instant a furious gust of fine, cutting particles
whirled all about, thicker than driven snow in a northern blizzard.

"Iron, O thou ill-omened one!" cried Rrisa, with the ancient
invocation against the sand-storm. He stretched out his forefinger,
making the sign of protection. Neither the meaning of his cry nor
of the gesture could he have explained; but both came to him
involuntarily, from the remote lore of his people.

He turned from the oncoming storm, leaning against the wind, clutching
for his cap that the wind-devil had just whirled away. After it he
stumbled; and, falling to his knees, groped for it in the gloom.

"Thousand devils!" ejaculated the Frenchman. "No time, now, for
killing! Lucky if we get back ourselves, alive, to the beach! My
Captain!"

"What now?" the Master flung at him, shielding mouth and eyes with
cupped hands.

"To the wady, all of us! That may give protection till this blast of
Hell passes!"

A startled cry from Rrisa forestalled any answer. The Arab's voice
rose in a wild hail from the sand-filled dark:

"O _M'almé_, _M'almé!_"

"What, Rrisa?"

"Behold! I--_I have found him!_"

"Found--?" shouted the Master, plunging forward.

Leclair followed close, staggering in the sudden gale. "_Abd el
Rahman?_"

"The old hyena, surely! _M'almé, M'almé! See!_"

The white men stumbled with broken ejaculations to where Rrisa was
crouched over a gaunt figure in the drifting sand.

"Is that he, Rrisa?" cried the Master. "Art thou sure?"

"As that my mother bore me! See the old jackal, the son of Hareth!
(the devil). Ah, see, see!"

"_Dieu_!" exclaimed the Frenchman, in his own tongue. "It is none
other!" With a hand of great rejoicing, he stirred the unconscious
Sheik--over whom the sand was already sifting as the now ravening
simoom lashed it along.

Forgotten now were all his fears of death in the sand-storm. This
delivery of the hated one into his hands had filled him with a savage
joy, as it had the two others.

"Ah, _mon vieux!_" he cried. "It is only the mountains that never
meet, in time!"

The Master laughed, one of those rare flashes of merriment that
at infrequent intervals pierced his austerity. Away on the growing
sand-storm the wind whipped that laugh. Simoom and sand now appeared
forgotten by the trio. Keen excitement had gripped them; it held them
as they crouched above the Sheik.

"Allah is being good to us!" exulted the Master, peering by the
gale-driven fire-glare. "This capture is worth more to the Legion than
a hundred machine-guns. What will not the orthodox tribes give for
this arch-Shiah, this despoiler of the sacred Haram at Mecca?"

He began feeling in the bosom of the old man, opening the cloaklike
burnous and exploring the neck and chest with eager fingers.

"If we could only lay hands on the fabled loot of the Haram!" he
whispered, his voice tense with excitement.

Rrisa, wide-eyed, with curling lips of scorn, peered down at the
Sheik. The orderly, bare-headed, was shielding eyes and face from the
sand-blast, with hands that trembled. His teeth were bared with hate
as he peered at the prostrate heretic.

A tall, powerful figure of a man the Sheik was, lying there on his
right side with his robe crumpled under him--the robe now flapping,
whipping its loose ends in the high and rising wind. His _tarboosh_
had been blown away, disclosing white hair.

That hair, too, writhed and flailed in the gusts that drove it full
of sand, that drifted his whole body with the fine and stinging
particles. His beard, full and white, did not entirely conceal the
three parallel scars on each cheek, the _mashali_, which marked him as
originally a dweller at Mecca.

One sinewy brown arm was outflung, now almost wholly buried in the
growing sand-drift. The hand still gripped a long, gleaming rifle,
its stock and barrel elaborately arabesqued in silver picked out with
gold.

"Ah!" exclaimed the Master again, pulling at a thin crimson cord his
questing fingers had discovered about the old man's neck. With hands
that trembled a little, he drew out this cord. Then he uttered an
exclamation of intense disappointment.

There was nothing at the end of the crimson loop, save a _lamail_, or
pocket Koran. Leclair muttered a curse, and moved away, peering
toward the fire, spying out the wady through the now almost choking
sand-drive--the wady where they certainly must soon take refuge or be
overwhelmed by the buffeting lash of sand whirled on the breath of the
shouting tempest.

Even in the Master's anger, he did not throw the Koran away. Too
astute, he, for any such act in presence of Rrisa. Instead, he bound
the Arab to fresh devotion by touching lips and forehead, and by
handing him the little volume. The Master's arm had to push its way
against the wind as against a solid thing; and the billion rushing
spicules of sand that swooped in upon him from the desert emptiness,
stung his flesh like tiny scourges.

"This Koran, Rrisa, is now thine!" he cried in a loud voice, to make
the Arab hear him. "And a great gift to thee, a Sunnite, is the Koran,
of this desecrating son of the rejected!"

Bowed before the flail of the sand--while Rrisa uttered broken words
of thanks--the Master called to Leclair:

"By _Corsi_ (Allah's throne), now things assume a different aspect!
This old dog of dogs is a prize, indeed! And--what now--"

Leclair did not answer. The Frenchman was not even near him. The
Master saw him in the wady, dimly visible through the ghostly white
sand-shrouds spinning in the blue-whipped fire-glare. There on hands
and knees the lieutenant was huddled. With eager hands he was tearing
the hood of a _za'abut_--a rough, woolen slave cloak, patched and
ragged--from the face of a prostrate figure more than half snowed
under a sand-drift.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" the Master heard him cry. "_Mais, nom de_--"

"What have you found, Lieutenant?" shouted the Master, letting the
simoom drive him toward the wady. In their excitement none of the men
would yet take cover, lie down and hide their faces under their coats
as every dictate of prudence would have bidden. "Who is it, now?
What--"

"Ah, my Captain! Ah! the pity of it! Behold!"

The Frenchman's voice, wind-gusted, trembled with grief and passionate
anger; yet through that rage and sorrow rang a note of joy.

"Tell me, Leclair! Who, now?" demanded the Master, as he came close
and peered down by the fire-gleam roaring on the beach, sending
sheaves of sparks in comet-tails of vanishing radiance down-wind with
rushing sand.

"It is impossible, my Captain," the lieutenant answered in French. His
voice could now make itself heard more clearly; for here in the wady
a certain shelter existed from the roaring sand-cyclone. "Impossible,
but--_Dieu_!--it is true!"

"What is true?"

"Incredible, yet--_voilà_!"

"In Allah's name, Lieutenant!" the Master ejaculated, "compose
yourself! Explain! Who is this Arab, here?"

"No Arab, sir! No, no!"

"Not an Arab? Well, what is he, then?"

"Ah, these scars, my Captain! Behold--see the slave dress, the weals
of the branding-iron on cheek and brow! Ah, for pity! See the starved
body, the stripes of the lash, the feet mangled by the bastinado! What
horrible things they have done to him--ah, God have pity on us!"

Tears gleamed on the stern fighter's cheeks, there in the ghostly blue
firelight--tears that washed little courses through the dust and sand
now griming his face. The French airman, hard in battle and with heart
of steel and flame, was crying like a child.

"What now? Who is it?" shouted the Master. "A European?"

"Yes, my Captain! A Frenchman!"

"A Frenchman. You don't mean to say it--is--"

"Yes, yes! My orderly! Lebon!"

"God!" exclaimed the Master. "But--"

A cry from Rrisa interrupted him, a cry that flared down-wind with
strange, wild exultation. The Arab had just risen from the sand, near
the unconscious, in-drifting form of the Sheik, Abd el Rahman.

In his hands he was holding something--holding a leather sack with a
broken cord attached to it. This cord in some way had been severed by
the Sheik's rifle when the old man had fallen. The leather sack had
rolled a few feet away. Now, with hands that shook so that the Arab
could hardly control them, Rrisa was holding out this sack as he
staggered through the blinding sand-storm towards his chief.

"_Al Hamdu Lillah!_" (Praise to the Lord of the Three Worlds!) choked
Rrisa in a strange voice, fighting for his very breath. "See--see what
I--have found!"

Staring, blinking, trying to shelter his eyes against the demons of
the storm, the Master turned toward him.

"What, Rrisa?"

Down into the wady stumbled the Arab, gray-powdered with clinging
sand.

"Oh," he choked, "it has been taken from these _yezid_, these abusers
of the salt! Now we rescue it from these cut-off ones! From the swine
and brothers of the swine it has been taken by Allah, and put back
into the hands of Rrisa, Allah's slave! See, _M'almé_, see!"

The shaking hands extended the leather sack. At it the Master stared,
his face going dead white.

"Thou--dost not mean--?" he stammered.

"Truly, I do!"

"Not Kaukab el Durri?"

"Aye--it was lying near that heretic dog!"

"The Great Pearl Star, the sacred loot from the Haram?"

"Kaukab el Durri, _M'almé_. The Great Pearl Star itself!"




CHAPTER XXVI


THE SAND-DEVILS

With hands that quivered in unison with his nerves, now no longer
impassive, the strange chief of this still stranger expedition took
from Rrisa the leather sack. Over the top of the wady a million
sand-devils were screeching. The slither of the dry snow--the white,
fine snow of sand--filled all space with a whispering rustle that
could be heard through the shouting of the simoom.

Sand was beating on them, everywhere, in the darkness lighted only by
the tortured beach-fire. The stinging particles assailed eyes, ears,
mouth; it whitened clothing, sifted into hair, choked breath. But
still the Legionaries could not take shelter under their coats. In
this moment of wondrous finding, they must see the gem of gems that
Kismet had thus flung into their grasp.

The Master loosed a knot in the cord, drew the sack open and shook
into his left palm a thing of marvellous beauty and wonder.

By the dim, fitful gleam of the fire, probably the strangest and most
costly necklace in the world became indistinctly visible. At sight of
it, everything else was forgotten--the wrecked air-liner, the waiting
Legion, the unconscious Arabs now being buried in the resistless
charge of the sand-armies. Even poor Lebon, tortured slave of the Beni
Harb, a lay neglected. For nothing save the wondrous Great Pearl Star
could these three adventurers find any gaze whatever, or any thoughts.

While Leclair and Rrisa stared with widening eyes, the Master, tense
with joy, held up their treasure-trove.

"The Great Pearl Star!" he cried, in a strange voice.

"Kaukab el Durri! See, one pearl is missing--that is the one said to
have been sold in Cairo, twelve years ago, for fifty-five thousand
pounds! But these are finer! And its value as a holy relic of
Islam--who can calculate that? God, what this means to us!"

Words will not compass the description of this wondrous thing. As
the Master held it up in the sand-lashed dimness, half-gloom and
half-light, that formed a kind of aura round the fire--an aura sheeted
through and all about by the aerial avalanches of the sand--the
Legionaries got some vague idea of the necklace.

Three black pearls and two white were strung on a fine chain of gold.
A gap in their succession told where the missing pearl formerly had
been. Each of the five pearls was of almost incalculable value; but
one, an iridescent Oman, far surpassed the others.

This pearl was about the size of a man's largest thumb-joint. Its
shape was a smooth oval; its hue, even in that dim, wind-tossed light,
showed a wondrous, tender opalescence that seemed to change and blend
into rainbow iridescences as the staring Legionaries peered at it.
The other pearls, black and white alike, ranked as marvelous gems;
but this crown-jewel of the Great Pearl Star eclipsed anything the
Master--for all his wide travel and experience of life--ever had seen.

By way of strange contrast in values the pearls were separated
from each other by worthless, little, smooth lumps of madrepore,
or unfossilized coral. These lumps were covered with tiny black
inscriptions in archaic Cufic characters; though what the significance
of these might be, the Master could not--in that gloom and howling
drive of the sand-devils--even begin to determine.

The whole adornment, as it lay in the Master's palm, typified the
Orient. For there was gold; there were gems and bits of worthless
dross intermingled; and there about it was drifting sand of infinite
ages, darkness, flashes of light, color, mystery, wonder, beauty.

"God! What this means!" the Master repeated, as the three men cringed
in the wady. "Success, dominion, power!"

"You mean--" put in Leclair, his voice smitten away by the
ever-increasing storm that ravened over the top of the gully.

"What do I _not_ mean, Lieutenant? No wonder the Apostate Sheik had to
flee from Mecca and take refuge here in this impassable wilderness at
the furthest rim of Islam! No wonder he has been hounded and hunted!
The only miracle is that some of his own tribesmen have not betrayed
him before now!"

"Master, no Arab betrays his own sheik, right or wrong!" said Rrisa in
a strange voice. "Before that, an Arab dies by his own hand!" He spoke
in Arabic, with a peculiar inflection.

Their eyes met a second by the light of the gusting fire.

"Right or wrong, _M'almé_!" repeated the Arab. Then he added: "Shall I
not now go to drag in the swine-brother Abd el Rahman?"

"Thou sayst, if he be left there--"

"Yes, Master, he will surely die. All who are not sheltered, now,
will die. All who lie there on the dune, will be drifted under, will
breathe sand, will perish."

"It is well, Rrisa. Go, drag in the swine-brother. But have a care to
harm him not. Thou wouldst gladly slay him, eh?"

"More gladly than to live myself! Still, I obey. I go, I bring him
safe to you, O Master!"

He salaamed, turned, and vanished up over the edge of the wady.

The lieutenant, warned of the danger of sand-breathing by an
unconscious man, drew the hood of the woollen _za'abut_ up over the
face of Lebon. There was nothing more he could do for the poor fellow.
Only with the passage of time could he be reawakened. The French ace
turned again to where his chief was still scrutinizing the Pearl Star
as he crouched in the wady, back to the storm-wind, face toward the
fire on the beach.

"Do you realize what this thing is?" demanded the Master, turning the
necklace in his hands. "Do you understand?"

"I have heard of it, my Captain. For years vague rumors have come to
me from the desert-men, from far oases and cities of the Sahara. Now
here, now there, news has drifted in to Algiers--not news, but rather
fantastic tales. Yes, I have often heard of the Kaukab el Durri. But
till now I have always believed it a story, a myth."

"No myth, but solid fact!" exulted the Master, with a strange laugh.
"This, Lieutenant, is the very treasure that Mohammed gathered
together during many years of looting caravans in the desert and
of capturing _sambuks_ on the Red Sea. Arabia, India, and China all
contributed to it. The Prophet gave it to his favorite wife, Ayeshah,
as he lay dying at Medina in the year 632, with his head in her lap.

"Next to the Black Stone, itself, it is possibly the most precious
thing in Islam. And now, now with this Great Pearl Star in our hands,
what is impossible?"

Silence fell between the two men. They still huddled there in the
partial protection of the wady, while all the evil _jinnee_ of the
sand-storm shrieked blackly overhead. With no further words they
continued to study the wondrous thing. The fire was dying, now, burned
out by the fierce blast of the storm and blown away to sea in long
spindrifts of spark and vapor, white as the sand-drive itself. By the
fading light little could now be seen of the Great Pearl Star. The
Master replaced it in its leather bag, knotted the cord securely about
the mouth of the receptacle, and pocketed it.

A rattle of pebbles down the side of the wady, and a grunting call,
told them Rrisa had returned. Dimly they saw him dragging the old
Sheik over the lip of the gully, down into its half-protection. He
brought the unconscious man to them, and--though bowed by the frenzy
of the storm--managed a salute.

"Here, Master, I have saved him from the _jinnee_ of the desert,"
Rrisa pantingly announced. His voice trembled with a passionate hate;
his eyes gleamed with excitement; his nails dug into the palms of his
hands. "Now Master, gladden my eyes and expand my breast by letting me
see this old jackal's blood!"

"No, Rrisa," the Master denied him. "I have other use for the old
jackal. Other punishments await him than death at my hands."

"What punishments, Master?" the Arab cried with terrible eagerness.

"Wait, and thou shalt see. And remember always, I am thy sheik, thy
preserver, with whom thou hast shared the salt. 'He who violates the
salt shall surely taste Jahannum!'"

"Death shall have me, first!" cried Rrisa, and fell silent. And for
a while the three men crouched in the wady with the two unconscious
ones, torturer and victim. At length the Master spoke:

"This won't do, Lieutenant. We must be getting back."

Leclair peered at him in the screaming dark.

"Why, my Captain?" asked he. "The Legionaries can care for themselves.
If _Nissr_ is breaking up, in the gale, we can do nothing. And on
the way we may be lost. To retrace our journey over the desert would
surely be to invite death."

"We must return, nevertheless. This storm may last all night, and it
may blow itself out in half an hour. That cannot be told. The Legion
may think us lost, and try to search for us. Lives may be sacrificed.
Morale demands that we go back. Moreover, we certainly need not
traverse the desert."

"How, then?"

"We can descend the wady to the beach, and make southward along it,
under the shelter of the dunes."

"In the noise and confusion of the storm they may take us for Arabs
and shoot us down."

"I will see to that. Come, we must go! Carry Lebon, if you like. Rrisa
and I will take Abd el Rahman."

"_M'almé_, not Abd el Rahman, now," ejaculated Rrisa, "but Abd el
Hareth![1] Let that be his title!"

[Footnote 1: The former name signifies "Slave of Compassion;" the
latter, "Slave of the Devil."]

"As thou wishest, Rrisa. But come, take his feet. I will hold him by
the shoulders. So! Now, forward!"

"And have a care not to breathe the sand, Master," Rrisa warned. "Turn
thy face away when the _jinnee_ smite!"

Stumbling, heavy-laden, the three men made their painful way down to
the beach, turned to the left, and plowed southward in deep sand. As
they left the remains of the fire a great blackness fell upon them.
The boisterous exultation of the wind, howling in from a thousand
miles of hot emptiness, out over the invisible sea now chopped into
frothy waves, seemed snatching at them. But the dunes at their left
flung the worst of the sand-storm up and over. And though whirls and
air-eddies, sand-laden, snatched viciously at them, they won along the
beach.

That was lathering toil, burdened as they were, stumbling over
driftwood and into holes, laboring forward, hardly able to distinguish
more than the rising, falling line of white that marked the surf.
Voices of water and of wind conclamantly shouted, as if all the devils
of the Moslem Hell had been turned loose to snatch and rave at them.
Heat, stifle, sand caught them by the throat; the breath wheezed in
their lungs; and on their faces sweat and sand pasted itself into a
kind of sticky mud.

After fifteen minutes of this struggle the Master paused. He dropped
Abd el Rahman's shoulders, and Rrisa the Sheik's feet, while Leclair
stood silently bowed with the weight of Lebon and of the belaboring
storm.

"_Oooo-eeee! Oooooeeee! Oooooo-eeee!_" the Master hailed, three long
times. An answering shout came back, faintly, from the black. The
Master bent, assured himself the old Sheik's mouth and nose were still
covered by the hood of the burnous, and cried: "Forward!" And the
three men stumbled on and on.

Five minutes later the Master once more paused.

"Remember, both of you," he cautioned, "not one word of the find!"

"The Great Pearl Star?" asked Leclair gruntingly.

Their voices were almost inaudible to each other in that mad tumult.
"That is to be a secret, my Captain?"

"Between us three; yes. Let that be understood!"

"I pledge my honor to it!" cried the Frenchman. Rrisa added: "The
Master has but to command, and it is done!" Then once more they plowed
on down the shore.

Only a few minutes more brought them, with surprising suddenness, to
the end of the Legionaries' trench. Trench it no longer was, however.
All the paltry digging had been swiftly filled in by the sand-devils;
and now the men were lying under the lee of the dunes, protecting
themselves as best they could with the tunics of their uniforms over
their heads.

They got up and came stumbling in confusion to greet the returning
trio. Peering in the dark, straining their eyes to see, they listened
to a few succinct words of the Master:

"Perfect success! Lethalizing was complete. Sand has buried the entire
tribe. Leclair found his former orderly, who had been their slave.
We have here their Sheik, Abd el Rahman. Nothing more to fear. Down,
everybody--tunics over heads again--let the storm blow itself out!"

The Legion lay for more than an hour, motionless, waiting in the
night. During this hour both Lebon and the old Sheik recovered
consciousness, but only in a vague manner. There was no attempt to
tell them anything, to make any plans, to start any activities. In a
Sahara simoom, men are content just to live.




CHAPTER XXVII


TOIL AND PURSUIT

Before midnight the storm died with a suddenness even greater than
that of its onset. Like a tangible flock of evil birds or of the
spirits Victor Hugo has painted in _Les Djinns_, the sand-storm blew
itself out to sea and vanished. The black sky opened its eyes of
starlight, once again; gradually calm descended on the desert, and by
an hour after midnight the steady east wind had begun to blow again.

The "wolf's tail," or first gray streak of dawn along the horizon,
found the Legion all astir. Lebon had long since been told of his
rescue; he and his lieutenant had embraced and had given each other a
long story--the enslaved man's story making Leclair's face white with
rage, his heart a furnace of vengeance on all Islam.

The Sheik, dimly understanding that these devils of Feringistan had by
their super-magic overwhelmed him and his tribe with sleep-magic
and storm-magic of the strongest, lay bound hand and foot, sullenly
brooding. No one could get a word from Abd el Rahman; not even Rrisa,
who exhausted a wonderful vocabulary of imprecation on him, until the
Master sternly bade him hold his peace.

A gaunt, sunken-eyed old hawk of the desert he lay there in the sand,
unblinkingly defiant. Tortures and death, he felt, were to be his
portion; but with the stoicism of the barbarian he made no sound.
What his thoughts were, realizing the loss of tribesmen, capture,
despoilment of the Great Pearl Star, who could tell?

A wondrous dawn, all mingled of scarlet, orange, and vivid yellows,
with streaks of absinthe hue, burned up over the desert world. It
showed _Nissr_ about as she had been the night before; for the simoom
had not thrashed up sea enough--offshore, as it had been--to break up
the partial wreck.

The air-liner had, however, settled down a good deal in the sand,
and had canted at a sharp angle to port. Her galleries, fuselage,
and wings were heavily laden with sand that materially increased her
weight; and to the casual eye she gave the impression of a bird which
never again would soar on level wing.

The major voiced discouragement, but no one shared it. Spirits were
still high, in spite of thirst and exhaustion, and of the losses
already sustained in men and material. Lombardo and "Captain Alden"
had patched up the wounded in rough, first-aid fashion; and they,
in spite of pain, shared the elation of the others in the entire
wiping-out of the Beni Harb.

As soon as the light permitted operations to begin again, the Legion
trekked over to the Arabs' former lines. Nothing now remained to tell
them of the enemy, save here or there the flutter of a bit of burnous
or _cherchia_ (head-dress), that fluttered from the white sand now
all ribbed in lovely scollops like the waves of a moveless sea. In one
spot a naked brown arm and hand were projecting heavenward, out of the
sand-ocean, as if in mute appeal to Allah.

The Legionaries heaped sand on this grim bit of death, completely
burying it, and on the fluttering cloths. And as they peered abroad
across the desert, in the glory of morning, now nothing could be seen
to mind them of the fighting-men who, like the host of Sennacherib,
had been brushed by the death-angel's wing.

The jackals knew, though, and the skulking hyenas, already
sneaking in the _nullahs_; and so did the _rion_ and the yellow
_ukab_-birds--carrion-fowl, both--which already from the farthest
blue, had begun to wheel and volplane toward the coast.

Back on the beach, exultant, yet rather silent in the face of all that
death, the Legion at once got itself into action under the vigorous
command of the Master. Twenty-three men were still fit and active for
service; and both Enemark and Lebon would in a few days be of help.

"Man-power enough," thought the Master, as he laid out his campaign.
"The only troublesome factors, are, first, _Nissr's_ condition;
second, our lack of water and supplies; and third, the possibility of
interference from Arabs or European forces, by land or sea. If we can
overcome all these--_if_, did I say? We can! We will!"

First of all, three volunteers swam out to _Nissr_ through the surf
now again beating in from the open sea. Their purpose was to bring the
wounded Kloof ashore. Even though Kloof's oversight of the stowaway
had wrecked the expedition, and though Kloof would probably be
executed in due time, common humanity dictated succoring him.

The volunteers returned, after a hard fight, with a body past any
human judgments. Kloof, Daimamoto, Sheffield, and Beziers, all of
whom had lost their lives in the battle with the Beni Harb, were
soon buried on the beach by the hungry, thirsty, sand-penetrated
Legionaries. The shallow graves were piled with driftwood--rocks there
were none, even in the wady, which' was of clay and gravel--and so,
protected as best might be from beasts and birds, four of the
Legion entered their long homes. The only ceremony over the fallen
adventurers was the firing of a volley of six pistol-shots.

Swiftly returning heat, and a plague of black flies that poisoned with
every bite, warned the Legionaries not to delay. Hunger and thirst,
too, scourged them on. Their first care was food and drink.

Fortune favored them. In spite of the simoom the prevailing west
wind had cast up all along the shore--for two or three miles each
way--perhaps a quarter or a third of the stores they had been forced
to jettison. Before doing anything else, the Legion brought in these
cases of provisions and established a regular camp in the wady where
they would be protected from observation from the Sahara. The piling
up of these stores, the building of a fire to keep off the flies,
and the portioning out of what little tobacco they had with them,
wonderfully stiffened their morale.

Water, however, was still lacking; and all the Legionaries, as well
as the old Sheik who would have died in the flames before asking
for drink, were beginning to suffer extremely. The Master detailed
Simonds, L'Heureux, and Seres to construct a still, which they did in
only a little more than three hours.

The apparatus was ingeniously and efficiently built, out of two large
provision tins and some piping which they got--together with a few
tools--by swimming out to the air-liner. The still, with a brisk fire
under it, proved capable of converting sea-water into flat, tasteless
fresh water at the rate of two quarts an hour. Thirsty they might
all get, to desperation; but with this supply they could survive till
better could be had.

While the distilling apparatus was being built, work was already under
way on _Nissr_; work which old Abd el Rahman watched with beady eyes
of hate; work in which Dr. Lombardo, fellow-partner in Kloof's guilt,
was allowed to share--the condition being frankly stated to him that
his punishment was merely being deferred.

Under the Master's direction, stout mooring-piles of driftwood were
sunk into the dunes, block-and-tackle gear was improvised, and lines
were rove to the airship. She was lightened by shoveling several tons
of sand from her and by removing everything easily detachable; the men
working in baths of sweat, with a kind of ardent abandon.

Enough power was still left in her storage-batteries to operate the
air-pressure system through the floats. This air, with a huge boiling
and seething of the white surf, loosened the floats from the cling of
the sand; and a score of men at the tackles succeeded at high-tide in
hauling _Nissr_ far up on the beach.

Rough gear, broken ship, toiling men blind with sweat, blazing African
sun, appalling isolation, vultures and jackals at work behind the
dunes, and--back of all--ocean and Sahara, made a picture fit for any
master-painter. We must throw only one glance at it, and pass on.

This much accomplished, nightfall, with the west glowing like
a stupendous jewel, brought rest. They camped in the wady, with
machine-guns mounted and sentinels out. Abd el Rahman, liberated from
his bonds and under strict surveillance, still refused to talk. No
information could be got from him; but Rrisa's eyes brightened with
unholy joy at sight of the old man ceremonially tearing his burnous
and sifting sand on his gray head.

"Allah smite thy face, _ya kalb!_" (O dog!) he murmured. "Robber of
the Haram, from Jehannum is thy body!"[1]

[Footnote 1: Alluding to the Arab superstition that every man's body
is drawn from the place where it will eventually be buried. Rrisa's
remark, therefore, was an Oriental way of wishing the Sheik back into
Hell.]

Night passed with no alarm, quietly save for the yelping and
quarreling of the jackals and hyenas at work beyond the dunes. Early
morning found the Legionaries again at work; and so for five days they
toiled. The Legion was composed of picked men, skilled in science and
deep in technical wisdom. With what tools still remained from the time
when all surplus weight had been jettisoned, and with some improvised
apparatus, they set vigorously to work repairing the engines, fitting
new rudder-plates, patching up the floats and providing the burned
propellers with metal blades.

Metal enough they had at hand, by cutting out dispensable partitions
from the interior. And beavers never worked as these men worked in
spite of the fierce smitings of the tropic sun. Even the wounded men
helped, holding or passing tools. The Master labored with the rest,
grimy, sweating, hard-jawed; and "Captain Alden" did her bit without
a moment's slackening. Save for Abd el Rahman, now securely locked
without any means of self-destruction in a stateroom, no man idled.

Anxiety dogged their every moment. Sudden storm might yet hopelessly
break up the stranded air-liner. Other tribes might have seen the
signal-fire and might descend upon the Legionaries. Arab slavers might
discover them, beating along the coast in well-armed dhows. Twice, in
five days, latteen-sailed craft passed south, and one of these put
in to investigate; but a tray of blanks from a machine-gun, at half a
mile, turned the invader's blunt nose seaward again.

The greatest peril of all was that some news of the wreck might reach
Rio de Oro and be wirelessed to civilization. That would inevitably
mean ruin. Either it would bring an air-squadron swooping down, or
battle-ships would arrive.

The Master labored doggedly to get his neutralizing apparatus
effectively operating once more; and besides this, he spent hours
locked in his cabin, working on other apparatus the nature of which
he communicated to no one. But the Legion knew that nothing could
save them from long-range naval guns, if that kind of attack should
develop. They needed no urging to put forth stern, unceasing energies.
Twice smoke on the horizon raised the alarm; but nothing came of it.

With great astuteness the Master had the wireless put in shape, at
once, and sent out three messages at random, on two successive days.
These messages stated that _Nissr_ had been sighted in flames and
falling, in North latitude 19°, 35'; longitude 28°, 16', or about two
hundred and fifty miles north-west of the Cape Verdes; that wreckage
from her had been observed somewhat south of that point; and that
bodies floating in vacuum-belts had been recovered by a Spanish
torpedo-boat.

No answer came in from any of these messages; but there was always
an excellent chance that such misinformation would drag a red herring
across the trail of pursuit.

Men never slaved as the Legionaries did, especially toward the end.
The last forty-eight hours, the Master instituted night work. The men
paused hardly long enough to eat or sleep, but snatched a bite when
they could, labored till they could do no more, and then dropped in
their places and were dragged out of the way so that others could
take hold. Some fell asleep with tools in hand, stricken down as if by
apoplexy.

The Master had wisely kept the pace moderate, at first, but had
speeded up toward the end. None grew more haggard, toil-worn, or
emaciated than he. With blistered hands, sweat-blinded eyes, parched
mouths and fevered souls these men fought against all the odds of
destiny. Half naked they strove, oppressed by heat, sun, flies,
thirst, exhaustion. Tobacco was their only stay and solace. The
Master, however, only chewed khat leaves; and as for "Captain Alden,"
she toiled with no stimulant.

It was 7:33, on the morning of the sixth day, that Frazier--now chief
engineer--came to the Master, as he was working over some complex bit
of mechanism in his cabin. Frazier saluted and made announcement:

"I think we can make a try for it now, sir." Frazier looked white and
wan, shaking, hollow-eyed, but a smile was on his lips. "Two engines
are intact. Two will run half-speed or a little better, and one will
do a little."

"One remains dead?"

"Yes, sir. But we can repair that on the way. Rudders and propellers
will do. Helicopters O.K."

"And floats?"

"Both aft floats repaired, sir. One is cut down a third, and one a
half, but they will serve."

"How about petrol?" the Master demanded. "We have only that one aft
starboard tank, now, not over three-quarters full."

"There's a chance that will do till we can run down a caravan along
the Red Sea, carrying petrol to Suakin or Port Sudan. So there's a
fighting hope--if we can raise ourselves out of this sand that clings
like the devil himself. It's lucky, sir, we jettisoned those stores.
Wind and current brought some of them back, anyhow. If they'd stayed
in the storeroom they'd have all been burned to a crisp."

"Yes, yes. You think, then, we can make a start?" The Master put his
apparatus into the desk-drawer and carefully locked it. He stood up
and tightened his belt a notch.

"We can try, sir," Frazier affirmed grimly. Unshaven, haggard, dirty,
and streaked with sweat, he made a strange figure by contrast with the
trim, military-looking chap who only a week before had started with
the other Legionaries, now no less altered than he.

"Very well," said the Master decisively. "Our prospects are good. The
wounded are coming on. Counting Lebon, we have twenty-five men. I
will have all stores reloaded at once. Be ready in one hour, sir.
Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" And Frazier, saluting again, returned to the ravaged but
once more efficient engine-room.

All hands plunged into the surf, wading ashore--for it was now
high-tide--and in short order reloaded the liner. In forty-five
minutes stores, machine-guns, and everything had been brought aboard,
the cables to the posts in the beach had been cast off and hauled in,
and all the Legionaries were at their posts. The ports were closed.
Everything was ready for the supreme test.

The Master was last to come aboard. Still dripping seawater, he
clambered up the ladder from the lower gallery to the main corridor,
and made his way into the pilot-house. Bohannan was with him, also
Leclair and Captain Alden.

The engines had already been started, and the helicopters had begun
to turn, flickering swiftly in their turbine-tubes. The Master settled
himself in the pilot's seat. All at once a buzzer sounded close at
hand.

"Well, what now?" demanded the Master into the phone communicating
with the upper port gallery.

"Smoke to southward, sir. Coming up along the Coast."

"Smoke? A steamer?"

"Can't see, sir." It was the voice of Ferrara that answered. "The
smoke is behind the long point to southward. But it is coming faster
than a merchant vessel. I should say, sir, it was a torpedo-boat or a
destroyer, under forced draft. And it's coming--it's coming at a devil
of a clip, sir!"




CHAPTER XXVIII


ONWARD TOWARD THE FORBIDDEN CITY

The Master rang for full engine-power, and threw in all six
helicopters with one swift gesture.

"Major," commanded he, as _Nissr's_ burned and wounded body began to
quiver through all its mutilated fabric; "Major, man the machine-guns
again. All stations! _Quick_!"

Bohannan departed. The droning of the helicopters rose to a shrill
hum. The Master switched in the air-pressure system; and far
underneath, white fountains of spumy water leaped up about the floats,
mingled with sand and mud all churned to frenzy under the bursting
energy of the compressed air released through thousands of tubules.

_Nissr_ trembled, hesitated, lifted a few inches, settled back once
more.

Again the buzzer sounded. The noise of rapid feet became audible
above, in the upper galleries. Ferrara called into the phone:

"It's a British destroyer, sir! She's just rounded the point, three
miles south. Signals up for us to surrender!"

"Machine-guns against naval ordnance!" gritted the Master savagely.
"Surrender?" He laughed with hot defiance.

The first shell flung a perfect tornado of brine into air, glistening;
it ricochetted twice, and plunged into the dunes. A "dud," it failed
to burst.

_Nissr_ rose again as the second shell hit fair in the hard clay of
the wady, cascading earth and sand a hundred feet in air. Both reports
boomed in, rolling like thunder over the sea.

"Shoot and be damned to you!" cried the Master. _Nissr_ was rising
now, clearing herself from the water like a wounded sea-bird. A
tremendous cascade of water sluiced from her hissing floats, swirling
in millions of sun-glinted jewels more brilliant even than Kaukab el
Durri.

Higher she mounted, higher still. The destroyer was now driving in at
full speed, with black smoke streaming from four funnels, perfectly
indifferent to possible shoals, rocks or sand-bars along this
uncharted coast. Another shell screamed under the lower gallery and
burst in a deluge of sand near one of the mooring-piles.

"Very poor shooting, my Captain," smiled Leclair, leaning far out the
port window of the pilot-house. "But then, we can't blame the gunners
for being a bit excited, trying to bag a bit of international game
like this Legion."

"And beside," put in Alden coolly, "our shifting position makes us
rather a poor target. Ah! That shell must have gone home!"

_Nissr_ quivered from nose to tail. A violent detonation flung echoes
from sea and shore; and bits of splintered wreckage spun down past the
windows, to plunge into the still swirling, bubbling sea.

The Master made no answer, but rang for the propellers to be clutched
in. _Nissr_ obeyed their quickening whirl. Her altitude was already
four hundred and fifty feet, as marked by the altimeter. Lamely she
moved ahead, sagging to starboard, badly scarred, ill-trimmed and
awry, but still alive.

Her great black shadow, trailing behind her in the water, passed on
to the beach, wrinkled itself up over the dunes and slid across the
sand-drifts where little flutters of cloth, uncovered by the ghoulish
jackals, showed from the burning stretch of tawny desert.

Flocks of vultures rose and soared away. Jackals and hyenas cowered
and slunk to cover. The tumult of the guns and this vast, drifting
monster of the air had overcome even their greed for flesh.

Another shot, puffing white as wool from the bow-chaser of the
destroyer, screeched through the vultures, scattering them all ways,
but made a clean miss of _Nissr_.

The air-liner gathered speed as the west wind got behind her, listed
her, pushed her forward in its mighty hands. Swifter, ever swifter,
her shadow slipped over dune and wady, over hillock and _nullah_, off
away toward the pellucidly clear-golden tints of the horizon beyond
which lay the unknown.

Rrisa, at his gun-station, gnawed his fingers in rage and scorn of
the pursuing Feringi, and cried: "Allah make it hard for you!
_Laan'abuk!_" (Curses on your fathers!)

Old Sheik Abd el Rahman, close-locked in a cabin, quivered, not with
fear, but with unspeakable grief and amazement past all telling. To
be thus carried away through the heavens in the entrails of the
unbelievers' flying dragon was a thing not to be believed. He
prostrated himself, with groans and cries to Allah. The Legionaries,
from galleries and gun-stations waving derisive arms, raised shouts
and hurrahs.

Sweaty, spent, covered with grease and dirt, they cheered with leaping
hearts.

Another shell, bursting in mid-air not fifty yards away, rocked
_Nissr_, keeled her to port, and for a moment sent her staggering
down. She righted, lifted, again gathered speed.

More and more wild became the shooting, as she zigzagged,
rose, soared into something like her old-time stride. Behind
her the sea drew back, the baffled destroyer dwindled, the harmless
shots crashed in.

Ahead of her the desert opened. Uncouth, lame, scarred by flame and
shell, _Nissr_ spread her vast wings and--still the Eagle of the Sky,
undaunted and unbeaten--roared into swift flight toward the waiting
mysteries of the vacant abodes.

Mid-morning found _Nissr_ far from the coast, skimming along at
fifteen hundred feet altitude over the Tarmanant region of the Sahara.
The one shell from the destroyer that had struck her had done no more
than graze the tip of the starboard aileron, inflicting damage of no
material consequence. It could easily be repaired.

For the present, all danger of any interference from any civilized
power seemed to be at an end. But the world had discovered that
_Nissr_ and her crew had not yet been destroyed, and the Legionaries
felt they must prepare for all eventualities. The stowaway's rash act
was still big with possibilities of the most sinister import.

"This is probably just a temporary respite," said Bohannan, as he sat
with the Master in the latter's cabin. The windows had been slid
wide open, and the two men, leaning back in easy wicker chairs, were
enjoying the desert panorama each in his own way--Bohannan with a
cigar, the Master with a few leaves of the "flower of paradise."

Now once more clean and a little rested, they had again assumed
something of their former aspect. "Captain Alden," and as many others
as could be spared from duty, were asleep. The Legion was already
pulling itself together, though in depleted numbers. Discipline had
tautened again. Once more the sunshine of possible success had begun
to slant in through a rift in the lowering clouds of disaster.

"It's still, perhaps, only a temporary respite," the major was saying.
"Of course, as long as we stay in the Sahara, we're safe enough
from molestation. It's trying to get out--that, and shortage of
petrol--that constitute our problem now."

"Yes?" asked the chief, noncommittally. He peered out the window at
the vast, indigo horizons of the desert, curving off to northward into
a semicircle of burnished blue. Here, there, the etherial wonder of a
mirage painted the sandy sea. Vast distances opened on all sides;
the sparkling air, brilliant with what seemed a kind of suspended
jewel-dust, made every object visible at an incredible remoteness. The
wonder of that morning sun and desert could not be put in words.

"Our troubles are merely postponed," the Celt continued, gloomily.
"The damage was done when that infernal destroyer sighted us. Just how
the alarm was given, and what brought the sea-wasp racking her engines
up the coast, we can't tell. But the cat's out of the bag, now, and
we've got to look out for an attack at any moment we try to leave this
region."

"It's obvious my wireless messages about being wrecked at sea won't
have much weight now," the Master replied, analytically. "They would
have, though, if that slaving-dhow hadn't put in to investigate us. I
have an idea that those _jallahs_ (slavers) must in some way have let
the news out at Bathurst, down in Gambia. That's the nearest British
territory."

"I wish they'd come within machine-gun fire!" growled the major,
blowing smoke.

"Still, we've got lots of room to maneuver," the chief continued.
"We're heading due east now," with a glance at the wall-compass and
large-scale chart of Northern Africa. "We're now between Mauretania
and Southern Algeria, bound for Fezzan, the Libyan Desert, and Nubia
on the Red Sea. That is a clear reach of more than three thousand
miles of solid desert."

"Oh, we're all right, as long as we stay in the desert," Bohannan
affirmed. "But they'll be watching for us, all right, when we try to
leave. It's all British territory to the east of us, from Alexandria
down to Cape Town. If we could only make our crossing of the Nile and
the Red Sea, at night--?"

"Impossible, Major. That's where we've got to restock petrol. If it
comes to a show-down, crippled as we are, we'll fight! Of course, I
realize that, fast as we fly, the wireless flies faster. We may have
to rely on our neutralizers again--"

"They're working?"

"Imperfectly, yes. They'll still help us, in 'civilized warfare.'
And as for what will happen at Mecca, if the Faithful are indiscreet
enough to offer any resistance--"

"Got something new, have you?"

"I think it may prove something of a novelty, Major. Time will tell,
if Allah wills. Yes, I think we may have a little surprise for our
friends, the Meccans."

The two fell silent again, watching the desert panorama roll back
and away, beneath them. Afar, two or three little oases showed
feathery-tufted palms standing up like delicate carvings against the
remote purple spaces or against the tawny, seamed desolation that
burned as with raw colors of fires primeval. Here, there, patches of
stunted tamarisk bushes were visible. A moving line of dust showed
where a distant caravan was plodding eastward over the sparkling
crystals of an ancient salt sea-bottom. A drift of low-hanging
wood-smoke, very far away, betrayed the presence of a camp of the Ahl
Bayt, the People of the Black Tents.

The buzzer of the Master's phone broke the silence between the two
men, a silence undertoned by the throb and hum of the now effectively
operating engines.

"Well, what is it?" the Master queried.

"Promising oasis, _mon capitaine_," came the voice of Leclair from the
upper starboard gallery. "Through my glass I can make out extensive
date-palm groves, pomegranate orchards, and gardens. There must be
plenty of water there. We should take water, eh?"

"Right!" the Master answered. He got up and turned to Bohannan.

"Major," commanded he, "have Simonds and a crew of six stand by, in
the lower gallery, to descend in the nacelle. Rrisa is to go. They
will need him, to interpret. Give them a few of the trinkets from that
assortment we brought for barter, and a little of our Arabic money."

"Yes, sir. But you know only two of the detachable tanks are left."

"Two will suffice. Have them both lowered, together with the
electric-drive pump. Don't annoy me with petty details. You are in
charge of this job now. Attend to it!"

He passed into the pilot-house, leaned at the window and with his
glasses inspected the deep green patch, dark as the profoundest sea,
that marked the oasis. A little blind village nestled there, with
mud-brick huts, a watch-tower and a tiny minaret; date-grounds and
fields of corn, melons, and other vegetables spread a green fringe
among the groves.




CHAPTER XXIX


"LABBAYK!"

As Nissr slowed near the oasis, the frightened Arabs--who had been
at their _ghanda_, or mid-day meal--swarmed into the open. They left
their mutton, _cous-cous_, date-paste, and lentils, their chibouques
with perfumed vapor and their keef-smoking, and manifested extreme
fear by outcries in shrill voices. Under the shadows of the palms,
that stood like sentinels against the blistering sands, they gathered,
with wild cries.

No fighting-men, these. The glasses disclosed that they were mostly
old men, women, children. Young men were few. The fighters had
probably gone with the caravan, seen a while before. There came a
little ragged firing; but a round of blanks stopped that, and sent the
villagers skurrying back into the shelter of the palms, mimosas, and
jamelon trees.

_Nissr_ poised at seven hundred and fifty feet and let down tanks,
nacelle, and men. There was no resistance. The local _naib_ came with
trembling, to make salaam. Water was freely granted, from the _sebil_,
or public fountain--an ancient tank with century-deep grooves cut in
its solid stone rim by innumerable camel-hair ropes. The flying men
put down a hose, threw the switch of the electric pump, and in a few
minutes half emptied the fountain. The astonishment of the villagers
passed all bounds.

"These be men of great magic," said the _naib_, to Rrisa, after the
tanks had been hoisted to _Nissr_, and a dozen sacks of fresh dates
had been purchased for the trinkets plus two _ryals_ (about two
dollars). "Tell me of these 'People of the Books!'"

"I will tell thee of but one thing, Abu Shawarib," (father of
whiskers) answered Rrisa with pride. "Old Abd el Rahman is our
prisoner in the flying ship above. We are taking him back to Mecca.
All his people of the Beni Harb lie dead far toward the great waters,
on the edge of the desert of the sea. The Great Pearl Star we also
have. That too returneth to the Haram. _Allah isélmak!_" (Thanks be to
Allah!)

The _naib_ prostrated himself, with joyful cries, and touched lips
and forehead with quivering fingers. All others who heard the
news, did likewise. Fruits, pomegranate, syrup, honey, and _jild el
faras_[1] were brought as offerings of gratitude. The crew ascended to
the air-liner amid wild shouts of praise and jubilation.

[Footnote 1: Literally "mare's skin." Apricot paste in dried sheets,
cut into convenient sizes. A great dainty among the Arabs.]

"You see, Leclair?" the Master inquired, as _Nissr_ drew away once
more to eastward, leaving the village in the palms behind. "We hold
power already with the sons of Islam! What will it be when--?"

"When you attempt to take from them their all, instead of returning to
them what they so eagerly desire to have!" the Frenchman put in. "Let
us hope all for the best, my Captain, but let us keep our powder very
dry!"

Two days and one night of steady flying over the ocean of sand, with
but an occasional oasis or caravan to break the appalling wastes of
emptiness, brought _Nissr_ to the Valley of the Nile. The river of
hoar antiquity came to view in a quivering heat-haze, far to eastward.
In anticipation of possible attack, _Nissr_ was forced to her best
altitude, of now forty-seven hundred feet, all gun-stations were
manned and the engines were driven to their limit. The hour was
anxious; but the Legion passed the river in safety, just a little
south of the twentieth degree, near the Third Cataract. Bohannan's
gloomy forebodings proved groundless.

The Red Sea and Arabia were now close at hand. Tension increased.
Rrisa thrilled with a malicious joy. He went to the door of the
captive Sheik, and in flowery Arabic informed him the hour of
reckoning was at last drawing very near.

"Thou carrion!" he exclaimed. "Soon shalt thou be in the hands of the
Faithful. Soon shall Allah make thy countenance cold, O offspring of a
one-eyed man!"

Three hours after, the air-liner sighted a dim blue line that marked
the Red Sea. The Master pointed at this, with a strange smile.

"Once we pass that sea," he commented, "our goal is close. The hour of
great things is almost at hand!"

"Provided we get some petrol," put in Bohannan.

"Faith, an open gate, that should have been closed, defeated Napoleon.
A few hundred gallons of gasoline--"

"The gasoline is already in sight, Major," smiled the chief, his
glasses on the coastline. "That caravan--see there?--comes very
apropos."

The Legion bore down with a rush on the caravan--a small one, not
above fifty camels, but well laden. The cameleers left off crying
"_Ooosh! Ooosh!_" and beating their spitting beasts with their
_mas'hab_-sticks, and incontinently took to their heels. Rrisa viewed
them with scorn, as he went down in the nacelle with a dozen of the
crew.

The work of stripping the caravan immediately commenced. In an hour
some five hundred tin cases of petrol had been hoisted aboard. On
the last trip down, the Master sent a packet wrapped in white cloth,
containing a fair money payment for the merchandise. British goods, he
very wisely calculated, could not be commandeered without recompense
The packet was lashed to a camel-goad which was driven into the sand,
and _Nissr_ once more got slowly under way.

All eyes were now on the barren chalk and sandstone coasts of the Red
Sea, beyond which dimly rose the castellated peaks of Jebel Radhwa.
At an altitude of 2,150 feet the air-liner slid out over the Sea,
the waters of which shone in the mid-afternoon sun with a peculiar
luminosity. Only a few _sambuks_, or native craft, troubled
those historic depths; though, down in the direction of Bab el
Mandeb--familiar land to the Master--a smudge of smoke told of some
steamer beating up toward Suez.

Leaning from the upper port gallery, the Master with Bohannan,
Leclair, and "Captain Alden," watched the shadow of the giant
air-liner sliding over the tawny sand-bottom. That shadow seemed a
scout going on before them, spying out the way to Arabia and to Mecca,
the Forbidden City. To the white men that shadow was only a shadow.
To Rrisa, who watched it from the lower gallery, it portended ominous
evil.

"It goes ahead of us, by Allah!" he murmured. "Into the Empty Abodes,
where the sons of Feringistan would penetrate, a shadow goes first!
And that is not good." He whispered a prayer, then added: "For the
others, I care not. But my Master--his life and mine are bound with
the cords of Kismet. And in the shadows I see darkness for all!"

At 4:27, _Nissr_ passed the eastern shores of the Red Sea. Arabia
itself now lay beneath. There exposed to their eyes, at length lay the
land of mystery and fear. Bare and rock-ribbed, a flayed skeleton of
a terrain, it glowed with wondrous yellow, crimson, and topaz hues.
A haze bounded the south-eastern horizon, where a range of iron hills
jaggedly cut the sky. Mecca was almost at hand.

The Master entered his cabin and summoned Rrisa.

"Listen," he commanded. "We are now approaching the Holy City. I am
bringing back the Apostate Sheik and the Great Pearl Star. I am the
preserver of the Star. Thine own people could not keep it. I have
recovered it. Is that not true?"

"True, _M'almé_, praise to Allah!"

"It may be that I shall be called on to preserve some other and
still more sacred thing. If so, remember that my salt is still in thy
stomach."

"Master, I will not forget." Rrisa spoke dutifully, but his eyes
were troubled. His face showed lines of fear, of the struggle already
developing in his soul.

"Go thou, then! And remember that whatever happens, my judgment tells
me it is best. Raise not a hand of rebellion against me, Rrisa, to
whom thou owest life itself. To thy cabin--go!"

"But, Master--"

"_Ru'c'h halla!_"

The Arab salaamed and departed, with a strange look in his eyes.

When he was gone, the Master called Bohannan and Leclair, outlined the
next _coup_ in this strange campaign, and assigned crews to them for
the implacable carrying-out of the plan determined on--surely the most
dare-devil, ruthless, and astonishing plan ever conceived by the brain
of a civilized man.

Hardly had these preparations been made, when the sound of
musketry-fire, below and ahead, drew their attention. From the open
ports of the cabin, peering far down, the three Legionaries witnessed
an extraordinary sight--a thing wholly incongruous in this hoar land
of mystery and romance.

Skirting a line of low savage hills that ruggedly stretched from
north to south, a gleaming line of metal threaded its way. A train,
southbound for Mecca, had halted on the famous Pilgrims' Railway.
From its windows and doors, white-clad figures were violently
gesticulating. Others were leaping from the train, swarming all about
the carriages.

An irregular fusillade, harmless as if from pop-guns, was being
directed against the invading Eagle of the Sky. A faint, far outcry
of passionate voices drifted upward in the heat and shimmer of that
Arabian afternoon. The train seemed a veritable hornets' nest into
which a rock had been heaved.

"Faith, but that's an odd sight," laughed the major. "Where else
in all this world could you get a contrast like that--the desert, a
semibarbarous people, and a railroad?"

"Nowhere else," put in Leclair. "There is no other road like that,
anywhere in existence. The Damascus-Mecca line is unique; a Moslem
line built by Moslems, for Moslems only Modern mechanism blent with
ancient superstition and savage ferocity that implacably hold to the
very roots of ancient things!"

"It is the Orient, Lieutenant," added the Master. "And in the Orient,
who can say that any one thing is stranger than anything else? To your
stations, men!"

They took their leave. The Master entered the pilot-house and assumed
control. As _Nissr_ passed over the extraordinary Hejaz Railway,
indifferent to the mob of frenzied, vituperating pilgrims, the chief
peered far ahead for his first sight of Mecca, the Forbidden.

He had not long to wait. On the horizon, the hills seemed suddenly to
break away. As the air-liner roared onward, a dim plain appeared, with
here or there a green-blue blur of oasis and with a few faint white
spots that the Master knew were pilgrims' camping-places.

Down through this plain extended an irregular depression, a kind of
narrow valley, with a few sharply isolated, steep hills on either
hand.

The Master's eyes gleamed. His jaw set; his hand, on the controls,
tightened till the knuckles whitened.

"The Valley of Mina!" he exclaimed. "Mount Arafat--and there, beyond,
lies Mecca! _Labbayk! Labbayk!_"




CHAPTER XXX


OVER MECCA

The descent of the giant air-liner and her crew of masterful
adventurers on the Forbidden City had much the quality of a hawk's
raid on a vast pigeon-cote. As _Nissr_, now with slowed engines loomed
down the Valley of Sacrifice, a perfectly indescribable hurricane of
panic, rage, and hate surged through all the massed thousands who had
come from the farthest ends of Islam to do homage to the holy places
of the Prophet.

The outraged Moslems, in one fierce burst of passion against the
invading Feringi, began to swarm like ants when the stone covering
their ant-hill is kicked over. From end to end of the valley, a
howling tumult arose.

On the Darb el Ma'ala, or Medina Road, a caravan bearing the annual
_mahmal_ gift of money, jewels, fine fabrics, and embroidered
coverings for the Ka'aba temple, cut loose with rifles and old
blunderbusses. Dogs began to bark, donkeys to bray, camels to spit and
snarl. The whole procession fell into an anarchy of hate and fear.

The vast camp of conical white tents in the Valley of Mina spewed out
uncounted thousands of _Hujjaj_ (pilgrims), each instantly transformed
into a blood-lusting fiend. From the Hill of Arafat; from Jannat el
Ma'ale Cemetery; from the dun, bronzed, sun-baked city of a hundred
thousand fanatic souls; from the Haram sanctuary itself where mobs of
pilgrims were crowded round the Ka'aba and the holy Black Stone;
from latticed balcony and courtyard, flat roof, mosque, and minaret,
screams of rage shrilled up into the baked air, quivering under the
intense sapphire of the desert sky.

Every crowded street of the bowl-shaped city, all converging toward
the Sacred Enclosure of the Haram, every caravanserai and square,
became a mass of howling _ghuzzat_, or fighters for the faith. Mecca
and its environs, outraged as never before in the thousands of years
of its history, instantly armed itself and made ready for a _Jihad_,
or holy war of extermination.

Where the Ahl Bayt, or People of the Black Tents, had tamely enough
submitted to the invaders, these Ahl Hayt, or People of the Walls,
leaped to arms, eager for death if that could be had in the battle
against the infidel dog--for death, so, meant instant bearing up to
Paradise, to cool fountains and sweet fruits, and to the caresses of
the seventy entrancing houris that each good Moslem has had promised
him by "The Strong Book," Al Koran.

Every man and boy in all that tremendous multitude spread over many
square miles of rocky, sun-blistered aridity, seized whatever came
first to hand, for the impending war, as the black shadow of _Nissr_
lagged down toward the city and the Haram. Some snatched rifles, some
pistols; others brandished spears and well-greased _nebut_ clubs, six
feet long and deadly in stout hands. Even camel-sticks and tent-poles
were furiously flung aloft. Pitiful, impotent defiance, no more
effective than the waving of ants' antennae against the foot that
kicks their nest to bits!

Screams, curses, execrations in a score of tongues mounted in one
frenzied chorus. Swarms of white-robed pilgrims came running in masses
after the drifting shadow, knocking each other down, falling
aver tent-pegs, stampeding pack-animals. The confusion amazed the
Legionaries as they watched all this excitement through their powerful
glasses.

"It looks," thought the Master, with a smile, "as if our little
surprise-party might be a lively affair. Well, I am ready for it.
'Allah knows best, and time will show!'"

All over the plain and through the city, myriads of little white
puffs, drifting down-wind, showed the profusion of firing. Now came
the boom of a cannon from the Citadel--an unshotted gun, used only for
calling the Faithful to prayer. Its booming echo across the plain and
up against the naked, reddish-yellow hills, still further whipped the
blood-frenzy of the mad mobs.

Even the innumerable pigeons, "Allah's announcers,"[1] swirled in
clouds from the arcades, mosques, and minarets surrounding the Haram,
and from the Ka'aba itself, and began winging erratic courses all
about the Forbidden City. Men, birds, and animals alike, all shared
the terror of this unheard-of outrage when--according to ancient
prophesy--the Great Devils of Feringistan should desecrate the holy
places.

[Footnote 1: So called because of their habit of cooing and bowing.
Moslems fancy they are praying to Allah and making salaam to him.]

"Slow her!" commanded the Master into the engine-room phone, and began
compensating with the helicopters, as _Nissr_ lagged over the crowded
city. "Shut off--let her drift! Stand by to reverse!"

Mecca the Unattainable now lay directly beneath, its dun roofs, packed
streets, ivory minarets all open to the heretics' gaze from portholes,
from the forward observation pit and from the lower gallery. As
_Nissr_ eased herself down to about one thousand feet, the plan of
the city became visible as on a map. The radiating streets all started
from the Haram. White mobs were working themselves into frenzy,
trampling the pilgrims' shrouds that had been dipped in the waters of
the well, Zem Zem, and laid out to dry.

Not even the Master's aplomb could suppress a strange gleam in
his eye, could keep his face from paling a little or his lips from
tightening, as he now beheld the inmost shrine of two hundred and
thirty million human beings. Nor did any of the Legionaries, bold as
they were, look upon it without a strange contraction of the heart. As
for the Apostate Sheik, that old jackal of the desert was crouched
in his place of confinement, with terror clutching at his soul; with
visions of being torn to pieces by furious Sunnite mobs oppressing
him.

And Rrisa, what of him? Shut into his cabin, with the door locked
against intrusion, he was lying face downward on the metal floor,
praying. For the first time in the world's history, a Moslem's
_kiblah_, or direction of prayer, was directly downward!

"Reverse!" ordered the Master. Nissr hovered exactly above the Haram
enclosure. "Lower to five hundred feet, then hold her!"

The air-liner sank slowly, with a hissing of air-intakes into the
vacuum-floats, and hung there, trembling, quivering with the slow
back-revolution of her screws, the swift energy of her helicopters.
The Master put her in charge of Janina, the Serbian ace, and descended
to the lower gallery.

Here he found the crew assembled by Bohannan and Leclair ready for the
perilous descent they were about to make.

He leaned over the rail, unmindful of the ragged patter of bullets
from below, and with a judicial eye observed the prospect. His calm
contrasted forcibly with the frenzied surging of the pilgrim mobs
below, a screaming, raging torrent of human passion.

Clearly he could discern every detail of the city whereof Mohammed
wrote in the second chapter of the Koran: "So we have made you the
center of the nations that you should bear witness to men." He could
see the houses of dark stone, clustering together on the slopes like
swallows' nests, the unpaved streets, the _Mesjid el Haram_, or
sacred square, enclosed by a great wall and a colonnade surmounted by
small white domes.

At the corners of this colonnade, four tall white minarets towered
toward the sky--minarets from which now a pretty lively rifle-fire
was developing. A number of small buildings were scattered about the
square; but all were dominated by the black impressive cube of the
Ka'aba itself, the _Bayt Ullàh_, or Allah's house.

The Master gave an order. Ferrara obeying it, brought from his cabin
a piece of apparatus the Master had but perfected in the last two days
of flight over the Sahara. This the Master took and clamped to the
rail.

"Captain Alden," said he, "stand by, at the engine-room phone from
this gallery, here, to order any necessary adjustments as weights
are dropped or raised. Keep the ship at constant altitude as well as
position. Major Bohannan and Lieutenant Leclair, are your crews ready
for the descent?"

"Yes, sir," the major answered. "_Oui, mon capitaine_," replied the
Frenchman.

"Tools all ready? Machine-guns installed? Yes? Very well. Open the
trap, now, and swing the nacelle by the electric crane and winch.
Right! Steady!"

The yells of rage and hate from below were all this time increasing in
volume and savagery. Quite a pattering of rifle-bullets had
developed against the metal body of the lower gallery and--harmlessly
glancing--against the fuselage.

Smiling, the Master once more peered over. He seemed, as indeed he
was, entirely oblivious to any fear. Too deeply had the Oriental
belief of Kismet, of death coming at the appointed hour and no sooner,
penetrated his soul, to leave any place there for the perils of
chance.

The swarming Haram enclosure presented one of the most extraordinary
spectacles ever witnessed by human eyes. The strangeness of the scene,
witnessed under the declining sun of that desert land, was heightened
by the fact that all these furious Moslems were seen from above. Men
cease to appear human, at that angle. They seem to be only heads, from
which legs and arms flail out grotesquely.

The Haram appeared to have become a vast pool of brown faces and
agitated white _ihrams_ (pilgrim robes) of weaving brown hands,
of gleaming weapons. This pool, roaring to heaven, showed strange,
violent currents in flow and refluent ebb of hate.

To descend into that maelstrom of frenzied murder-lust took courage
of the highest order. But neither Bohannan nor the Frenchman had even
paled. Not one of their men showed any hesitancy whatever.

"Ready, sir," said the major, crisply. "Faith, give the signal and
down we go; and we'll either bring back what we're going after, or
we'll all come back and report ourselves dead!"

"Just a minute, Major," the Master answered. He had opened a small
door of the box containing the apparatus he had just clamped to the
rail, and had taken out a combination telephone earpiece and receiver.
With this at mouth and ear, he leaned over the rail. His lips moved in
a whisper inaudible even to those in the lower gallery with him.

An astonishing change, however, swept over the infuriated mob in the
Haram and throughout the radiating streets. One would have thought a
bolt from heaven had struck the Moslems dumb. The angry tumult died;
the vast hush that rose to _Nissr_ was like a blow in the face,
so striking was its contrast with the previous uproar. Most of the
furious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanatics
remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.




CHAPTER XXXI


EAST AGAINST WEST

The major, peering down through the trap, swore luridly. Leclair
muttered something to himself, with wrinkled brow. "Captain Alden's"
eyes blinked strangely, through the holes of the mask. The others
stared in frank astonishment.

"What the devil, sir--?" began the major; but the chief held up
his hand for silence. Again he spoke whisperingly into the strange
apparatus. This time a murmur rose to him; a murmur increasing to a
confused tumult, that in an angry wave of malediction beat up about
Nissr as she hung there with spinning helicopters, over the city.

The Master smiled as he put up the receiver in the little box and
closed the door with a snap. Regretfully he shook his head.

"These Arabic gentlemen, _et ál_," he remarked, "don't seem agreeably
disposed to treat with us on a basis of exchanging the Sheik Abd el
Rahman for what we want from them. My few remarks in Arabic, via this
etheric megaphone, seem to have met a rebuff. Every man in the Haram,
the minarets, the arcade, and the radiating streets heard every word I
said, gentlemen, as plainly as if I had spoken directly into his ear.
Yet no sound at all developed here."


"The principle is parallel to that of an artillery shell that only
bursts when it strikes, and might be extremely useful in warfare,
if properly developed--as I haven't had time, yet, to develop it. No
matter about that, though. My proposal has been rejected. Peace having
been declined, we have no alternative but to use other, means.
There is positively no way of coming to an agreement with our Moslem
friends, below."

As if to corroborate his statement, a rifle-bullet whistled through
the open trap and flattened itself against the metal underbody of the
fuselage, over their heads. It fell almost at "Captain Alden's" feet.
She picked it up and pocketed it.

"My first bit of Arabia," said she. "Worth keeping."

The firing, below, had now become more general than ever. Shrill cries
rose to Allah for the destruction of these infidel flying dogs. The
Master paid no more heed to them than to the buzzing of so many bees.

"I think, Major," said he, "we shall have to use one of the two
kappa-ray bombs on these Arabic gentry. It's rather too bad we haven't
more of them, and that the capsules are all gone."

"Pardon me, my Captain," put in Leclair, "but the
paralysis-vibrations, eh? As you did to me, why not to them?"

"Impossible. The way we're crippled, now, I haven't the equipment. But
I shall nevertheless be able to show you something, Lieutenant. Major
will you kindly drop one of the kappa-rays?"

He gestured at two singular-looking objects that stood on the metal
floor of the lower gallery, about six feet from the trap. Cubical
objects they were, some five inches on the edge, each enclosed in what
seemed a tough, black, leather-like substance netted with stout white
cords that were woven together into a handle at the top.

Strong as Bohannan was, his face grew red, with swollen veins in
forehead and neck, as he tried to lift this small object. Nothing in
the way of any known substance could possibly have weighed so much;
not even solid lead or gold.

"Faith!" grunted the major. "What the devil? These two little metal
boxes didn't weigh a pound apiece when--ugh!--when we packed 'em in
our bags. How about it, chief?"

The Master smiled with amusement.

"They weren't magnetized then, Major," he answered. "Shall I have
someone help you?"

"No, by God! I'll either lift this thing or die, right here!" the Celt
panted, redder still. But he did not lift the little cube. The best he
could do was to drag it, against mighty resistance, to the edge of the
trap; and with a last, mighty heave, project it into space.

As it left the trap, _Nissr_ rocked and swayed, showing how great a
weight had been let drop. Down sped the little, netted cube, whirling
in the sunlight. Its speed was almost that of a rifle-ball--so far in
excess of anything that could have been produced by gravitation as to
suggest that some strange, magnetic force was hurling it earthward,
like a metal-filing toward an electro-magnet. It dwindled to nothing,
in a second, and vanished.

All peered over the rail, eager with anticipation. No explosion
followed, but the most astonishing thing happened. All at once,
without any preliminary disturbance, the ground became white. A
perfect silence fell on the Haram and the city for perhaps half a mile
on all sides of the sacred enclosure Haram and streets, roof-tops,
squares all looked as if suddenly covered with deep snow.

This whiteness, however, was not snow, but was produced by the
_ihrams_ of the pilgrims now coming wholly to view.

Instead of gazing down on the heads of the multitude--all bare heads,
as the Prophet commands for pilgrims--the Legionaries now found
themselves looking at their whole bodies. Every pilgrim in sight
had instantaneously fallen to the earth, on the gravel of the Haram,
along the raised walks from the porticoes to the Ka'aba, on the marble
tiling about the Ka'aba itself, even in the farthest visible streets.

The white-clad figures lay piled on each other in grotesque attitudes
and heaps. Even the stone tank at the north-west side of the Ka'aba,
under the famous Myzab, or Golden Waterspout on the Ka'aba roof, was
heaped full of them; and all round the sacred Zem Zem well they lay in
silent windrows, reaped down by some silent, invisible force.

In the remote suburbs and out on the plain, the Legionaries'
binoculars could still see a swarming of white figures; but all the
immediate vicinity was now wholly silent, motionless. To and fro the
Master swept his glasses, and nodded with satisfaction.

"You have now fifteen minutes, men," said he, "before the paralyzing
shock of that silent detonation--that noiseless release of molecular
energies which does not kill nor yet destroy consciousness in the
least--will pass away. So--"

"You mean to tell me, my Captain, _those pilgrims are still
conscious?_" demanded Leclair, amazed.

"Perfectly. They will see, hear, and know all you do. I wish them to.
The effect will be salutary, later. But they cannot move or interfere.
All you have to look out for is the incoming swarm of fanatics already
on the move. So there is no time to be lost. Into the nacelle, and
down with you!"

"But if they try to rush us you can drop the other bomb, can't you?"
demanded the major, as they all clambered into the nacelle.

The Master smiled, as he laid his hands on top of the basket and
cast his eyes over the equipment there, noting that machine-guns,
pick-axes, crowbars, and all were in position.

"The idea does you credit, Major," said he. "The fact that the other
bomb would of course completely paralyze you and your men, here, is
naturally quite immaterial. Let us have no more discussion, please.
Only fourteen minutes, thirty seconds now remain before the _Hujjaj_
will begin to recover their muscular control. You have your work cut
out for you, the next quarter-hour!"

The Master raised his hand in signal to Grison, at the electric winch
A turn of a lever, and the nacelle rose from the metals of the lower
gallery. It swung over the trap and was steadied there, a moment, by
many hands. The raiding-party leaped in.

"Lower away!" commanded the chief

Smoothly the winch released the fine steel cable, with a purring
sound. Down shot the nacelle, steadily, swiftly, with the major,
Leclair, and the others now engaged in the most perilous, dare-devil
undertaking imaginable.

Down, swiftly down, to raid the _Bayt Ullah_, the sacred Ka'aba, holy
of holies to more than two hundred million Moslem fanatics, each of
whom would with joy have died to keep the hand of the unbelieving
dog from so much as touching that hoar structure or the earth of the
inviolate Haram.

Down, swiftly down with picks and crowbars. Down, into the midst of
all that paralyzed but still conscious hate, to the very place of the
supremely sacred Black Stone, itself.




CHAPTER XXXII


THE BATTLE OF THE HARAM

The raiding-party, beside its two leaders, consisted of Lombardo,
Rennes, Emilio, Wallace, and three others, including Lebon. The
lieutenant's orderly, now having recovered strength, had pleaded so
hard for an opportunity to avenge himself on the hated Moslems that
Leclair had taken him.

As for Lombardo, he had downright insisted on going. His life, he
knew, was already forfeited to the expedition--by reason of his having
let the stowaway escape--and, this being so, he had begged and been
granted the favor of risking it in this perilous undertaking.

Such was the party now swiftly dropping toward the Haram where never
yet in the history of the world two English-speaking men had at one
time gathered; where never yet the speech of the heretic had been
heard; where so many intruders had been beheaded or crucified for
having dared profane the ground sacred to Allah and his Prophet.

To the major, peering over the side of the nacelle, it seemed as
if the Haram--central spot of pilgrimage and fanatic devotion for
one-seventh of the human race--were leaping up to meet him. With
dizzying rapidity the broad square, the grim black Ka'aba, the
prostrate white throngs all sprang up at the basket. Fascinated, the
major watched; his eyes, above all, sought the mysterious Ka'aba.
Excitement thrilled his romantic soul at thought that he was one of
the very first white men in the world ever to behold that strange,
ancient building.

Clearly he could see the stone slabs cemented with gypsum, the few
stricken pigeons lying there, the cords holding the huge _kiswah_,
or brocaded cloth, covering "Mecca's bride," (the Ka'aba). The Golden
Waterspout was plainly visible, gleaming in the sun--a massive trough
of pure metal, its value quite incalculable.

Now the Ka'aba was close; now the nacelle slowed, beside it, in the
shadow of its grim blackness. The major got an impression of exceeding
richness from the shrouding veil, which he saw to be a huge silken
fabric, each side like a vast theater curtain of black, with a
two-foot band a little more than half-way up, the whole covered with
verses from the Koran worked in gold.

The nacelle sank gently on to a heap of motionless pilgrims, canted to
the left, and came to rest. Not a groan, curse, or even a sigh escaped
the desecrated Moslems forever defiled by the touch of the infidels'
accursed machine.

The effect was horribly uncanny--of all those brown men, open-eyed and
conscious, but perfectly unable to move so much as an eyebrow. Such as
had fallen with their eyes in the direction of the nacelle, could
see what was going on; the others could only judge of this incredible
desecration by what they could hear. The sound of foreign voices,
speaking an unbelievers' tongue in the very shadow of the Ka'aba, must
have been supremely horrible to every Mohammedan there.

"Out, men, and at it!" the major commanded, as he scrambled from the
nacelle, slid and stumbled over the Moslems, and reached hands for the
tools passed out to him. Leclair followed. Men and tools were swiftly
unloaded, leaving only Wallace and Emilio at their guns, as agreed.

"Faith, but this is some proposition!" grunted the major, as the seven
men trampled over the prostrate bodies, without any delay whatever to
peer at the Haram or the Ka'aba.

"The stone's there, men, at the south-east corner! Get busy!"

No exhortation was necessary. Every man, nerved to the utmost energy
by the extreme urgency of the situation, leaped to work. And a strange
scene began, the strangest in all the history of that unknown city of
mysteries. The little troop of white men in uniform stumbled over the
bodies and faces of their enemies along the Ka'aba, past the little
door about seven feet from the ground, and so, skirting the slanting
white base, two feet high, came to the Hajar el Aswad, or Black Stone,
itself.

Above, in the burning Arabian sky, the air-liner hovered like a
gigantic bird of prey, her gallery-rails lined with motionless
watchers. The Master observed every move through powerful glasses.
Over his ears a telephone headpiece, which he had slipped on, kept him
in close touch with the men in the nacelle, via the steel cable. This
cable formed a strand between East and West; if any evil chance
should break it, life would end there and then for nine members of the
Legion, brave men all.

That their time was short, indeed, was proved by the vague, hollow
roar already drifting in from the outskirts of the city, and from
the plain whence, crowding, struggling into the city's narrow ways, a
raging mass of pilgrims was already on the move. A tidal-wave, a sea
of hate, the hundred thousand or more _Hujjaj_ as yet untouched by the
strong magic of the Feringi, were fighting their way toward the Haram.

The time of respite was measured but by minutes. Each minute, every
second, bore supreme value.

"There she is, men!" the major shouted, pointing. And on the instant,
driving furiously with pick-axe, he struck the first blow.

Plainly, about three feet below the bottom of the silken veil and four
feet above the pavement, there indeed they saw the inestimably sacred
stone, which every Moslem believes once formed a part of Paradise and
was given by Allah to the first man. To the Legionaries' excited eyes
it seemed to be an irregular oval, perhaps seven inches in diameter,
with an undulating surface composed of about a dozen smaller stones
joined by cement and worn blackly smooth by millions of touches and
kisses.

It was surrounded by a border of cement that looked like pitch and
gravel; and the major noted, even as he drove his pick into this
cement, that both the stone and the border were enclosed by a massive
circle of gold with the lower part studded full of silver nails.

Only these hasty observations, and no more, the Legionaries made as
they fell with furious energy to the task of dislodging the venerable
relic. To all but this labor they were oblivious--to the heat and
stifle of that sun-baked square, the mute staring of the paralyzed
_Hujjaj_, the wafting languor of incenses from the colonnades, the
quiet murmur of waters from the holy well, Zem Zem.

The scene, which ordinarily would have entranced them and filled them
with awe, now had become as nothing. Every energy, every sense had
centered itself only on this one vital work of extracting the Black
Stone from the Ka'aba wall and of making a swift getaway with it
before the rising murmur of rage, from without the area of paralysis,
should sweep in on them with annihilating passion.

"Here, Emilio--drive your pick here!" commanded the major, his red
face now dark crimson with heat and excitement as well as with the
intense force wherewith he was wielding his implement. Cement flew
in showers at every stroke, out over the sweating Legionaries and the
prostrate Moslems near the stone. The white men slid and stumbled
on limp bodies, trampled them unheedingly, and of the outstretched
pilgrims made as it were a kind of vantage-post for the attack on the
inmost citadel of Islam.

"Work quick, Major!" came the Master's voice, seemingly at Bohannan's
elbow. "There's a fearful drove of the rascals coming. You'd better
get that stone out and away in double-quick time!"

The major replied nothing, but his pick-axe flailed into the cement
with desperate energy. Emilio and others seconded him, while Rennes
and Wallace dug, kneeling, with their crowbars. The blows echoed with
staccato rapidity through the sacred Haram, which now had begun to
fill with the confused roar of the on-coming mobs from the Ma'abidah
suburb and the Plain of Mina, from Jebel Hindi and the Sulaymainyah
quarter.

"You have about five minutes more," the Master spoke again. "If
necessary, we will open on them with machine-guns, from the ship, but
I'd like to avoid bloodshed if possible. Do the best you can!"

Bohannan had no breath for answering. Every ounce of energy of all
seven men was being flung into that mad labor. Sweat streamed into
their eyes, half blinding them; they dashed it off, and struck again
and again. The cement crumbled and gave; the heavy gold band commenced
to bend; Rennes got his crowbar into an advantageous leverage and gave
a mighty heave.

The stone seemed to cry aloud, with a dry, harsh screaming sound
of outraged agony, as it yielded. It was only the sundering of
the mortar, of course; but a chill ran up the major's spine, and
goose-flesh prickled all over him. Furiously the Legionaries worked
the stone back and forth; a shower of mortar fell on the workers' feet
and on the upturned, staring faces of the paralyzed Moslems trampled
by the horrible contamination of heretical boots--perhaps even pigskin
boots!--and then, all at once, the Hajar el Aswad slid from the place
where it had lain uncounted centuries.

Cursing with frantic excitement, the Legionaries tugged it from the
wall, together with its golden band. Above them the _kiswah_ bellied
outward, swaying in the breeze. No Moslem has ever admitted that the
Ka'aba veil is ever moved by any other thing than the wings of angels.
Those of the Faithful who now beheld that movement, felt the avenging
messengers of Allah were near, indeed; and a thousand unspoken prayers
flamed aloft:

"Angels of death, Azraël and his host, smite these outcasts of
Feringistan!"

The prayers seemed more likely of fulfilment from the hands of the
oncoming hordes already streaming into the converging streets to the
Haram. As the stone came clear, into the hands of the invaders, a
dank, chill blast of air blew from the aperture against the white
men's faces. It seemed to issue as from a cavern; and with it came a
low, groaning sound, as of a soul in torment.

A shadow fell across the Haram; the light of the sun was dulled. The
sudden crack of a rifle-shot snapped from the arcade, and a puff of
rock-dust flew from the corner of the Ka'aba, not two feet from the
major's head.

"Come on, men!" cried the major. "Away!"

Some latent mysticism had been stirred in him; some vague, half-sensed
superstition. Nothing more natural than that a cold draught should
have soughed from the pent interior of the temple, or that the
air-liner, slowly turning as she hung above the Haram, should with her
vast planes have for a moment thrown her shadow over the square. But
the Celt's imaginative nature quivered as he gripped the stone.

"You, quick, on the other end!" he cried to Emilio. "You, Lombardo,
steady her! So! Now--to the nacelle!"

The rifles were opening a lively fire, already, as the men staggered
over the prostrate Moslems, reached the nacelle and with a grunt and
a heave tumbled the Hajar el Aswad into it. They scrambled after,
falling into the shelter of the basket.

Into the arcade, at the north-east corner and half-way along the
western side, two furious swarms of white-robed _Hujjaj_ were already
debouching, yelling like fiends, firing as they came. The uproar
swelled rapidly, in a swift-rising tide. The Haram grew all a
confusion of wild-waving arms, streaming robes, running men who
stumbled over the paralyzed forms of their coreligionists. Knives,
spears, scimitars, rifles glinted in the sun.

The whine and patter of bullets filled the air, punctured the
_kiswah_, slogged against the Ka'aba. Lebon and Rennes, turning loose
the machine-guns, mowed into the white of the pack; but still they
came crowding on and on, frenzied, impervious to fear.

Up rose the nacelle, as the major wildly shouted into the phone. It
soared some forty feet in air, up past the black silken curtain, then
unaccountably stopped, level with the Ka'aba roof.

"Up! Up!" yelled Bohannan, frantically. The spud of bullets against
the steel basket tingled the bodies of the men crouching against the
metal-work.

All at once Dr. Lombardo stood up, pick-axe in hand, fully exposed to
rifle-fire.

"Down, you blazing idiot!" commanded the major, dragging at him with
hands that shook. The doctor thrust him away, and turned toward the
Ka'aba, the roof of which was not three feet distant.

"The golden spout--see?" he cried, pointing. "_Dio mio_, what a
treasure!" On to the edge of the nacelle he clambered.

"Don't be a damn fool, Doctor!" the major shouted; but already
Lombardo had leaped. Pick in hand, he jumped, landing on the flat roof
of the temple.

Ferocious howls and execrations swelled into a screaming chorus
of hate, of rage. Unmindful, the Italian was already frantically
attacking the Myzab. Blow after blow he rained upon it with the sharp,
cutting edge of the pick, that at every stroke sank deep into the
massive gold, shearing it in deep gashes.

A perfect hail of rifle-fire riddled the air all about him, but still
he labored with sweat streaming down his face all blackened with dirt
and cement. From _Nissr_, far above, cries and shouts rang down at
him, mingled with the sharp spitting of the machine-guns from the
lower gallery. The guns in the nacelle, too, were chattering; the
Haram filled itself with a wild turmoil; the scene beggared any
attempt at description, there under the blistering ardor of the
Arabian sun.

All at once Dr. Lombardo inserted the blade of the pick under the
golden spout, pried hard, bent it upward. He stamped it down again
with his boot-heel, dropped the pick and grappled it with both
straining hands. By main force he wrenched it up almost at right
angles. He gave another pull, snapped it short off, dragged it to the
parapet of the Ka'aba, and with a frantic effort swung it, hurled it
into the nacelle.

Down sank the basket, a little, under this new weight.

The doctor leaped, jumped short, caught the edge of the basket and
was just pulling himself up when a slug caught him at the base of the
brain.

His hold relaxed; but the major had him by the wrists. Into the
nacelle he dragged the dying man.

"For the love o' God, _haul up!_" he shouted.

The basket leaped aloft, as the winch--that had been jammed by a
trivial accident to the control--took hold of the steel cable. Up
it soared, still pursued by dwindling screams of rage, by now futile
rifle-fire. Before it had reached the trap in the lower gallery,
the main propellers had begun to whicker into swift revolution, all
gleaming in the afternoon sun. The gigantic shadow of the Eagle of the
Sky began to slide athwart the hill-side streets to south-eastward of
the Haram; and so, away.

Up came the nacelle through the trap. The davit swung it to one side;
the trap was slammed down and bolted. Out of the nacelle tumbled the
major, pale as he had formerly been red, his face all drawn with grief
and pain.

"The damned Moslem swine!" he panted. "Faith, but they--they've killed
him!" He flung a passionate hand at the basket, in which, prone across
the golden spout, the still body of Lombardo was lying. "They've
killed as brave a man--"

"We all saw what he did, Major," the chief said quietly. "Dr. Lombardo
owed us all a debt, and he has paid it. This is Kismet! Control
yourself, Major. The price of such brave adventure--is often death."

They lifted out the limp form, and carried it away to the cabin Dr.
Lombardo had occupied, there to wait some opportune time for burial
in the desert. Mecca, in the meanwhile, was already fading away to
north-westward. The heat-shimmer of that baked land of bare-ribbed
rock and naked, igneous hills had already begun to blur its outlines.
The white minarets round the Haram still with delicate tracery as of
carved ivory stood up against the sky; but of the out-raged people,
the colonnades, the despoiled and violated Ka'aba, nothing could any
more be seen.

Southward by eastward sped _Nissr_; and with her now was departing the
soul of Islam. In her keeping lay three things more sacred than all
else to Mohammedan hearts--Kaukab el Durri, the Great Pearl Star; Ha
jar el As wad, the Black Stone; and Myzab, the Golden Waterspout.

Awed, silenced, the Legionaries stood there in the lower gallery,
peering into the blood-stained nacelle. Hard-bitten men, all, and used
to the ways and usages of war; yet factors were present in this latest
exploit that sobered and steadied them as never before.

The Master, still unmoved, merely smiled a peculiar smile as he
commanded:

"Major, have the stone and the golden spout carried to my cabin. And,
if you please, no remarks!"

Bohannan picked a few men to fulfil the order. Then he asked and
received permission to retire to the smoke-room, for a pipe and a
quiet half-hour, after having washed the dust and grime of battle
from his hands and face. The major's Celtic nerves needed tobacco and
reflection as they had rarely needed them.

The Master, climbing up the ladder to the main gallery, left Leclair
and a few off-duty men in the lower one. Two or three approached the
French ace, to hold speech with him about the exploit at the Ka'aba,
but he withdrew from them to the extreme rear end of the gallery and
remained for a long time in silent contemplation of the fading city,
the Plain of Mina, and Mount Arafat, beyond.

As the vague purple haze of late afternoon deepened to veils that
began to hide even the outlines of the mountain, he leaned both elbows
on the rail and in his own language whispered:

"_Nom de Dieu!_ The Pearl Star--the Golden Waterspout--the sacred
Black Stone!" His face was white with pride and a fire of eagerness
that burned within. "Why, now we're masters of all Islam--masters of
the treasure-houses of the Orient!

"_Mais--nom de Dieu!_"




CHAPTER XXXIII


THE ORDEAL OF RRISA

Alone in his cabin with the waterspout of massive gold and with the
sacred Black Stone, the Master sat down in front of the table where
they had been laid, took a few leaves of khat, and with profound
attention began to study the treasures his _bold coup_ had so
successfully delivered into his hands.

The waterspout, he saw at once, would as a mere object of precious
metal be worth a tremendous sum. It was of raw gold, apparently
unalloyed--as befitted its office of carrying the water from the roof
of the Ka'aba and throwing it upon Ishmael's grave, where pilgrims
have for centuries stood fighting to catch it. Its color verged
on reddish; all its lateral surfaces were carved with elaborate
arabesques and texts from the Koran. The bottom bore an inscription in
Tumar characters, easily decipherable by the Master, stating that it
had been sent from Constantinople in the year of the Hegira 981, by
Shâfey Hanbaly, the Magnificent.

"A great treasure," pondered the Master. "An almost incalculable
treasure, in itself; but less so, intrinsically, than as an object of
Moslem veneration. In either case, however, enormously valuable."

He examined it a moment or two longer, noting with care the gashes and
deep cuts made by the frantic strokes of Dr. Lombardo's pick-axe. What
his thoughts might have been regarding the doctor's tragic death, none
could have told. For with a face quite unmoved, he turned now to the
examination of the world-famous Black Stone.

This object, he saw, possessed no value whatever, _per se_. Aside from
its golden encircling band studded with silver nails, its worth seemed
practically nothing. As it lay on the table before him, he realized
that it was nothing but a common aerolite, with the appearance of
black slag. Its glossy, pitchlike surface, on the end that had been
exposed from the wall, was all worn and polished smooth by innumerable
caresses from Moslem hands and lips.

"Very hygienic," the Master thought. "If there was ever a finer way
devised for spreading the plague and other Oriental diseases, I can't
very well imagine what it could be!"

A bit of the stone had been broken off by Leclair's crowbar. The
Master's trained, scientific eye saw, by the brightly sparkling,
grayish section of the break, that iron and nickel formed the chief
elements of the stone. Its dimensions, though its irregular form made
these hard to come by, seemed about two and a half feet in length, by
about seven or eight inches in breadth and thickness. Its weight, as
the Master stood up and lifted it, must have been about two hundred
pounds. No doubt one man could have carried it from its place in the
Ka'aba to the nacelle; but in the excitement of battle, and impeded by
having to stumble over prostrate Moslems, the major had considered it
advisable to ask for help.

"Mineralogically speaking, this is a meteor or a block of volcanic
basalt," judged the Master. "It seems sprinkled with small crystals,
with rhombs of tile-red feldspath on a dark background like velvet or
charcoal, except for one reddish protuberance of an unknown substance.
A good blow with a hammer would surely break it along the original
lines of fracture--and this is well worth knowing and remembering".

"Well, so far so good," he concluded. "The Air Control Board hasn't
got us, yet. Neither have the Mohammedans. True, we've lost a number
of men, but that was to have been expected. That's inevitable, and we
still have enough. I hardly see that we have so very much to complain
of, so far."

He turned, pulled a blanket from his berth and carefully spread it
over the loot on the table. Then he pushed the button communicating
with the cabin wherein Rrisa was still quivering as a result of having
heard the fusillades and the terrific tumult--unseen though they had
been to him--at Mecca.

In a couple of minutes the faithful orderly appeared, salaamed, and
stood waiting with a drawn, troubled face.

"_Allah m'a!_" the Master greeted him, in Allah's name inquiring for
his good health. "I have something important to ask thee. Come in.
Come in, and close the door."

He spoke in Arabic. The orderly, in the same tongue, made answer as he
obeyed:

"The Master hath but to talk, and it is answered, if my knowledge can
suffice." His words were submissive; but the expression was strange
in his eyes, at sight of the blanket on the table. That blanket might
hide--what might it not hide? The light in his gaze became one the
Master had never yet seen there, not even in the sternest fighting at
Gallipoli.

"Mecca lieth behind us, Rrisa," the Master began. "Thou hast seen
nothing of it, or of what happened there?"

"Nothing, _M'almé._ I was bidden remain in my cabin, and the Master's
word is always my law. It is true that I heard sounds of a great
fighting, but I obeyed the Master. I saw nothing. The Sheik Abd el
Hareth, did you deliver him into the hands of the Faithful?"

"No, Rrisa. They refused to accept him. And now I have other plans
for him. It is well that thou didst see nothing, for it was a mighty
fighting and there was death both to them and to us. Now, my questions
to thee."

"Yea, Master?"

"Tell me this thing, first. Is it indeed true speaking, as I have
heard, that the Caliph el Walid the First, in Hegira 88, sent to Mecca
an immense present of gold and silver, forty camel-loads of small cut
gems and a hundred thousand _miskals_ in gold coin?"

"It is true, Master. Save that he sent more; nearly two hundred
thousand _miskals_. He also sent eighty Coptic and Greek artists to
carve and gild the mosques.

"One Greek sculptured a hog on the Mosque of Omar, trying to make it
into a _kanisah_ (unclean idol-house). My people discovered the sacrilege,
and"--he added with intent--"gave that Greek the bowstring, then quartered
the body and threw it to the vultures."

"That is of no importance whatever, Rrisa," answered the Master with
an odd smile. "What thy people do to the unbeliever, if they capture
him, is nothing to me. For--dost thou see?--they must first make the
capture. What I would most like to know is this: where is all that
treasure, now?"

"I cannot tell you, Master."

"At Mecca?"

"No, Master, not at Mecca."

"Then where?"

"_M'almé!_ My lips are sealed as the Forbidden Books!"

"Not against the commands of thy sheik--and I am thy sheik!"

Rrisa's lips twitched. The inner struggle of his soul reflected itself
in his lean, brown face. At last he aroused himself to make answer:

"The treasure, Master, is far to the south-east--in another city."

"Ah! So there _is_ another city far out in Ruba el Khali, the Empty
Abodes!"

"Yea, _M'almé_, that is so."

"Then the ancient rumor is true? And it is from near that city that
thou didst come, eh? By Allah's power, I command thee to tell me of
this hidden city of the central deserts!"

"This thing I cannot do, my sheik."

"This thing thou must do!"

"O Master! It is the secret of all secrets! Spare me this!"

"No Rrisa, thou must obey. Far inside El Hejaz (the barrier), that
city is lying for my eyes to behold. I must know of it. Thy oath to me
cannot be broken. Speak, thou!"

The Master made no gesture with his hands, did not frown or clench his
fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa
like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a
piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer:

"_M'almé_, in our tongue we have a proverb: 'There are two things
colder than ice--a young old man and an old young man.' There is still
a colder thing--the soul that betrays the Hidden City!"

"Speak Rrisa! There is no escape for thee!"

"My sheik, I obey," quavered the unfortunate orderly, shaken with a
palsy of fear. Without a quiver, the Arab would rush a machine-gun
position or face a bayonet-charge; but this betrayal of his kin struck
at the vitals of his faith. Still, the Master's word was law even
above Al Koran. With trembling lips he made answer:

"This city--spare me uttering its name, Master!--lies many hours'
journey, even by this Eagle of the Sky, beyond the Iron Mountains that
no man of the Feringi hath ever seen. It lies beyond the Great Sand
Barrier, in a valley of the Inner Mountains; yea, at the very heart of
Ruba el Khali."

"I hear thee, Rrisa. Speak further. And let thy speaking be truth!"

"It shall be truth, by the Prophet's beard! What doth the Master ask
of me?"

"Is it a large city, Rrisa?"

"Very large."

"And beautiful?"

"As the Jebel Radhwa!" (Mountain of Paradise).

"Thou hast been in that secret city, Rrisa?"

"Once, Master. The wonderful sight still remaineth in mine eyes."

"And, seeing the Iron Mountains again, thou couldst guide us thither?"

"Allah forbid! That is among the black deeds, Master! 'The grave is
darkness and good deeds are its lamps; but for the betrayer, there
shall be no light!' _Wallah, Effendi!_ Do not make me your guide!"

"I have not said I intended to do so, Rrisa. I merely asked thee
if thou _couldst_!" The Master's voice was silken, fine, penetrant.
"Well, Rrisa, tell me if thou couldst!"

"Yea, Master. _Ya gharati!_ (O my calamity!) It is true I could." The
words issued from his unwilling throat as if torn out by main force.
"But I earnestly beg of you, my sheik, do not make me do this thing!"

"Rrisa, if I command, thou must obey me! 'There is only one thing can
ever loose the bonds I have knotted about thee."

"And that is certainty (death), Master?"

"That is certainty! But this, to the oath-breaker and the abuser
of the salt, means a place among the _mujrim_ (sinful). It means
Jehannum, and an unhappy couch shall it be!"

Rrisa's face grew even more drawn and lined. A trembling had possessed
his whole body.

"Master, I obey!" he made submission, then stood waiting with downcast
eyes of suffering.

"It is well," said the chief, rising. He stood for a moment peering at
Rrisa, while the hum and roar of the great air-liner's mechanism, the
dip and sway of its vast body through the upper air, seemed to add a
kind of oppressive solemnity to the tense situation. To the cabin
wall the Master turned. There hung a large-scale map of the Arabian
Peninsula. He laid a hand on the vast, blank interior, and nodded for
Rrisa to approach.

"Listen, thou," said he. "Thy knowledge is sufficient. Thou dost
understand the interpretation of maps, and canst read latitude and
longitude. Mark here the place of the Hidden City!"

"Of the Bara Jannati Shahr, Master? Ah no, _no_!"

"So then, that is its name?" the chief demanded, smiling.

"No, _M'almé_. Thou dost know the Arabic. Thou dost understand this
means only, in thy tongue, the Very Heavenly City."

"True. Well, let it pass. Very Heavenly City it shall be, till the
real name becomes known. Come now, mark the place of the Hidden City
and mark it truly, or the greatest of sins will lie upon thy soul!"

The Arab advanced a brown, quivering hand.

"Give me a pencil, Master, and I obey!" he answered, in a voice hardly
audible.




CHAPTER XXXIV


THE INNER SECRET OF ISLAM

The chief handed him a pencil. Rrisa intelligently studied the map for
nearly two minutes, then raised his hand and made a dot a few miles
north-east of the intersection of fifty degrees east and twenty
degrees north. The Master's eye was not slow to note that the
designated location formed one point of a perfect equilateral
triangle, the other points of which were Bab el Mandeb on the south
and Mecca on the north.

"There, _M'almé_," whispered the Arab, in a choking voice. "Now I
have told you the secret of all secrets, and have lost my soul. I have
revealed the inner mystery of Islam, that to this day no man of the
Feringi hath ever known. I am a very great man of sin, and should have
first torn out my tongue.

"But my life is in your hands, Master, and I have shared your salt.
Allah knows I was forced to speak. _Shal'lah!_ (It is _Allah's_
will!) Allah will weigh my heart and will forgive, for he is the
Compassionate, the Merciful! I beg you, Master, now let me go!"

"Soon, Rrisa," the chief answered, turning away from the map. "But
first there is something of highest import I must show thee."

"And what may that be, my sheik?" the Arab queried, his widening eyes
fixed on the blanket that covered the loot from Mecca. Instinctively
he sensed that some horrible sight was about to be presented to him.
His face paled even more. He licked dry lips with a tongue equally
dry, and leaned against the table to steady himself. "What have you
now to show me, O _M'almé?_"

"Listen!" the chief commanded sternly. "The Meccans are a people
corrupt and accursed. 'Their hearts are black as their skins are
white.' They live by fleecing the _Hujjaj_, by making sale and barter
of relics, by turning the holy places into marts of trade. All this is
well known throughout Islam. Ah, the degenerate breed of the sons of
the Prophet!"

"That is true, Master. And what then?"

"Is it not a fact that they could not even safeguard the Kaukab el
Durri from the hand of the Great Apostate Sheik? How much less, then,
could they protect their other and more sacred things, if some Shiah
dog should come to rob them of the things they value?

"Would it not be better that such things should be carried far from
danger, to the hidden, inner city? I ask thee this, Rrisa; would it
not be better far?"

"And what is the meaning of my master's strange words?" ventured
Rrisa, a sort of dazed horror dawning in his eyes. "The other and more
sacred things of Islam--are they there under that cloth, O Master?"

"Thou hast said it, Rrisa! Now, behold them!"

With a quick, dramatic gesture, well-calculated to strike at the roots
of the superstitious Arab's nature, he flung away the blanket. To
Rrisa's horrified gaze appeared the Myzab and the sacred Black Stone.

"_Ya Allah!_" gulped the orderly, in a choking whisper. His face
became a dull gray. His eyes, rimmed with white, stared in terror. His
teeth began to chatter; and on his forehead appeared little glistening
drops.

"O Master, that is not--."

"Truly, yea! The Golden Waterspout, Rrisa, and the Black Stone
itself! I am carrying them to the Very Heavenly City, far in the Iron
Mountains! They shall be given to the Great Olema, there, who is more
fit to guard and keep them than the Sheriff of Mecca or than his sons
Feisal and the two Alis. No harm shall befall them, and--"

"And your hand--the hands of other Feringi who are not my
masters--have touched these things?" stammered Rrisa. "O my calamity!
O my grief!"

"Thou canst go now, Rrisa," the Master said. "Go, and think well of
what I have told thee, and--"


But Rrisa, falling prone to the metal of the cabin floor, facing the
Black Stone, gave vent to his feelings and burst into a wild cry of
"_La Illaha_--" and the rest of the immemorial formula.

The Master smiled down at him, quizzical and amused yet still more
than a little affected by the terror and devotion of his orderly.
Wise, he waited till Rrisa had made the compulsory prayers of
_Labbayk, Takbir_, and _Tahiti_, as all Moslems must do when coming
near the Black Stone. Then, as the orderly's voice suddenly died away,
he bent and laid a hand on the quivering Arab's shoulder.

"Come, come, Rrisa," said he, not unkindly. "Be thou not so
distressed. Is it not better that these very precious things be kept
in greater safety at the Jannati Shahr? Come, Rrisa! Arise!"

The orderly made no move, uttered no sound. The Master dragged him
up, held him, peered into his face that had gone quite ashen under its
brown.

"Why, Lord! the man has fainted dead away!" exclaimed the Master. He
gathered Rrisa in his powerful arms, carried him to his own cabin and
laid him in the berth, there; then he bathed his face with water and
chafed his hands and throat.

In a few minutes, Rrisa's eyes vaguely opened. He gulped, gasped, made
shift to speak a few feeble words.

"Master!" he whispered.

"Well, what dost thou wish?"

"One favor, only!"

"And what is that?"

"Leave me, a little while. I must be alone, all alone with Allah--to
think!"

The Master nodded.

"It shall be as thou wishest," said he. "Think, yes. And understand
that what I do is best for all of Sunnite Islam! As for the Shiah
dogs, what hast thou to trouble about them?"

Saying no more, he withdrew to his own cabin, wrapped the Myzab and
the Stone in the blanket and laid them carefully under his berth.
Opening his desk-drawer, he assured himself the Pearl Star was still
there. This done, he turned again to the map, carefully studied
the location of the point Rrisa had designated, and--going to the
pilot-house--gave directions for a new course to "Captain Alden," now
at the wheel.

This course, he calculated by allowing for wind and lateral
drift, would carry _Nissr_ directly toward the site of the still
half-mythical Iron Mountains and the Bara Jannati Shahr.

He now returned to his cabin, locked himself in and--pondering over
a few khat leaves--passed the remainder of the afternoon sunk in deep
abstraction.

Evening and night still found him in profound thought, while the giant
air-liner steadily rushed into the south-east, bearing him and the
Legion onward toward dim regions now veiled in purple darkness under
strange stars.

At nine o'clock he ordered _Nissr_ stopped, and had the body of Dr.
Lombardo sent down with six men in the nacelle, for burial. No purpose
could be served by keeping the body, and all unnecessary complications
had to be dispensed with before the morrow. Lombardo, who had fully
atoned for his fault by having given his life in the service of the
now depleted Legion, was buried in his service-uniform, in a fairly
deep grave on which the Legionaries heaped a great tumulus of sand.
The only witnesses were the Arabian Desert stars; the only requiem
the droning of the helicopters far above, where _Nissr_ hung with her
gleaming lights like other, nearer stars in the dense black sky.

By ten o'clock, the air-liner had resumed her course, leaving still
another brave man to his last sleep, alone. The routine of travel
settled down again on the ship and its crew of adventurers.

At half-past eleven, the Master issued from his cabin. All alone, and
speaking with no man, he took a quarter-hour constitutional up and
down the narrow gallery along the side of the fuselage--the gallery
on which his cabin window opened. His face, by the vague light of the
glows in this gallery, looked pale and worn; but a certain gleam of
triumph and proud joy was visible in his dark eyes.

All about him, stretched night unbroken. Far behind, lay vast
confusions involving hundreds of millions of human beings violently
wrenched from their accustomed routines of faith and prayer, with
potential effects beyond all calculation. Ahead lay--what?

"It may be glory and power, wealth past reckoning, incredible
splendor," thought the Master, "and it may be ignominy, torture,
death. 'Allah knows best and time will show.' But whatever it may
be--is it completion? The human heart, alone--can that ever be
complete in this world?"

He bent at the rail, gazing far out into the vague emptiness through
which the air-liner was pushing.

"Come what may," he murmured, "for tonight, at any rate, it is peace.
'It is peace, till the rising of the dawn!'"

In a strange mood, still holding no converse with any man, he returned
to the main corridor and went toward his cabin. His way led past the
door of "Captain Alden." There he paused a moment, all alone in the
corridor. The lights in the ceiling showed a strange look in his eyes.
His face softened, as he laid a hand on the metal panels of the door,
silently almost caressingly.

To himself he whispered:

"I wonder who she really is? What can her name be--who can she be,
and--and--"

He checked himself, impatiently:

"What thoughts are these? What nonsense? Such things are not for me!"

Silently he returned to his cabin, undressed, switched off the light
and turned into his berth, under which lay the incalculable treasures
of Islam. For a long time he lay there, thinking, wondering, angry
with himself for having seemed to give way for a single moment to
softer thoughts than those of conquest and adventure.

Gradually the cradling swing, the quivering power of the airship,
lulled his fevered spirit. Sleep won upon him, dulled the excitements
of the past twenty-four hours, sank him into oblivion. His deep,
regular breathing sounded in the gloom of the cabin that contained
the Great Pearl Star, the Myzab, the sacred Black Stone of infinite
veneration.

An hour he slept. On, on roared _Nissr_, swaying, rising, falling
a little as she hurled herself through the Arabian night toward
the unknown Bara Jannati Shahr, hidden behind the Iron Mountains of
mystery as yet unseen by any unbelieving eye.

Peace, all seemed peace, for one dark hour.

But as the hour ended, a shadow fell along the narrow gallery outside
the cabin window. A silent shadow it was, that crept, paused, came on
again. And now in the dark, had there been any eye to see, the shadow
would have been identified as a barefoot man, lithe, alert, moving
silently forward with the soundless stealth of an Arab versed in the
art of _asar_, or man-stalking.

To the Master's window this shadow crept, a half-invisible thing in
the gloom. It paused there, listening to the deep, regular breathing
within. Then a lean, brown hand was laid on the sill. It still seemed
to hesitate.

Something gleamed vaguely in that hand--a crooked _jambiyeh_,
needle-sharp at the point, keen-edged and balanced for the stroke that
silently slays.

Motionless, unbreathing even, the shadow waited a long minute. Then
all at once over the sill it writhed, quick, lithe as a starved
panther.

Dagger in hand, the shadow slid to the berth where lay the Master of
the Legionaries. There Rrisa paused, listening to the slow respiration
of the White Sheik with whom he had shared the inviolable salt, to
whom he owed life itself.

Up, in the gloom, came the dagger-blade.

Over the unconscious Master it poised, keen, cold, avenging in the
dark of the cabin where lay the three supreme treasures of all Islam.




CHAPTER XXXV


INTO THE VALLEY OF MYSTERY

The upraised blade, poised for swift murder, did not descend. With a
groan from the heart's core, Rrisa let fall his trembling hand, as
he recoiled toward the vague patch of starlight that marked the cabin
window.

"_Bismillah_!" he whispered hoarsely. "I cannot! This is my
sheik--'and thrice cursed is the hand that slays the sheik.' I cannot
kill him!"

For a moment he remained there, pondering. Swift, passionate thoughts
surged through his brain, which burned with fever. In Rrisa's
fighting-blood the supreme battle of his whole existence was
aflame--duty of annihilating the violator of his Faith combating duty
of loyalty absolute to one whose salt he had eaten, to one who had
preserved his life.

So, in the dark he stood there, a shadow among shadows. He peered
about with white-rimmed eyes, striving to discover where now the Myzab
and the sacred Black Stone might be. The dim bulk of the blanket under
the berth came to his senses. He knelt, touched the blanket, felt the
hard solidity within.

Torn with anguish of a great conflict, he pondered, smearing the sweat
of agony from his hard-wrinkled forehead. Better was it to fling these
holy things from the cabin window, out into the night? Better the
certainty that the desert sands, far below, would inevitably drift
over them, forever burying them from the sight of his people; or
better the chance that the Master, after all, really intended to
deliver them back into Moslem hands at Bara Jannati Shahr?

"Allah, oh, guide thy servant now!" the orderly prayed with trembling
lips. "Allah, show thou me the way!"

The Master, stirring in his sleep, sighed deeply and let his right
hand fall outside the berth. Rrisa, fearful of imminent discovery,
made up his mind with simple directness. He salaamed in silence, all
but brushing the Master's hand with his lips.

"_Wa'salem!_" (Farewell!) he breathed. Then he got up, turned, laid
his dagger on the table and slid out through the window as soundlessly
as he had come. He crossed the marrow gallery in the gloom, and
mounted the rail beyond which yawned black vacancy.

For a moment he stayed there, peering down first at the impenetrable
abysses below, then up at the unmoved stars above. The ghostly aura
of light in the gallery showed his face wan, deep-graven with lines,
agonized, ennobled by strong decisions of self-sacrifice.

"Thou, Allah," he whispered, "dost know life cannot be for both my
Master and thy servant, after what thy servant hath seen. I offer thee
my life for his! Thou wilt judge aright, for thou knowest the hearts
of men and wilt wrong no man by the weight of a grain of sand. Thou
art easy to be reconciled, and merciful! There is no God but Allah,
and M'hámed is his Prophet!"

With no further word, he leaped.

Just a fraction of a second, a dim-whirling object plummeted into
space. It vanished.

As best he understood, Rrisa had solved his problem and had paid his
score.


The Master wakened early, with the late May sun already Slanting in
from far, dun and orange desert-levels, gilding the metal walls of his
cabin. For a few moments he lay there, half dreamily listening to
the deep bass hum of the propellers, the slight give and play of
the air-liner as she shuddered under the powerful drive of her
Norcross-Brail engines.

His thoughts first dwelt a little on yesterday's battle and on the
wondrous treasure now in his hands. Then they touched the approaching
campaign beyond the Iron Mountains in regions never yet seen by any
white man's eye, and for a while enveloped some of the potentialities
of that campaign.

But "Captain Alden" recurring to his mind, drove away such stern
imaginings. The Master's lips smiled, a little; his black eyes
softened, and for a moment his face assumed something that might
almost have made it akin to those of men who feel the natural passions
of the heart. Never before, in all his stern, hard life, had the
Master's expression been quite as now.

"Who can she be, I wonder?" he mused. "A woman like that, possessed of
that extraordinary beauty; a woman with education, languages, medical
skill; a woman with courage, loyalty, and devotion beyond compare,
and with all the ardor for service and adventure that any man could
have--who can she be? And--damn it, now! Who am I, to be thinking of
such nonsense, after all?"

His eyes fell on the table. Something lay there, agleam with the
sunlight flicking blood-red spots from a polished metal surface. What
could this thing be? Surely, it had not lain there, the night before.

The Master wrinkled heavy brows, focussing his sight on this metal
object. Puzzled, not yet able to make it out clearly, he raised
himself on his elbow and looked with close attention at the mysterious
object.

Suddenly he leaped from the berth, strode to the table and caught
up--Rrisa's dagger.

"Allah! What's this?" he exclaimed. "Rrisa--he's been here--and with a
knife?--"

For a second or two he stood there, staring at the _jambiyeh_ in his
grip. His powerful frame tautened; his thick, corded neck swelled with
the intensity of his emotion as his head went forward, staring.
His jaw set hard. Then with a kind of half-comprehension, he turned
quickly toward the window.

Yes, there were traces on the sill, that could not be mistaken. The
Master's keen eyes detected them, under the morning sun. He stepped to
his desk, dropped the dagger into a drawer, and pressed the button for
his orderly.

No one appeared. The Master rang again. Quite in vain. With more
precipitation than was customary with him, he dressed and went to
Rrisa's cabin.

Its emptiness confirmed his suspicions. Returning along the outer
gallery, a little pale, he reached the railing opposite his own
window. Here a scratch on the metal drew his attention. Closely he
scrutinized this scratch. A hint of whitish metal told the tale--metal
the Master recognized as having been abraded from a ring the Master
himself had given him; a ring of aluminum alloy, fashioned from part
of a Turkish grenade at Gallipoli.

The Master's face contracted painfully. In his mind he could
reconstitute the scene--Rrisa's hands gripping the rail, his climb
over it, his leap. For a moment the Master stood there with blank
eyes, peering out over the burning, tawny desolation of the great
sand-barrens that stretched away, away, to boundless immensity.

"Yes, he is surely gone," he whispered. "_Shal'lah! Razi Allahu
anhu!_" (It is Allah's will; may Allah be satisfied with him!) "What
would I not give to have him back!"

The trilling of his cabin phone startled him to attention. He entered,
took the receiver and heard Leclair's voice from the pilot-house:

"Clouds on the horizon, my Captain. And I think there is a mountain
range coming in sight. Would you care to look?"

The Master, very grim and silent, went into the pilot-house. He had
decided to make no mention of what had happened. The suicide must
pass as an accident. He himself must seem to have no knowledge of it.
Morale forbade the admission either of treachery or self-destruction,
for any member of the Legion.

The sight of vague, pearl-gray clouds on the far south-east horizon,
and of a dim, violet line of peaks notched across the heat-quivering
sky in remotest distances, struck him like a blow in the face. Clouds
must mean moisture; some inner, watered plain wholly foreign to the
general character of the Arabian Peninsula. And the peaks must be the
Iron Mountains that Rrisa had told him about. They seemed to rebuff
him, to be pointing fingers of accusation at him. Had it not been for
his insistence--

"But that is all nonsense!" he tried to assure himself, as he took
his binoculars from the rack and sighted at the forbidding, mysterious
range. "Am I responsible for a Moslem's superstitions, or his fanatic
irrationality?"

The Master's own narrow escape from death disturbed him not at all.
He hardly even thought of it. All he strove for, now, was to exculpate
himself for Rrisa's death. But this he could not do.

A sense of blood-guiltiness clung about him like a garment--the first
that he had felt on this expedition. His soul, unemotional, practical,
hard, was at last touched and wounded by the realization that Rrisa,
pushed beyond all limits of endurance, had chosen death rather than
inflict it on his sheik. And the thought that the faithful orderly's
body was now lying on the flaming sands, hundreds of miles away--that
it was already a prey to jackals, kites, and buzzards--sickened his
shuddering heart and filled him with remorse.

"Allah send a storm of sand--_jinnee_ to bury the poor chap, that's
all I can wish now!" he pondered, as he studied the strange yellowish
and orange tints in utmost horizon distances. The air, over the
shimmering peaks, seemed of a different quality from that elsewhere.
To north, to west, the desert rim of the world veiled itself in magic
blue, mysteriously dim. But there, it glowed in golden hues. What,
thought the Master, might be the meaning of all this?

The Master had no time for speculation. The urgent problem of locating
the Bara Jannati Shahr, beyond that inhospitable sierra, banished
thoughts of all else. He inspected his charts, together with the
air-liner's record of course and position. He slightly corrected the
direction of flight. "Captain Alden" was already in the pilot-house,
with Leclair. The Master summoned Bohannan tersely, and briefly
instructed him:

"You understand, of course, that we may now be facing perils beyond
any yet encountered. We have already upset all Islam, and changed the
_kiblah_--the direction of prayer--for more than two hundred million
human beings. The 'fronting-place' is now aboard _Nissr_."[1]

[Footnote 1: So long as the Black Stone was at the Ka'aba, this
building was the only spot in the world where the _kiblah_ was
circular, that is, where Moslems could pray all around it. The
Legion's theft of the stone had completely dislocated all the most
important beliefs and customs of Islam.]

"The most intense animosity of religious fanaticism will pursue us.
If the news of our exploit has, in any unaccountable way such as
the Arabs know how to employ, reached Jannati Shahr, we are in for a
battle royal. If not, we still have a chance to use diplomacy. A few
hours now will determine the issue.

"We are approaching what will probably be the final goal of this
expedition; a city beyond unknown mountains; a city that no white man
has ever yet seen and that few have even heard of. What the conditions
will be there no one can tell; but--"

"Not even Rrisa?" put in the major. "Faith, now's the time, if ever,
to consult that lad!"

"Correct, for once," assented the Master. With purpose to deceive,
he phoned for Rrisa. No answer coming, he got Simonds on the wire and
ordered him to find the orderly. The investigation thus started would,
he knew, soon bring out the fact of the orderly's disappearance. This
line of action fairly started, he went on formulating his plans:

"Major, look well to your guns. For once you may have a chance to use
them. I have put my various pieces of apparatus in good condition,
and have improvised some new features. In addition, we have the second
kappa-bomb."

"But I trust we shall not be driven to a fight. If diplomacy can win,
there will be no bloodshed. Otherwise, our only limit will be the
total destruction of these unknown people, or our own annihilation.
It's a case, now, of win what we are after, or end everything right
there, beyond those mountains!"

He ascended to the upper port gallery, and concentrated himself on
observation. A certain change in the desert was becoming noticeable,
as the air-liner flung herself at high speed into the south-east. At
times there must be a little rainfall here, or else some hidden source
of water, for a scrub, of dwarf acacia, of camel-grass, and tamarisk
had begun to show.

But as the black, naked mountains drew near, this gave place to flats
white with salt, to jagged upcroppings of dull, yellowish rock--how
little they then suspected its true nature!--and to detached cliffs
sharp as a wolf's teeth, with strata of greenish schist.

It was at 9:30 a.m. of May 28, that _Nissr_ tilted her planes and
soared abruptly over the first crags of the Iron Mountains. At a
height of forty-five hundred feet she sped above them, the heat of
their sun-baked blackness radiating up against her wings and body. No
more terrible desolation could be imagined than this rock fortress,
split with chasms and unsounded gorges, where here and there more of
the yellow outcrops showed. No life appeared, not even vultures. For
more than an hour, _Nissr's_ shadow leaped across this utter solitude
of death.

The Master summoned Leclair, Bohannan, and "Captain Alden," and for
some time gave them careful instructions which none but they were
allowed to hear.




CHAPTER XXXVI


JOURNEY'S END

All this time, the strange, yellowish sheen against the heavens was
increasing. What might lie beyond the mountains--who could tell? But
that its nature was wholly different from anything any white man ever
had beheld seemed obvious.

Quite suddenly, at 10:05, the Master's binoculars detected a break far
to southward, in the craggy wall of rock. He ordered _Nissr's_ beak
turned directly thither. Swiftly the Eagle of the Sky held her course,
speeding like an arrow. And now a vast, open plain was seen to be
spreading away, away to indeterminable distances; a plain the further
limits of which veiled themselves in bister and dull ocher vapors.

The aureate shimmer on the sky kept steadily increasing, from a point
somewhat to the left of _Nissr's_ line of flight. What this might be,
none could guess. None save the Master. More agitated than any had
ever seen him, he stood there at the rail, lips tight, hands clutching
the binoculars at his eyes.

"By Allah!" the major heard him mutter. "It can't be true--the thing
I've heard. Only a fable, surely! And yet--"

Now the vast plain was coming clearly to view. It appeared fully
under cultivation with patches of greenery that denoted gardens,
palm-groves, fruit-orchards; all signs of a well-watered region here
at the center of the world's most appalling desert.

This in itself was a thing of astonishment. But it faded to
insignificance as all at once a far, dazzling sheen burst on the
watchers. Up against the sky a wondrous, yellow blaze seemed to be
burning. Enormously far away as it still was, it filled the heart
of every observer with a strange, quick thrill of wonder, of hope.
Something of wild exultation seemed to leap through the Legionaries'
veins, at sight of that strange fire.

Leclair glanced at the Master. The dark, taciturn man, for all his
self-control, had set teeth into his lip till the blood was all but
starting.

On, on swooped _Nissr._ Now the plain was widening. Now, off at the
left, behind the shimmer of the wondrous sight that seemed a fantastic
city of dreams, long black cliffs had become visible--surely some spur
of the Iron Mountains, making to southward at the eastern edge of the
plain. This line of crags faded, in remote distance, into the brown
vapors that ringed the mystic horizon.

"The city?" asked Bohannan. "That--can't be the city, can it, now?
Faith, if it _is_, we're too late. Damn me, sir, but the whole
infernal place is on fire! Just our rotten luck, eh?"

The Master made no reply. As if he would devour the place with his
eyes, he was leaning over the rail, boring through those powerful
glasses at the dazzle and bright sheen of the wonder-city now every
moment becoming more clearly visible.

That it was in truth a city could no longer be doubted. Long walls
came to view, pierced by gates with fantastic arches. Domes rose to
heaven. Delicate minarets, carved into a fretwork of amazing fineness,
pointed their fingers at the yellow shimmering sky. The contrast of
that brilliance, with the soft green gardens and feathery palm-groves
before, the grim black cliffs behind, filled the Legionaries with a
kind of silent awe.

But most wonderful of all was the metallic shimmer of those walls,
domes, minarets, under the high sun of this lost Arabian paradise. So
amazing was the prospect that, as _Nissr_ hurled herself in over
the last ranges of the mountains and shot out across the open plain
itself, only one man found words.

This man was Leclair. Close beside the Master, he said in Arabic:

"I too have heard, my Captain. I too know the story of the Bara
Jannati Shahr--but I have always thought it fable. Now, now--."

"Faith!" interrupted the major, with sudden excitement. He smote the
rail a blow with an agitated fist. "If that doesn't look like gold,
I'm a--."

"Gold?" burst out the Master, unable longer to control himself. "Of
course it's gold! And we--are the first white men in all the world to
look on it--the Golden City of Jannati Shahr!"

Stupefaction overcame the Flying Legion. The sight of this perfectly
incredible city, which even yet--despite its obvious character--they
could not believe as reality, for a little while deprived all the
observers of coherent thought.

Like men in a daze, they stood watching the far-distant mass of walls,
buildings, towers, battlements all agleam with the unmistakable sheen
of pure metal. The human mind, confronted by such a phenomenon, fails
to react, and for a while lies inert, stunned, prostrate.

"Gold?" stammered the major, and fell to gnawing his mustache, as
he stared at the incredible sight. "By God--gold? Sure, it can't be
_that_!"

"It not only can be, but is!" the Master answered. "The old legend is
coming true, that's all. Have you no eyes in your head, Major? If that
shine isn't the shine of gold, what is it?"

"Yes, but the thing's impossible, sir!" cried Bohannan. "Why, man
alive! If that's gold, the whole of Arabia would be here after it!
There'd be caravans, miners, swarms of--"

"It's obvious you know nothing of Moslem severity or superstition,"
the Master interrupted. "There is no Mohammedan beggar, even starving,
who would touch a grain of that metal. Not even if it were given him.
There's not one would carry an ounce away from the Iron Mountains.
This whole region is under the ban of a most terrific _tabu_, that
loads unthinkable curses on any human being who removes a single atom
of any metal from it!"

"Ah, that's it, eh?"

"Yes, that's very much it! And what is more, Major, no word of this
ever gets out to the white races--or hardly any. Nothing more than
vague rumors that barely amount to fairy stories. Even though I forced
Rrisa to tell me the location of this city, he wouldn't mention its
being gold, and I knew too much to ask him or try to make him. Why,
he'd have been torn to bits before he'd have betrayed _that_ Inner
Secret. So now you understand!"

"I see, I see," the major answered, mechanically. It was plain,
however, that his mind had received a shock from which it had not yet
fully recovered. He remained staring and blinking, first chewing at
his mustache and then tugging it with blunt, trembling fingers. Now
and then he shook his head, like a man just waking from a dream and
trying to make himself realize that he is indeed awake.

The others, some to a greater degree, some to a less, shared the
major's perturbation. A daze, a numb stupefaction had fallen on them.
The Master, however, soon recalled them to activity. Not much time now
remained before _Nissr_ must make her landing on the plain near the
Golden City. None was to be wasted.

Vigorous orders set the Legionaries to work. The machine-guns were
loaded and fully manned; several pieces of apparatus that the Master
had been perfecting in his cabin were brought into the lower gallery;
everyone was commanded to smarten his personal appearance. The
psychology of the Oriental was such, well the Master knew, that the
impression the Legion should make upon the people of this wonder-city
could not fail to be of the very highest importance.

The plain over which _Nissr_ was now sweeping, with the black
mountains left far behind, seemed a fairyland of beauty compared with
the desolation of the Central Arabian Desert.

"This is surely a fitting spot for the exact geometrical center of
Islam," the Master said to Leclair, as they stood looking down. "My
measurements show this secret valley to be that center. Mecca, of
course, has only been a blind, to keep the world from knowing anything
about this, the true heart of the Faith. The Meccans have been
usurping the Black Stone, all these centuries, and these Jannati Shahr
people have submitted because any conflict would have betrayed their
existence to the world. That is my theory. Good, eh?"

"Excellent!" the lieutenant replied. "There must be millions of
Mohammedans, themselves, who have hardly learned of this valley.
Certainly, very few from the outside world ever have been able to
cross the Empty Abodes, and reach it.

"These people here evidently represent a far higher culture than
any other Moslems ever known. Who ever saw a finer city--even not
considering its material--or more wonderful cultivation of land?"

His eyes wandered out over the plain, which lost itself to sight in
the remote south. Roads in various directions, with here and there
a few white dromedaries bearing bright-colored _shugdufs_ (litters),
showed there was travel to some other inhabited spots inside the
forbidding mountain girdle.

Here, there, herds of antelope and flocks of sheep were grazing on
broad meadows, through which trickled sparkling threads of water,
half glimpsed among feathery-tufted date-palms. Plantations of fig and
pomegranate, lime, apricot, and orange trees, with other fruits not
recognized, slid beneath the giant liner as she slowed her pace. And
broad fields of wheat, barley, tobacco, and sugar-cane showed that the
people of the city had no fear of any lack.

Birds were here--pelicans, cranes, and water-fowl along the brooks
and gleaming pools; swift little yellow birds with crownlike crests;
doves, falcons, and hawks of unknown species. Here was life abundant,
after the death of the Empty Abodes. Here was rich color; here arose
a softly perfumed air, balmy, incensed as with strange aromatics. Here
was peace--eternal _kayf_--blessed rest--here indeed lay a scene that
gave full explanation of the ancient name "Arabia Felix."

And at the left, dominating all this beauty, shone and glimmered in
the ardent sun the wondrous Golden City of Jannati Shahr.

_Nissr_ had already begun to slant to lower levels. Now at no more
than twenty-five hundred feet, with greatly reduced speed, she was
drifting down the valley toward the city, the details of which
were every moment becoming more apparent. Its size, the wondering
Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained
three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Its frontage along the
black mountains could not have been less than two and a half miles;
and, as it seemed to lose itself up a defile in those crags, no way at
present existed of judging its depth.

The general appearance was that of stern simplicity. A long wall
of gleaming yellow bounded it, from north to south; this wall being
pierced by seven gates, each flanked by minarets. Behind the wall,
terraces arose, with _mesjid_ (temple) domes, innumerable houses, and
some larger buildings of unknown purpose.

The powerful glasses on _Nissr_ showed fretwork carving everywhere;
but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression
of almost primitive severity. No touch of modernity affected it.
Everything appeared immensely archaic.

"The Jerusalem of Solomon's day," thought the Master, "must have
looked like that--barring only that this is solid gold."

Out from the city, a little less than two-thirds of the way down,
issued a rather considerable stream. It seemed to come from under the
wall fronting the plain. Its course, straight rather than sinuous,
lay toward the south-west, and was marked by long lines of giant
date-palms and pale-stemmed eucalyptus trees, till it lost itself in
brown distances.

"Faith, but that looks like lotus-eating, all right," said the major,
notching up his cartridge-belt another hole. "That looks like 'A book
of verses underneath the bough,' with Fatima or Lalla Rookh, or the
like, eh?" He drew at a cigarette, and smiled with sweet visionings of
Celtic exuberance. "A golden city! Lord!"

"You'll do no dallying 'with Amaryllis in the shade,' in _this_
valley!" the Master flung at him. "Nor any lotus-eating, either. To
your stations, men! Wake up! Forget all about this gold, now--remember
my orders! That's all you've got to do. The gold will take care of
itself, later. For now, there's stern work ahead!"

The Legionaries assumed their posts, ready for whatever attack might
come. They still moved like men in a trance. Whether they could quite
even realize the true character of Jannati Shahr seemed doubtful. The
Inca's room of gold stunned Pizarro and his men. How much more, then,
must a whole city of gold numb any concrete thought?

Down, still down sank _Nissr_, now beginning to circle in broad,
descending spirals, seeking where she might land. The roar of the
propellers lessened; and at the same time, the increasing hum of the
helicopters made itself heard, counterbalancing the loss of lifting
power of the planes, yet gradually letting the air-liner sink. Came,
too, a sighing hiss of the air-intakes as the vacuum-floats filled.

High noon was now at hand. The sun burned, a copper ball, in the very
forehead of a turquoise sky. A light breeze, lazying over the plain,
stirred the fronded tufts of the date-palms' thick plantations.
Beyond a massy grove, stretching for nearly two miles out from
the northernmost gate of the city, a grassy level quite like a
parade-ground invited the liner to rest.

As she sank still lower, the Master's glass again picked up the city
wall and ran along it. Here, there, white dots were visible; human
figures, surely--the figures of men in snowy burnouses, on the
ramparts of heavy metal.

The Master smiled, and nodded.

"My men think they are surprised," he mused. "What will these Jannati
Shahr men think, when I have opened my little box of tricks and shown
them what's inside?"

He pressed a button on the rail. A bell trilled in the pilot-house;
another in the engine-room. The Norcross-Brails died to inactivity.

With a last long swoop, an abandonment of all the furious energies
that for so long had been hurling her over burning sand and black
crag, _Nissr_ slanted to the grassy sward. A sudden, furious hissing
burst out beneath her, as the compressed-air valves were thrown and
the air-cushions formed beneath her thousands of spiracles. Then, with
hardly a shudder, easily as a tired gull slips down into the quiet of
a still lagoon, the vast air-liner took earth.

She slid two hundred yards on her air-cushions, over the close-cropped
turf, slowed, came to rest there fronting the northern gate of Bara
Jannati Shahr. And the shimmer of those golden walls, one mile to east
of her, painted her all a strangely luminous yellow.

Journey's end, at last!




CHAPTER XXXVII


THE GREETING OF WARRIORS

Without delay, everything was put in complete readiness for whatever
eventualities might develop. If these strange people meant peace and
wanted it, the Legion would give them peace. If war, then by no means
was the Legion to be unprepared.

The gangplank was put down from the starboard port in the lower
gallery. The helicopters were cut off. Nothing was left running but
one engine, at half-speed, to furnish current for the apparatus the
Master had decided to use in dealing with the Jannati Shahr folk in
case of need--some of this having been evolved on the run from Mecca.

Four hampers were carried down the gangplank and set on the grass,
about fifty feet ahead of _Nissr's_ huge beak, that towered in air
over the men like an eagle over sparrows. These hampers contained the
chosen apparatus. Wires were attached, and run back to the ship, and
proper connections made at once by Leclair and Menendez, under the
Master's instructions.

The machine-guns were dismounted and taken "ashore," to borrow a
nautical phrase. These were set up in strategic positions before the
liner, and full supplies of ammunition both blank and ball were served
to them.

About a quarter of a mile to north of _Nissr's_ position, one of the
small watercourses or irrigating ditches that cut the plain glimmered
through a grove of Sayhani dates.[1] To this ditch the Master sent two
men in search of the largest stone they could find there. When they
returned with a rock some foot in diameter, he ordered it placed
half-way between _Nissr_ and the palm-grove.

[Footnote 1: Sayhani (the Crier), so called because one of these palms
is fabled to have cried aloud in salutation to Mohammed, when the
Prophet happened to walk beneath it.]

These preparations made, the Master lined up his Legionaries for
inspection and final instructions. Standing there in military array,
fully armed, they made rather a formidable body of fighters despite
their paucity of numbers. Courage, eagerness, and joy--still
unalloyed by all the fatigues and perils of the long trek after
adventure--showed on every face. Even through the eyeholes of "Captain
Alden's" mask, daring exultation glimmered.

The dead, left behind, could not now depress the Legionaries' spirits.
To be on solid earth again, in this wonderland with the Golden City
fronting them, quickened every man's pulse.

What though they were but a handful, ringed round by grim, jagged
mountains, beyond which lay hundreds of leagues of burning sand? What
though an unknown people of great numbers already had begun to stir
in that vast hive of gold? What though all of Islam, which had already
learned of the sacrilege the accursed Feringí had wrought, was
lusting their blood? Nothing of this mattered. It was enough for the
Legionaries that adventure still beckoned onward, ever on!

The Master, standing there before them, called the roll. We should
listen, by way of knowing just how the Legion was now composed. It
consisted of the following: Adams, "Captain Alden," Bohannan, Bristol,
Brodeur, Cracowicz, Emilio, Enemark, Frazíer, Grison, Janina, Lebon,
Leclair, L'Heureux, Manderson, Menendez, Prisrend, Rennes, Seres,
Simonds, Wallace. All the wounded had recovered sufficiently to be of
some service. The dead were: Travers, who had died on the passage
of the Atlantic; Auchincloss and Gorlitz, burned to death; Kloof,
Daimamoto, Beziers and Sheffield, killed by the Beni Harb; Lombardo,
killed by the Meccans; Rrisa, suicide.

In addition to these, we must not forget the Sheik Abd el Rahman,
still locked a prisoner in the cabin that for some days had been his
swift-flying prison-cell of torment.

The Master had just finished checking his roster, when quite without
any preliminary disturbance a crackle of rifle-fire began spattering
from the city. And all at once, out of the gate opposite _Nissr_,
appeared a white-whirling swarm of figures, at the same time that a
green banner, bearing a star and crescent, broke out from the highest
minaret.

The figures issuing in a dense mass from the gate were horsemen, all;
and they were riding full drive, _ventre à terre_. Out into the
plain they debouched, with robes flying, with a green banner, steel
flashing, and over all, a great and continual volleying of rifle-fire.

This horde of rushing cavaliers must have numbered between five
and six hundred; and a fine sight they made as the Master got his
binoculars on them. Here, there, a bit of lively color stood out
vividly against the prevailing snowy white of the mass; but for the
most part, horses and men alike came rushing down like a drive of
furious snow across that wondrous green slope between the palm-groves
and the city wall.

As they drew near, the snapping of burnouses and cherchias in the
wind, the puffs of powder-smoke, the glint of brandished arms grew
clearer; and now, too, the muffled sound of kettle-drums rolled
down-breeze, in booming counterpoint to the sharp staccato of the
rifles.

Furious as an army of _jinnee_ with wild cries, screams, howls, as
they stood in their stirrups and discharged their weapons toward the
sky, the horsemen of Jannati Shahr drove down upon the little group of
Legionaries.

The major loosened his revolver in its holster. Others did the same.
At the machine-guns, the gunners settled themselves, waiting the
Master's word of command to mow into the white foam of that insurging
wave--a wave of frantic riders and of lathering Nedj horses,
the thunder of whose hoofs moment by moment welled up into a
heart-breaking chorus of power.

"Damn it all, sir!" the major exclaimed. "When are you going to rip
into them? They'll be on us, in three minutes--in two! Give 'em Hell,
before it's too late! Stop 'em!"

Leclair smiled dryly behind his lean hand, as the Master emphatically
shook a head in negation.

"No, Major," he said. "No machine-guns yet. You and your eternal
machine-guns are sometimes a weariness to the flesh." He raised his
voice, above the tumult of the approaching storm of men and horses.
"I suppose you've never even heard of the _La'ab el Barut_, the
powder-play of the Arabs? They are greeting us with their greatest
display of ceremony--and you talk about machine-guns!"

He turned, lifted his hand and called to the gunners:

"No mistakes now, men! No accidents! The first man that pulls a
trigger at these people, I'll shoot down with my own hand!"

The lieutenant touched the Master's arm.

"We must give them a return salute, my Captain," he said in Arabic.
"To omit that would be a grave breach of the laws of host and
guest--almost as bad as violating the salt!"

The Master nodded.

"That is quite true, Lieutenant," he answered. "Thank you for
reminding me!"

Once more he turned to the gunners.

"Load with blanks," he commanded, "and aim at an elevation of
forty-five degrees. Hold your fire till I give the word!"

"It is well, _Effendi_!" approved the lieutenant, his eyes gleaming
with Gallic enthusiasm. "These are no People of the Black Tents, no
Beni Harb, nor thieving Meccans. These are men of the very ancient,
true Arabic blood--and we must honor them!"

Already the rushing powder-play was within a few hundred yards.
The roar of hoofs, the smashing volleys of fire, raging of the
kettle-drums, wild-echoing yells of the white company deafened the
Legionaries' ears.

What a sight that was--archaic chivalry in all the loose-robed flight
and flashing magnificence of rushing pride! Not one, not even the
least imaginative of the Legion, but felt his skin crawl, felt his
blood thrill, with stirrings of old romance at sight of this strange,
exalting spectacle!

In the van, an ancient horseman with bright colors in his robe was
riding hardest of all, erect in his high-horned saddle, reins held
loose in a master-hand, gold-mounted rifle with enormously long barrel
flourished on high.

Tall old chief and slim white horse of purest barb breed seemed almost
one creature. Instinctively the Master's service-cap came off, at
sight of him. The lieutenant's did the same. Both men stepped forward,
cap over heart. These two, if no others, understood the soul of
Arabia.

Suddenly the old Sheik uttered a cry. An instant change came over the
rushing horde. With one final volley, silence fell. The kettle-drums
ceased their booming. Every rider leaned far back in his pearl-inlaid,
jewel-crusted saddle, reining in his horse.

And in a moment, as innumerable unshod hoofs dug the heavy turf, all
that thundering host--which but a second before had seemed inevitably
bound to trample down the Legion under a hurricane of white-lathered
horses and frenzied, long-robed men--came to a dead halt of silence
and immobility.

It was as if some magician's wand, touching the crest of an inbreaking
storm-wave, had instantaneously frozen it, white-slavering foam and
all, to motionless rigidity.

Ahead of all, standing erect and proud in his arabesque stirrups, with
the green banner floating overhead, the chief of this whole marvelous
band was stretching out the hand of salaam.

"_Fire_!" cried the Master.




CHAPTER XXXVIII


BARA MIYAN, HIGH PRIEST

The crash of six machine-guns clattered into a chattering tumult,
muzzles pointed high over the heads of the Jannati Shahr men. Up into
the still, hot air jetted vicious spurts of flame.

The Legion's answer lasted but a minute. As the trays of blanks became
empty, the tumult ceased.

Silence fell, strangely heavy after all that uproar. This silence
lengthened impressively, with the massed horsemen on one side, the
Legionaries on the other. Between them stretched a clear green space
of turf. Behind loomed the vast bulk of _Nissr_, scarred, battle-worn,
but powerful. Away in the distance, the glinting golden walls
shimmered across the plain; and over all the Arabian sun glowed down
as if a-wonder at this scene surpassing strange.

Forward stepped the Master, with a word to Leclair to follow him but
to stand a little in the rear. The old Sheik dismounted; and followed
by another graybeard, likewise advanced. When the distance was but
about eight feet between them, both halted. Silence continued, broken
only by the dull drone of one engine still running on board the ship,
by the creaking of saddle-leather, the whinny of a barb.

Lithe, powerful, alert, with his cap held over his heart, the Master
stood there peering from under his thick, dark brows at the aged
Sheik. A lean-faced old man the Sheik was, heavily bearded with white,
his brows snowy, his eyes a hawk's, and the fine aquilinity of his
nose the hallmark of pure Arab blood.

Hard as iron he looked, gravely observing, unabashed in face of these
white strangers and of this mysterious flying house. The very spirit
of the Arabian sun seemed to have been caught in his gleaming eyes, to
glitter there, to reflect its pride, its ardor. He reminded one of a
falcon, untamed, untamable. And his dress, its colors distinguishing
him from the mass of his followers, still further proclaimed the rank
he occupied.

His cherchia of jade-green silk was bound with a _ukal_, or fillet
of camel's-hair; his burnous, also silk, showed tenderest shades of
lavender and rose. Under its open folds could be seen a violet jacket
with buttons of filigree ivory. He had handed his gun to the man
behind him, and now was unarmed save for a _gadaymi_, or semicircular
knife, thrust into his silk sash of crimson, with frayed edges.

A leather bandolier, wonderfully tooled and filled with cartridges,
passed over his right shoulder to his left hip. His feet, high-arched
and fine of line, were naked save for silk-embroidered _babooshes_.

The Master realized, as he gazed on this extraordinary old man, whose
dignity was such that even the bizarre _mélange_ of colors could not
detract from it, that he was beholding a very different type of Arab
from any he yet had come in contact with.

The aged Sheik salaamed. The Master returned the salutation, then
covered himself and saluted smartly. In a deep, grave voice the old
man said:

"_A'hla wasá'halan_!" (Be ye welcome!)

"_Bikum_!" (I give thee thanks!) replied the Master.

"In Allah's name, who are ye?"

"Franks," the Master said, vastly relieved at this unexpected amity.
Strange contrast with the violent hostility heretofore experienced!
What might it mean? What might be hidden beneath this quiet surface?

Relief and anxiety mingled in the Master's mind. If treachery were
intended, in just this manner would it speak.

"Men of Feringistan?" asked the aged Sheik. "And what do ye here?"

"We be fighting-men, all," replied the Master. He had already noted,
with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's
Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of
the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in
the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening
to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was
nobility of blood, breed, speech, if anywhere!

"Fighting-men, all," the Master repeated, while Leclair listened
with keen enjoyment and the Legion stood attentive, with the
white-burnoused horsemen giving ear to every word--astonished, no
doubt, to hear Arabic speech from the lips of an unbeliever. "We have
traveled far, from the Lands of the Books. Is it not meritorious, O
Sheik? Doth not thy Prophet himself say: 'Voyaging is victory, and he
who journeyeth not is both ignorant and blind?"'

The old man pondered a moment, then fell to stroking his beard. The
act was friendly, and of good portent. He murmured:

"I see, O Frank, that thou hast read the Strong Book. Thou dost know
our law, even though thou be from Feringistan. What is thy name?"

"Men know me only as The Master. And thine?"

"_Bara Miyan_ (The Great Sir), nothing more."

"Dost thou wish us well?" the Master put a leading question.

"_Kull'am antum bil khair_!" (May ye be well, every year!) said the
old Sheik. The Master sensed a huge relief. Undoubtedly--hard as this
was to understand, and much as it contradicted Rrisa's prediction--the
attitude of these Jannati Shahr folk was friendly. Unless, indeed,
all this meant ambush. But to look into those grave, deep eyes, to
see that furrowed countenance of noble, straight-forward uprightness,
seemed to negative any such suspicion.

"We have come to bring ye wondrous gifts," the Master volunteered,
wanting to strike while the iron was hot.

"That is well," assented Bara Miyan. "But never before have the Franks
come to this center of the Empty Abodes."

"Even Allah had to say 'Be!' before anything was!" (_i.e._, there must
be a first time for everything).

This answer, pat from a favorite verse of the Koran, greatly pleased
Bara Miyan. He smiled gravely, and nodded.

"Allah made all men," he affirmed. "Mayhap the Franks and we be
brothers. Have ye come by way of Mecca?"

"Yea. And sorry brotherhood did the Mecca men offer us, O Sheik! So,
too, the men of Beni Harb. Together, they slew five of us. But we be
fighting-men, Bara Miyan. We took a great vengeance. All that tribe
of Beni Harb we brushed with the wing of Azraël, save only the Great
Apostate. And from the men of the 'Navel of the World'--Mecca--we
exacted greater tribute than even death!"

The Master's voice held a quiet menace that by no means escaped Bara
Miyan. Level-eyed, he gazed at the white man. Then he advanced two
paces, and in a low voice demanded:

"Abd el Rahman still lives?"

"He lives, Bara Miyan."

"Where is the Great Apostate?"

"In our flying house, a prisoner."

"_Bismillah_! Deliver him unto me, and thy people and mine shall be as
brothers!"

"First let us share the salt!"

Speaking, the Master slid his hand into the same pocket that contained
the Great Pearl Star, and took out a small bag of salt. This he
opened, and held out. Bara Miyan likewise felt in a recess of his
many-hued burnous. For a moment he hesitated as if about to bring out
something. But he only shook his head.

"The salt--not yet, O White Sheik!" said he.

"We have brought thy people precious gifts," began the Master, again.
Behind him he heard an impatient whisper--the major's voice, quivering
with eagerness:

"Ask him if this place is really all gold! Faith, if I could only talk
their lingo! Ask him!"

"I shall place you under arrest, if you interfere again," the Master
retorted, without turning round.

"What saith the White Sheik?" asked Bara Miyan, hearing the strange
words of a language his ears never before had listened to.

"Only prayer in my own tongue, Bara Miyan. A prayer that thine and
mine may become _akhawat_"[1]

[Footnote 1: Friends bound by an oath to an offensive and defensive
alliance.]

"Deliver unto me Abd el Rahman, and let thine _imams_ (priests) work
stronger magic than mine," said the old Sheik with great deliberation,
"and I will accept thy gifts and we will say: '_Nahnu malihin_!' (We
have eaten salt together!) And I will make thee gifts greater than thy
gifts to me, O White Sheik. Then thou and thine can fly away to thine
own country, and bear witness that there be Arabs who do not love to
slay the Feringi, but count all men as brethren.

"But if thou wilt not deliver Abd el Rahman to me, or test thy magic
against my magic, then depart now, in peace, before the setting of the
sun. I have spoken!"

"Take him at his word, my Captain!" murmured Leclair. "We can get no
better terms. Even these are a miracle!"

"My opinion, exactly," replied the Master, still facing Bara-Miyan,
who had now stepped back a few paces and was flanked by two huge
Arabs, in robes hardly less chromatic, who had silently advanced.

"I accept," decided the Master. He turned, ordered Enemark and
L'Heureux to fetch out the Apostate, and then remained quietly
waiting. Silence fell on both sides, for a few minutes. The Arabs,
for the most part, remained staring at _Nissr_, to them no doubt the
greatest miracle imaginable. Still, minds trained to believe in
the magic carpet of Sulayman and quite virgin of any knowledge of
machinery, could easily account for the airship's flying by means of
_jinnee_ concealed in its entrails.

As for the Legionaries, their attention was divided between the
strange white host, still sitting astride those high-necked,
slim-barreled Nedj horses, and the luring glimmer of the golden walls.
In a few minutes, however, all attention on both sides was sharply
drawn by the return of the two Legionaries with the Apostate.

Without ado, the lean, wild man of the Sahara was led, in wrinkled
burnous, with disheveled hair, wild eyes, and an expression of
helpless despair, to where the Master stood. At sight of the massed
horsemen, the grassy plain--a sight never yet beheld by him--and the
distant golden, glimmering walls, a look of desperation flashed into
his triple-scarred face.

The whole experience of the past days had been a Jehannum of
incomprehensible terrors. Now that the climax was at hand, strength
nearly deserted him even to stand. But the proud Arab blood in him
flared up again as he was thrust forward, confronting Bara Miyan. His
head snapped up, his eyes glittered like a caged eagle's, the fine,
high nostrils dilated; and there he stood, captive but unbeaten, proud
even in this hour of death.

Bara Miyan made no great speaking. All he asked was:

"Art thou, indeed, that Shaytan called Abd el Rahman, the Reviler?"

The desert Sheik nodded with arrogant admission.

Bara Miyan turned and clapped his hands. Out from among the horsemen
two gigantic black fellows advanced. Neither one was Arab, though no
doubt they spoke the tongue. Their features were Negroid, of an East
African type.

The dress they wore distinguished them from all the others. They had
neither _tarboosh_ nor burnous, but simply red fezes; tight sleeveless
shirts of striped stuff, and trousers of Turkish cut. Their feet were
bare.

Strange enough figures they made, black as coal, muscled like
Hercules, and towering well toward seven feet, with arms and hands in
which the sinews stood out like living welts. Their faces expressed
neither intelligence nor much ferocity. Submission to Bara Miyan's
will marked their whole attitude.

"Sa'ad," commanded Bara Miyan, "seest thou this dog?"

"Master, I see," answered one of the gigantic blacks, speaking with a
strange, thick accent.

"Lead him away, thou and Musa. He was brought us by these _zawwar_
(visitors). Thy hands and Musa's are strong. Remember, no drop of
blood must be shed in El Barr.[1] But let not the dog see another sun.
I have spoken."

[Footnote 1: Literally "The Plain." This name, no doubt, originally
applied only to the vast inner space surrounded by the Iron Mountains,
seems to have come to be that of Jannati Shahr itself, when spoken
of by its inhabitants. El Barr is probably the secret name that Rrisa
would not divulge.]

The gigantic executioner--the strangler--named Sa'ad, seized Abd el
Rahman by the right arm. Musa, his tar-hued companion, gripped him by
the left. Never a word uttered the Apostate as he was led away through
the horsemen. But he gave one backward look, piercing and strange, at
the Master who had thus delivered him to death--a look that, for all
the White Sheik's aplomb, strangely oppressed him.

Then the horsemen closed about the two Maghrabi, or East Africans,
and about their victim. Abd el Rahman, the Great Apostate, as a living
man, had forever passed from the sight of the Flying Legion.

His departure, in so abrupt and deadly simple a manner, gave the
Master some highly conflicting thoughts. The fact that no blood was
ever to be shed in this city had reassuring aspects. On the other
hand, how many of these Maghrabi stranglers did Bara Miyan keep as a
standing army? A Praetorian guard of men with gorilla-hands like the
two already seen might, in a close corner, prove more formidable than
men armed with the archaic firearms of the place or with cold steel.

A sensation of considerable uneasiness crept over the Master as he
pondered the huge strength and docility of these two executioners.
It was only by reflecting that the renegade Sheik would gladly have
murdered the whole Legion, and that now (by a kind of poetic justice)
he had been delivered back into the hands of the Sunnites he had so
long defied and outraged, that the Master could smooth his conscience
for having done this thing.

The direct, efficient way, however, in which Bara Miyan dealt with one
held as an enemy, urged the Master to press forward the ceremony of
giving and taking salt.

At all hazards, safeguards against attack must be taken. Once more the
Master addressed Bara Miyan:

"_Effendi_! Our gifts are great to thee and thine. Great, also, is our
magic. Let thine _imams_ do their magic, and we ours. If the magic
of El Barr exceeds ours, we will depart without exchange of gifts. If
ours exceeds thine, then let the salt be in our stomachs, all for all,
and let the gifts be exchanged!

"Thy magic against our magic! Say, O Sheik, dost thou dare accept that
challenge?"

The old man's head came up sharply. His eyes gleamed with intense
pride and confidence.

"The magic of the unbelievers against that of the People of the
Garment!" (Moslems!) cried he. "_Bismillah_! To the testing of the
magic!"




CHAPTER XXXIX


ON, TO THE GOLDEN CITY!

The Spartan simplicity of the proceedings impressed the Master far
more than any Oriental ceremony could have done. Here was the Olema,
or high priest and chief, of a huge city carved of virgin gold, coming
to meet him on horseback and speaking to him face to face, like a man.

It was archaic, patriarchal, dramatic in the extreme. No incensed
courts, massed audiences, tapestried walls, trumpeting heralds,
genuflexions, could have conveyed half the sense of free, virile power
that this old Bara Miyan gave as he stood there on the close turf,
under the ardent sun, and with a wave of his slim hand gave the order:

"The magic! To the testing of the magic!"

Thoroughly well pleased with progress thus far, the Master turned back
to give final instructions to his men and to examine the apparatus.
This was in perfect condition, all grouped with controls centered in
one switchboard and focussing-apparatus so that Brodeur, in charge,
could instantly execute any command.

Bara Miyan, clapping his hands again, summoned three horsemen who
dismounted and came to him. By the emerald color of their head-fillets
and jackets, as well as by their tonsure, the Master recognized them
as mystics of the class known as _Sufis._

That he was about to face a redoubtable test could not be doubted.
Long experience with Orientals had taught him the profundity of their
legerdemain, practically none of which ever has been fathomed by white
men. The Master realized that all his powers might be tried to the
utmost to match and overcome the demonstration of the Jannati Shahr
folk.

While Bara Miyan stood talking to the three _Sufis_, the Master was in
a low voice instructing his own men.

"Everything now depends on the outcome of the approaching contest,"
said he. "These people, irrespective of what we show them, will
probably evince no surprise. If we allow any sign or word of
astonishment to escape us, no matter what they do, they will consider
us beaten and we shall lose all. There must be no indication of
surprise, among you. Remain impassive, at all costs!" He turned to
Brodeur, and in French warned him:

"Remember the signals, now. One mistake on your part may cost my
life--more than that, the lives of all the Legion. Remember!"

"Count on me, my Captain!" affirmed Brodeur. The masked woman, coming
to the Master's side, said also in French:

"I have one favor to ask of you!"

"Well, what?"

"Your life is worth everything, now. Mine, nothing. Let me subject
myself--"

He waved her away, and making no answer, turned to the Olema.

"Hast thou, O Bara Miyan," he asked in a steady voice, "a swordsman
who can with one blow split a man from crown to jaw?"

"Thou speakest to such a one, White Sheik!"

"Take, then, a simitar of the keenest, and cut me down!"

The old man turned, took from the hand of a horseman a long, curved
blade of razor-keenness and with a heavy back. The Master glanced
significantly at Brodeur, who knelt by the switchboard with one
steady hand on a brass lever, the other on the control of a complex
ray-focussing device.

Toward Bara Miyan the Master advanced across the turf. He came close.
For a moment the two men eyed each other silently.

"Strike, son of the Prophet!" cried the Master.

Up whirled the Olema's blade, flickering in the sun. The metallic
_click_ of the brass switch synchronized with that sweep; Brodeur
shifted the reflector by the fraction of a degree.

Bara Miyan's arm grew rigid, quivered a second, then dropped inert.
From his paralyzed hand the simitar fell to the grass. Brodeur threw
off the ray; and the Master, unsmiling, stooped, picked up the blade
and with a salaam handed it back, hilt-first, to the old man.

Only with his left hand could Bara Miyan accept it. He spoke no word,
neither did any murmur run through the massed horsemen. But the shadow
of a deep astonishment could not quite veil itself in the profound
caverns of the old man's eyes.

"Strike again, Bara Miyan," invited the Master. "The other arm,
perhaps, may not have lost its cunning!"

The Olema shook his head.

"No, by Allah!" he replied. "I know thy magic can numb the flesh, and
it is a good magic. It is strong. But by the rising of the stars--and
that is a great oath--the bullets of our long rifles can pierce thine
unbelieving body!"

"Then bring six of thy best riflemen and station them a dozen
paces from me," the Master challenged. "Let them look well to their
cartridges. It is not I who load the guns with bullets made of
soft black-lead, as the _Effendi_ Robert-Houdin did long ago to the
confusion of the Marabouts in Algeria. No, let thy men load their
own rifles. But," and his voice grew mocking, "let their aim be good.
Death is nothing, O Bara Miyan, but clumsy shooting means much pain."

His tone galled the aged Sheik, despite that impassive exterior. Bara
Miyan beckoned, and with a command brought six riflemen from their
horses.

"Load well, and shoot me this Frank!" exclaimed the Olema. A fire was
burning in his eyes.

"_Aywa_!" (Even so!) replied one of the riflemen. "Allah will make it
easy for us!"

"Have no fear, Bara Miyan," another said. "Not so easily shall El Kisa
(the People of the Garment) be overcome by the Feringi!"

Tension held Arabs and Legionaries, alike. All remained calm, though
had you watched "Captain Alden," you would have seen her fingers
twisting together till the blood almost started through the skin.

The Master walked a few paces, turned and faced the squad.

"Ready, men of Jannati Shahr?" asked he, with a smile.

"We are ready, Unbeliever!"

"Then fire!"

Up came the rifles. Brodeur turned a knurled disk, and from one of the
boxes on the grass a sudden, whining hum arose, like millions of angry
hornets.

"_Fire_!" repeated the Master.


Six rifle-hammers fell with dull clicks. Nothing more.

The Master smiled in mockery.

"O Bara Miyan," said he, "let thy men reload and fire again! Perhaps
the sweat of a great anxiety hath wet their powder!"

"Thou must indeed be _Khalil Allah_" (a friend of Allah), he admitted.
"No doubt thou art a great _caïd_ in thy own country. It is strong
magic, Frank. But now behold what mine _imams_ can do!"

The riflemen, disgruntled but still, Arab-like, holding their
impassivity, returned to their horses and mounted again. At another
call of Bara Miyan, three _imams_ came from among the horsemen. They
were dressed alike, in brilliant saffron _gandouras_, with embroidered
muslin turbans from under which hung _daliks_, or sacred plaits of
hair; and each carried a plain white cloth in his hand.

In complete silence they showed the Legionaries both sides of these
cloths, then spread them on the grass. In not more than two minutes,
a slight fluttering became visible. This increased and grew more
agitated. One by one, the _imams_ gathered up the cloths, opened them
and exhibited three bluish-black birds with vivid scarlet crests.

The Master nodded.

"It is an old trick," said he, indifferently. "I have seen hawks,
much larger, come from under smaller cloths even in the great _suk_
(market-place) at Cairo."

Bara Miyan made no answer. The _imams_ drew knives from their belts of
plaited goat-hide, and without more ado severed the birds' heads.

This the Legionaries saw with perfect distinctness. The blood on
the feathers was entirely visible. The bodies quivered. Calmly the
_imams_, with reddened hands, now cut wings and legs from the bodies.
They laid these dead fragments on the blood-stained cloths in front of
them.

"Let every Frank behold!" exclaimed the Olema. The Legionaries drew
near. The _imams_ gathered up the fragments in the cloths.

"Now," said the Master, "thine _imams_ will toss these cloths in the
air, and three whole birds will fly away. The cloths will fall to
earth, white as snow. Is that not thy magic?"

Bara Miyan glowered at him with evil eyes. Not yet had his
self-control been lost; but this mocking of the unbeliever had kindled
wrath. The Master, however, wise in the psychology of the Arab, only
laughed.

"This is very old magic," said he. "It is told of in the second
chapter of Al Koran, entitled 'The Cow;' only when Ibrahim did this
magic he used four birds. Well, Bara Miyan, command thine _imams_ to
do this ancient magic!"

The sharp click of a switch on the control-board sounded as the imams
picked up the little, red-dripping bundles. Silently they threw these
into the air and--all three dropped back to earth again, just as they
had risen.

A growl burst, involuntarily, from the Olema's corded throat. The
growl echoed through the massed horsemen. Bara Miyan's hand went to
the butt of his pistol, half glimpsed under his jacket. That hand
fell, numb.

"Look, O Sheik!" exclaimed the Master, pointing. The Olema turned;
and there on the highest minaret of gold, the green flag had begun
smoldering. As Brodeur adjusted his ray-focusser, the banner of the
Prophet burst into bright flame, and went up in a puff of fire.

Only by setting teeth into his lip could the Sheik repress a cry. Dark
of face, he turned to the Master. Smiling, the Master asked:

"Perhaps now, O Bara Miyan, thou wouldst ask thine _imams_ to plant
a date-stone, and make it in a few minutes bear fruit, even as the
Prophet himself did? Try, if thou hast better fortune than with the
birds! But have care not to be led into committing sin, as with these
birds--for remember, thou hast shed blood and life hath not returned
again, and El Barr is sacred from the shedding of blood!"

His tone was well calculated to make the lesson sink well to the
Olema's heart--a valuable lesson for the Legion's welfare. But the
Olema only replied:

"The blood of believers is meant. Not of animals--or Franks!"

"And wilt thou make further trial with me?" demanded the Master.

"No, by the Prophet! It is enough!" The Master's soul warmed toward
the honesty of this bluff old Arab. "Thy magic is good magic. Give me
thy salt, Frank, and take mine!"

The Master signaled to Brodeur as he drew forth his bag of salt. He
stretched it out in his open palm; and all at once, bag, hand, and arm
up to the elbow enveloped themselves in a whirling mist and vanished
from sight, even as the Master's whole body had vanished in the cabin
when Leclair had tried to arrest him.

The Sheik's eyes grew white-rimmed with astonishment. Vaguely he
groped for the Frank's hand, then let his own fall limp.

"_Allahu akbar!_" he gasped.

The Master nodded at Brodeur. The droning of the apparatus ceased, and
again the hand became visible.

"Faith!" the major's voice was heard. "We've landed half a dozen home
runs, and they've never even got to second!"

"Come, O Bara Miyan!" the Master smiled. "Now we will put away the
things of magic, and talk the words of men. Here is my salt!"

The Sheik gingerly accepted a pinch, and with much misgiving put it
into his mouth. He produced salt of his own, which the Master tasted.

"It is done," said the Master. "Now thou and I are _akhawat. Nahnu
malihin._" (We have eaten salt.)

"But only from this mid-day till noon of the morrow," the Olema
qualified the bond.

"Even so! Remember, though, that the salt is now in the stomachs of
all thy people, both here and in the city, as it is in the stomachs of
all my men!"

"I will remember."

"And now, O Bara Miyan, I will show thee the very great gifts that I
have brought thee!"

The Olema nodded, in silence. A great dejection held him and his men.
The Master dispatched half a dozen men for the Myzab and the Black
Stone, also for three sticks of a new explosive he had developed on
the run from the Sahara. This explosive, he calculated, was 2.75 times
more powerful than TNT.

"Men," said he to the remaining Legionaries, "be ready now for
anything. If they show fight, when they realize we have touched the
sacred things of Islam, let them have it to the limit. If the salt
holds them, observe the strictest propriety.

"Some of us may go into the city. Let no man have any traffic with
wine or women. If we commit no blunder, in less than twenty-four hours
we shall be far away, each of us many times a millionaire. Watch your
step!"

The six men returned, carrying the blanket that contained the sacred
things. At the Master's command, they laid the heavy bundle on the
grass before the Olema and his beaten men.

"Behold!" cried the Master. "Gifts without price or calculation! Holy
gifts rescued from unworthy hands, to be delivered into the hands of
True Believers!"

And with swift gestures he flung back the enveloping folds of the
blanket, as if only he, the Master, could do this thing. Then, as the
Myzab and the Stone appeared, he drew from his pocket the Great Pearl
Star, and laid that also on the cloth, crying in a loud voice:

"O, Bara Miyan, and people of Jannati Shahr, behold!"

An hour from that time, the Master and seventeen of the Legionaries
were on their way to the City of Gold.

The stupefaction of the Arabs, their prostrations, cries, prayers
would delay us far too long, in the telling. But the Oath of the Salt
had held; and now reward seemed very near.

There could be no doubt, the Master reflected as he and his men
galloped on the horses that had been assigned to them, with the
white-robed and now silent horde, that the reward--in the form of
exchange gifts--would be practically anything the Legionaries might
ask and be able to carry away.

Treachery was now not greatly to be feared. Even had the salt not
held, fear of the explosive would restrain any hostile move. One stick
of the new compound, exploded at a safe distance by wireless spark,
had utterly demolished the stone which had been brought from the
watercourse.

The plain statement given Bara Miyan that the Myzab and the Black
Stone must be left on the grass until the Feringi had again flown away
toward their own country, had duly impressed the Arabs. They had seen
two sticks of the explosive laid on the holy objects, and well had
understood that any treachery would result in the annihilation of the
most sacred objects of their faith.

The Master felt, as well he might, that he absolutely held the whip
hand of the Jannati Shahr people. Elation shone in his face and in the
faces of all. The problem now had simplified itself to just this:
What weight of jewels and of gold could _Nissr_, by jettisoning every
dispensable thing, whatsoever, carry out of El Barr, over the Iron
Mountains and the Arabian Desert, back to the civilization that would
surely make peace with the Legion which would bring such incalculable
wealth?

Even the Master's level head swam a little, and his cool nerves
tingled, as he sat on his galloping white horse, riding beside the
Olema, with the thunder of the rushing squadrons--Arabs and his own
men--like music of vast power in his ears.

He did not, however, lose the coldly analytic faculty that weighed
all contingencies. The adventure still was critical; but the scales
of success seemed lowering in favor of the Legion. The feel, in his
breast pocket, of the leather sack containing Kaukab el Durri, which
he had again taken possession of after the magic tests, gave added
encouragement. This, the third gift, was to be delivered only at the
last moment, just before _Nissr_ should roar aloft.

"I think," reflected the Master, "the Pearl Star is an important
factor. It certainly will put the final seal of success on this
extraordinary bargain."

While his thoughts were busy with the pros and cons of the
soul-shaking adventure now coming to its climax, his eyes were busy
with the city wall and towers every moment closer, closer still.

The Master's knowledge of geology gave him the key to the otherwise
inexplicable character of Jannati Shahr. This gold, in incredible
masses, had not been mined and brought hither to be fashioned into a
great city.

Quite the contrary, it formed part of the cliffs and black mountains
themselves. Some stupendous volcanic upheaval of the remote past had
cleft the mountain wall, and had extruded through the "fault" a huge
"dyke" of virgin metal--to use technical terms. This golden dyke, two
and a half to three miles wide and of undeterminable length and
depth, had merely been formed by strong, cunning hands into walls,
battlements, houses, mosques, and minarets.

It had been carved out _in situ_, the soft metal being fashioned with
elaborate skill and long patience. Jannati Shahr seemed, on a larger
scale and a vastly more magnificent plan, something like the hidden
rock-city of Petra in the mountains of Edom--a city wholly carved by
the Edomites out of the solid granite, without a single stone having
been laid in mortar.

Wonderful beyond all words as the early afternoon sun gleamed from
its broad-flung golden terraces and mighty walls--whereon uncounted
thousands of white figures had massed themselves--the "Very Heavenly
City" widened to the Legionaries' gaze.

On, up the last slope of the grassy plain the rushing horsemen bore.
Into a broad, paved way they thundered, and so up, on, toward the
great gate of virgin gold now waiting to receive them.




CHAPTER XL


INTO THE TREASURE-CITADEL

Well might those Legionaries who had been left behind to protect Nissr
and the sacred gifts have envied the more fortunate ones now sweeping
into Jannati Shahr. The rear guard, however, formed no less essential
a part of the undertaking than the main body of the Legion.

This rear guard consisted of Grison, Menendez, Prisrend, Frazier,
and Manderson. Their orders were as follows: If the main body did not
return by midnight, or if sounds of firing were heard from the city,
or again if they received direct orders via the Master's pocket
wireless, they were at once to load the machine-guns on board the
liner. They were to carry Myzab on board, also, and with the wireless
spark detonate the explosive which would reduce the Black Stone to
dust.

This accomplished, they were to start the engines and, if possible,
make a getaway--which might be feasible for five men. If they
succeeded, they were to wheel over the city and drop the second
kappa-bomb, also all the remaining explosive, by way of punitive
measures. Well-placed hits might wipe out most of the city and, with
it, the population which had broken the Oath of the Salt.

The main body of the Legion would, of course, also perish in this
_débâcle_ if still alive; but the probability existed that before
Nissr could take the air, all would be dead.

The program was explicit. All five men of the rear guard fully
understood its every detail and all had sworn to carry it out to the
letter. Their morale remained perfect; their discipline, under the
command of Grison--left alone as they were in the midst of potentially
hostile territory and with overwhelming masses of Mohammedans close
at hand--held them as firmly as did that of the advance guard now
whirling up the wide, paved road to the gleaming gate of Jannati
Shahr.

This band of hardy adventurers, stout-hearted and armed with
service-revolvers, remained rather closely grouped, with the Arabs
flanking and following them. At their head rode old Bara Miyan with
the Master, who well bestrode his saddle with burnished metal peaks
and stitching of silver thread. After them came the three _imams_,
Major Bohannan, Leclair, and "Captain Alden."

The "captain's" mask seemed somewhat to impress the Arabs, who
whispered among themselves concerning it. But not one suspected the
sex of this Frank. The "captain" rode as gallantly as any, and with a
firm hand reined her slim, white horse.

As the on-thundering swarm of horsemen approached the pointed arch,
some sixty feet wide by ninety high, its intaglios and complex
arabesques flashing with millions of sunlit sparkles, a clear,
sustained chant drifted out over city and plain--the cry of some
unseen muezzin, announcing news of great import to Jannati Shahr. Came
an echoing call of trumpets, from far, hidden places in the city; and
kettle-drums boomed with dull reverberation.

"_Labbayk_, _Allahuma_!" shouted Bara Miyan, announcing with praise
to Allah his entrance into the City of Gold. A long, great shouting
answered him from the massed thousands of white figures on the walls.

The Master saw innumerable dark faces peering down from snowy
burnouses and haiks. He saw the gleam of steel. Not one of the figures
on the wall was veiled. Not one woman, therefore, had as yet been
permitted to leave the perfumed dimness of the harems, even for this
stupendous event in the city's history. So far as the Master could
judge, Captain Alden, lithely galloping close behind him, was the only
woman visible in all that multitude.

With a bold clatter of hoofs, now loudly echoed and hurled back by
the walls, the cavalcade burst up to the city like the foam-crest of
a huge, white wave. For a moment, as the Master's horse whirled him in
under the gate, he cast a backward glance at the plain and along the
battlements.

That glance showed him a small, white-clad band of Arabs trudging
afoot over the green expanse--the men who, dismounting, had given
their horses to the Legionaries. It showed him the pinions of _Nissr_
gleaming like snow on the velvet plain; showed him, too, the vast
sweep of the city's walls.

Those walls, no less than a hundred feet high, were cunningly
loopholed for defense. They presented a slightly concave façade to the
plain, and slanted backward at about the angle of the Tower of Pisa.

Through their aureate glimmer, dazzling in the direct rays of the
sun now well past its meridian, a glimpse of a flashing river
instantaneously impressed itself on the Master's sight, with cascading
rapids among palm-groves, as it foamed from beneath the city walls.
Then all was blotted out by the gleaming side of the stupendous
archway.

Up into a broad thoroughfare that rose on a steep slant--a
thoroughfare very different from the usual narrow, tortuous alleys of
Arabian cities--the swarm of horsemen swept, with a dull clatter of
hoofs on the soft yellow pavement that gave almost like asphalt. The
utter lack of any ruts well proved that wheeled vehicles were here
unknown. Nothing harder than unshod horses, than goats and sheep, and
the soft pads of camels had ever worn these gleaming ways.

The brush of a Verestchagin, a Gérôme, a Bida, skilled in the colors
of the Orient, would have been needed to paint even an impressionistic
_coup d'oeil_ of this scene surpassing strange, now opening out before
the Legionaries' eyes. Its elements were golden houses with door and
window-frames of cedar, sandal, and teak; fretwork golden balconies
overhanging streets and gardens where delicate palm-fronds
swayed--balconies whence no doubt kohl-tinted eyes of women were
peering at the strange men in khaki, as henna-dyed fingers pulled
aside silken curtains perfumed with musk and jasmine; mosques and
minarets carven of the precious metal; dim streets, under striped silk
awnings; a world of wonder to the Legion.

The Master saw, as the cavalcade swept along at unabated swiftness,
glimpses of terraced roofs and cupolas tiled with blue and peacock
hues; open-fronted shops hewn out of the all-present gold and
displaying wares whereof the purchase-price could not be imagined
since gold was everywhere; bazaars heaped with _babooshes_,
_cherchias_, and robes of muslin, wool and silk, with fruits and
flowers, tobacco, spices, sweetmeats, and perfumes, and with strange
merchandise unknown.

He caught swift vision of a wide _mirbad_, or open court for drying
dates; and then, through a low, golden arch, a camel-yard with a
vast number of kneeling, white dromedaries. And everywhere he saw
innumerable hosts of the people of Jannati Shahr.

The streets themselves were clear of people as the cavalcade thundered
on and on with many turnings; but every doorway, shop, arch, roof,
terrace, and tower was packed with these silent, white-clad folk,
bronze-faced and motionless, all armed with pistols, rifles, and cold
steel.

What some poet has called "a joyous fear" thrilled the Legion. No,
not fear, in the sense of timidity, but rather a realization of the
immense perils of this situation, and an up-springing of the heart to
meet those perils, to face and overcome them, and from out their very
maw to snatch rewards beyond all calculation.

Even the Master himself, tempered in the fires of war's Hell, sensed
this tremendous potentiality of death as the tiny handful of white men
galloped on and on behind Bara Miyan. Here the Legion was, hemmed and
pent by countless hordes of fanatics whom any chance word or look,
construed as a religious insult, might lash to fury. Five men remained
outside. The rest were now as drops of water in a hostile ocean. In
the Master's breast-pocket still lay Kaukab el Durri--and might not
that possession, itself, be enough to start a jihad of extermination?

Was not the fact of unbelieving dogs now for the first time being in
the Sacred City--was not this, alone, cause for a massacre? What, in
sober reason, stood between the Legion and death? Only two factors:
first, the potential destruction of the Myzab and the Black Stone
in case of treachery; and second, two tiny pinches of salt exchanged
between the Master and old Bara Miyan!

The situation, calmly reviewed, was one probably never paralleled in
the history of adventure--more like the dream of a hashish-smoking
addict than cold reality.

Very contending emotions possessed the hearts of the Legionaries, in
different reactions to their diverse temperaments. Only a vast
wonder mirrored itself in some faces, a kind of numb groping after
comprehension, a failure to believe such a thing possible as a city of
pure and solid gold.

Others showed more critical interest, appreciation of the wonderful
artistic effects of the carven gold in all its architectural
developments under the skilled chisels of the Jannati Shahr folk.

Still others manifested only greed. The eyes of such, feverishly
devouring walls, cornices, pillars, seemed to say:

"God! If we only had the smallest of these things, what a fortune that
would mean! What an incredible fortune!"

Each man, reacting under the overwhelming stimulus of this wonder
city, in his own expression betrayed the heart and soul within him.
And thus, each absorbed in his own thoughts and dreams, silently the
Legionaries pondered as they galloped through the enchanted streets.

Some fifteen minutes' riding, with no slackening of the pace and
always on an upward grade toward what seemed the central citadel of
Jannati Shahr, brought the party to an inner wall, forty feet high
and pierced by a triple-arched gate surmounted by a minaret of golden
lacery.

Through the center arch rode Bara Miyan, now reining into a canter.
The _imams_ and the Legionaries followed, and with them about fifty
of the Arabs, of superior rank. The rest drew rein outside, still in
complete silence.

The lessened cavalcade now found itself in what at first glance seemed
an enchanted garden. Not even a feeling of anxiety caused by the
silent closing of the hugely massive golden gates that, as they
passed through, immediately blocked the triple exit, could divert the
Legionaries' minds from the wondrous park confronting them.

Date and cocoa-palms with shadowy paths beneath them; clear rills with
bamboo thickets along their banks and with tangles of white myrtle,
red clouds of oleanders that diffused an almond perfume, delicate
hybiscus, and unknown flowers combined to weave a magic woof of
beauty, using the sifted sunlight for gold threads of warp.

Unseen water-wheels splashed coolly; vivid butterflies flickered
through masses of greenery among the acacia, mimosa, lote and mulberry
trees. And there were color-flashing parrots, too, a-wing and noisy
in the high branches; and apes that swung and chattered; and round the
high, golden walls of the citadel, half visible through the cloud of
green and party-colored foliage, whirls of pigeons, white as snow,
flicked against the gold.

The Legionaries were hard put to it to obey the Master's order never
to express surprise or admiration. But they kept silence, though their
eyes were busy; and presently through another smaller gate they all
clattered into a _hosh_, or court, facing what obviously must have
been the central citadel of Jannati Shahr.

Bara Miyan pulled sharply on the red, silver-broidered reins and
cut back the frothing lip of his barb. With a slide almost on its
haunches, along the soft, golden pavement, the horse came to a
quivering stand. All halted. And for a moment, the stamping of the
high-nerved horses' hoofs echoed up along the tall citadel with its
latticed windows and its machicolated parapet a hundred and fifty feet
in air.

"Well ridden, O Frank! Well ridden by thee and by all thy men
of Feringistan!" exclaimed Bara Miyan, with what seemed real
friendliness, as he sat there on his high saddle, gravely stroking his
beard. "It was a test for thee and thine, to see, by Allah! if the men
of the unbelieving nations be also men like us of Araby!

"We of the Empty Abodes are 'born on horseback.' But ye, white as the
white hand of Musa (Moses) have houses that, so I have heard, move on
iron roads. And I see now ye have flying houses. Wherefore horses are
not dear to you, as to us. But I see that ye can ride like men. Well
done! _Salaam_!"

The Master returned a "_Bïkum!_" of thanks. He would have been glad
to wipe his forehead, streaming with sweat; and so, too, would the
others. But pride restrained them. Not for them such weakness as the
use of a handkerchief, in presence of these half-hundred grave-eyed,
silently observing men of Jannati Shahr.

"Faith, though," the major whispered to "Captain Alden," close behind
him, "of all ways to take a walk, my favorite way _not_ to is on an
Arab horse with a saddle like the Inquisition! Tomorrow, oh, my poor
bones, tomorrow!"

Bara Miyan was speaking again, while the Master, Leclair, and
his orderly, Lebon--who alone of the Legionaries understood
Arabic--listened closely.

"Now that we have eaten salt and are _akhawat_ brethren," said he, "we
must break bread together. Let thyself and all thy men partake of food
with us, O Frank! Then we will speak of the present, we shall bestow
on thee. _Bismïllah!_ Dismount, White Sheik, and enter!"

The Master bowed, and swung himself from his horse. All did the same,
Legionaries and Arabs alike. And for a moment they stood there in the
sunlight before the long colonnade that occupied the lower story
of the citadel; while from beneath that colonnade issued a dozen or
fifteen of the black, muscular Maghrabi men, two of whom--in the
rôle of official stranglers--they had already seen. These powerful
half-savages took the horses away, the hoofs clacking hollowly on the
golden pavement.

Bara Miyan led the way in under the colonnade, which, though of gold
like all else in this, wonder city, still offered grateful shade.
The perpetual glare of the golden roadways, houses, towers,
balconies--even covered as many were with floating curtains of muslin
or silk--had been trying to eyes and nerves. Infinitely preferable
would stone or wood have been, for dwellings; but as Jannati Shahr
was, so the Legion had to take it. And doubtless long generations of
familiarity with it had made it wholly normal, pleasant, and innocuous
to these super-Arabs.

The Jannati Shahr men began kicking off their _babooshes_ and sliding
their naked feet into light slippers, rows upon rows of which stood
under the portico. The Master and Leclair quickly put off their
shoes and took slippers; the others followed suit. But not without
unwillingness did the Master make the change.

"This will put us at a very serious disadvantage," thought he, "in
case it comes to fighting. These people are used to going almost
barefooted. We are not. Still, there's no help for it. But I'd like
infernally well to keep my shoes!"

All he said was:

"Remember now, men, no women and no wine! If this city is like the
usual Arab towns, there will be neither in sight. But if not,
and temptations arise, remember my orders! No drop of any kind of
liquor--and no flirtation. I'll deal summarily with any man who
forgets himself. There's everything at stake now, in the next hour or
two. We can't jeopardize it all for any nonsense!"

The major groaned, inwardly. Thirsts were on his Celtic soul that
longed for dalliance with the Orient; but he well knew that tone of
voice, and sadly resigned himself to abstinence.

"Keep your revolvers loose in the holsters, men," the Master added,
as Bara Miyan gestured toward the slowly opening entrance of the
citadel--a massive door as all doors seemed in Jannati Shahr; a
door of gold reinforced with huge teak beams. "Watch for any sign
of treachery, but don't shoot until I give the order. Then, shoot to
kill! And whatever you do, stick together. Don't separate, no matter
what the provocation! Now, follow me!"

A strange feeling of anxiety, almost of fear, had taken hold on the
Master's heart. This fear was not in the least for himself or any
of the men. Hard-bitted adventurers all, they had gone into this
expedition with their eyes open, well knowing that some must
inevitably die before its close. They had gambled at dice with Fate;
and, losing, could have no complaint.

It was all for "Captain Alden" that the Master's anxiety was now
awakened. Here was a woman, not only exposed to risks of death, but
also of capture by Orientals--and what it might mean to a white woman
to be seized for some hidden harem in Jannati Shahr the Master knew
only too well. He found a moment's pause to speak in a low tone to the
"captain," unheard by any of the others.

"Remember the mercy-bullet!" said he. "If anything happens and there's
any risk of capture--remember, the last one for yourself!"

"If the worst comes," she whispered, "we can at least share death
together!"

He gazed at her a moment, not quite fathoming her words, but with an
inexplicable tightening round the heart.

"We can at least share death together!"

Why should those words so powerfully affect him? What were these
uncomprehended, new emotions stirring in his hard soul, tempered by
war and by unnumbered stern adventurings?

The Master had no skill in self-analysis, to tell him. Leader of
others, himself he did not understand. But as that night aboard Nìssr,
when he had laid a hand on the woman's cabin door, something unknown
to him seemed drawing him to her, making her welfare and her life
assume a strange import.

"Come, O Frank!" Bara Miyan was saying. The Olema's words recalled the
Master to himself with a start. "Such food and drink as we men of El
Barr have, gladly we share with thee and thine!"

The old man entered the dark doorway of the citadel, noiselessly in
soft sandals. Beside him walked the Master; and, well grouped and
flanked and followed by the Arabs in their white robes--all silent,
grave, watchful--the Legion also entered.

Behind them once more closed the massive doors, silently.

The eighteen Legionaries were pent in solid walls of metal, there in
the heart of a vast city of fighting-men whose god was Allah and to
whom all unbelievers were as outcasts and as pariah dogs--anathema.




CHAPTER XLI


THE MASTER'S PRICE

A dim and subtly perfumed corridor opened out before them, its walls
hung with tapestries, between which, by the light of sandal-oil
_mash'als_, or cressets, the glimmer of the dull-gold walls could be
distinguished.

Pillars rose to the roof, and these were all inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, with fine copper and silver arabesques of amazing
complexity. Every minutest architectural detail had been carved out of
the solid gold dyke that had formed the city; nothing had been added
to fill out any portion. The imagination was staggered at thought of
the infinite skill and labor required for such a task. The creation of
this city of El Barr seemed far beyond the possible; yet here it was,
all the result of the graver's chisel.[1]

[Footnote 1: If any reader doubts the existence of El Barr, as a city
of gold carved from a single block, on the ground that such a work
would be impossible, I refer him to an account of Petra, in the
_National Geographic Magazine_ for May, 1907. Petra, in all details,
was carved from granite--a monolithic city.]

Blasé as the Legionaries were and hardened to wonders, the sight of
this corridor and of the vast banquet-hall opening out of it, at the
far end, came near upsetting their aplomb. The major even muttered an
oath or two, under his breath, till Leclair nudged him with a forceful
elbow.

Not thus must Franks, from Feringistan, show astonishment or
admiration.

"May the peace be upon thee," all at once exclaimed Bara Miyan,
gesturing for the Master to enter the vast hall. "Peace, until the
rising of the day!"

"And upon thee, the peace!" the Master answered, with the correct
Arabic formula. They entered, and after them the other Legionaries and
the sub-chiefs of Jannati Shahr.

The banquet-hall was enormous. The Master's glance estimated it as
about two hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred and seventy-five
wide, with a height from golden floor to flat-arched roof of some one
hundred and twenty-five. Embroidered cloths of camel's-hair and silk
covered the walls. Copper braziers, suspended from the pillars, sent
dim spirals of perfumed smoke aloft into the blue air.

About sixty feet from the floor, a row of clerestory windows,
unglazed, admitted arrows of sunlight through a golden fretwork; and
these arrows, piercing the incense vapor, checkered intricate patterns
on the enormous, deep-piled Persian rugs of rose, lilac, and misty
blue.

Tables and chairs, of course, there were none. A _dakkah_, or
platform, in horseshoe shape, at the far end, covered with rugs and
cushions, and with water-jars, large copper fire-pans, coffee-pots of
silver, and _shishahs_ (water-pipes) told where the feast was to be
offered.

From a side door, as a silken curtain was drawn back, some fifteen
slave-girls entered--whiter than their masters and in tight jackets
and loose, silk trousers. These girls brought copper basins of
rose-water for the Arabs' "lesser ablution" before a meal. Bara Miyan
smiled slightly as he gestured the Legionaries also to wash hands and
faces; but the Master, little relishing the idea of using this same
water after the Arabs, shook his head.

Not thus slyly could the Olema inflict humiliation on unbelievers. A
hard look crept into the Master's eyes. This covert insult, after the
exchange of salt, boded very ill.

In silence the Legionaries watched the Arabs dry their hands and
faces on towels given them by the slave-girls, who then noiselessly
withdrew. All the Arabs prostrated themselves and prayed. The Master
was the only one who noticed one significant fact: that now the
_kiblah_, or direction of prayer, was not to the north-west, where lay
Mecca, but--judging by the sun--was almost due west, toward the spot
where lay the Black Stone. This reassured him once more.

"They recognize the Stone, right enough," thought he. "As long as
nothing happens to that, we hold the whip-hand of them. Our only real
danger is that something _might_ happen to it. But a few hours, now,
will end all this. And in a few hours, what can happen?"

The Arabs ceased their droning supplications to Allah, which had been
rising with hypnotically soothing murmurs through the incensed air,
and now followed Bara Miyan toward the raised platform. The old Sheik
beckoned his guests. All disposed themselves comfortably among the
cushions. The Legionaries ignored what seemed a disposition on
the part of the Arabs to separate them--to scatter them along the
platform.

"Keep together, men," the Master commanded. "Group yourselves closely
here, in the middle. Say nothing. Watch everything. Make no move
without specific orders. If it comes to a fight, and I am killed,
Leclair will command you. His knowledge of Arabic temporarily ranks
him above Bohannan. Don't shoot unless it comes to hard necessity; but
if you do shoot, make every bullet count--and save the last one for
yourselves!"

Bara Miyan clapped his hands. Through two arched doorways, to right
and left, entered a silent file of the huge, half-naked Maghrabi
men. All were unarmed; but the muscles of their heavy shoulders, the
gorilla-like dangle of their steel-fingered hands produced an effect
more ominous even than the gleam of simitars in the dim cressets'
light would have been.

Along the walls these black barbarians disposed themselves, a full
hundred or more, saying nothing, seeming to see nothing, mere human
automata. Bohannan, seated cross-legged between Captain Alden and the
Master, swore an oath.

"What are these infernal murderers here for?" growled he. "Ask the
Sheik, will you? I thought you and he had eaten salt together! If this
isn't a trap, it looks too damned much like it to be much of a picnic!
Faith, this is a Hell of a party!"

"Silence, sir!" commanded the Master; while Leclair, at his other
side, cast a look of anger at the Celt. "Diplomacy requires that we
consider these men as a guard of honor. Pay no attention to them,
anybody! Any sign of hesitation now, or fear, may be suicide.
Remember, we are dealing with Orientals. The 'grand manner' is what
counts with them. I advise every man who has tobacco, to light a
cigarette and look indifferent. _Verb sap!_"

Most of the Legionaries produced tobacco; but the Olema, smiling,
raised a hand of negation. For already the slave-girls were entering
with trays of cigarettes and silver boxes of tobacco. These they
passed to the visitors, then to the Arabs. Such as preferred
cigarettes, suffered the girls to light them at the copper fire-pans.
Others, choosing a _shishah_, let the girls fill it from the silver
boxes; and soon the grateful vapors of tobacco were rising to blend
with the spiced incense-smoke.

A more comfortable feeling now possessed the Legionaries. This sharing
of tobacco seemed to establish almost an amicable Free Masonry between
them and the Jannati Shahr men. All sat and smoked in what seemed a
friendly silence.

The slave-girls silently departed. Others came with huge, silver trays
graven with Koran verses. These trays contained meat-pilafs, swimming
in melted butter; vine leaves filled with chopped mutton; _kababs_,
or bits of roast meat spitted on wooden splinters; crisp cucumbers; a
kind of tasteless bread; a dish that looked like vermicelli sweetened
with honey; thin jelly, and sweetmeats that tasted strongly of
rosewater. Dates, pomegranates, and areca nuts cut up and mixed with
sugar-paste pinned with cloves into a betel leaf--these constituted
the dessert.

The Arabs ate with strict decorum, according to their custom,
beginning the banquet with a _Bismillah_ of thanks and ending with an
_Al Hamd_ that signified repletion. Knives and forks there were none;
each man dipped his hand into whatever dish pleased him, as the trays
were passed along. The Legionaries did the same.

"Rather messy, eh?" commented the major; but no one answered him. More
serious thoughts than these possessed the others.

After ablution, once more--this time the white men shared it--tobacco,
pomegranate syrup, sherbet, water perfumed with _mastich_-smoke, and
thick, black coffee ended the meal.

The Master requested khat leaves, which were presently brought
him--deliciously green and fresh--in a copper bowl. Then, while the
slave-girls removed all traces of the feast, all relaxed for a few
minutes' _kayf_, or utter peace.

Utter peace, indeed, it seemed. Nothing more soothing could have been
imagined than the soft wooing of repletion and of silken cushions,
the dim sunlight through the smoke of incense and tobacco, the gentle
bubbling of the water-pipes, the half-heard courting of pigeons
somewhere aloft in the embrasures of the clerestory windows.

All possibility of warfare seemed to have vanished. Under the magic
spell of this enchanted, golden hall, even the grim Maghrabis, black
and motionless along the tapestried walls, seemed to have sunk to the
role of mere spectators.

The Arabs' glances, though subtly curious, appeared to hold little
animosity. Now that they had broken bread together, cementing the Oath
of the Salt, might not hospitality have become inviolable? True, some
looks of veiled hostility were directed against "Captain Alden's"
strangely masked face, as the woman sat there cross-legged like the
rest, indifferently smoking cigarettes. For what the Arab cannot
understand is always antipathetic to him. But this hostility was
not marked. The spirits of the Legion, including those of the Master
himself, rose with a sense of greater security.

Even Bohannan, chronic complainer, forgot to cavil and began to bask
in contentment.

"Faith, but this is a good imitation of Lotus-land, after all," he
murmured to Janina, at his side. "I wouldn't mind boarding at this
hotel for an indefinite period. Meals excellent; waitresses beat
anything on Broadway; atmosphere very restful to wandering gentlemen.
Now if I could only get acquainted with one of these lovely Fatimas,
and find out where the bar is--the bar of El Barr! Very good! Faith,
very good indeed!"

He laughed at his own witticism and blew perfumed smoke toward the
dim, golden roof. But now his attention was riveted by the silent
entrance of six dancing-girls, that instantly brought him to keen
observation.

Their dance, barefooted and with a minimum of veils, swayed into
sinuous beauty to the monotonous music of kettle-drums, long red
flutes and guitars of sand-tortoise shell with goat-skin heads--music
furnished by a dozen Arabs squatting on their hunkers half-way down the
hall. The gracious weaving of those lithe, white bodies of the girls
as they swayed from sunlit filigree to dim shadow, stirred even the
coldest heart among the Legionaries, that of the Master himself. As
for Bohannan, his cup of joy was brimming.

The dance ended, one of the girls sang with a little foreign accent,
very pleasing to the ears of the Master and Leclairs the famous chant
of Kaab el Ahbar:

  A black tent, swayed by the desert wind
  Is dearer to me, dearer to me
  Than any palace of the city walls.
  Dearer to me!

  [1]_And the earth met with rain!_

  A handful of dates, a cup of camel's milk
  Is dearer to me, dearer to me
  Than any sweetmeat in the city walls.
  Dearer to me!

  _And the earth wet with rain!_

  A slender Bedouin maid, freely unveiled
  Is dearer to me, dearer to me
  Than harem beauties with henna-stained fingers.
  My Bedouin maid is slim as the _ishkil_ tree.
  Dearer to me!

  _And the earth wet with rain!_

  Black tent, swift white mare, camel of Hejaz blood
  Are dear to me, are dear to me!
  Dearest is my slim, unveiled one of the desert sands!
  Dearest to me!
  Ibla her name is; she blazes like the sun,
  Like the sun at dawn, with hair like midnight shades,
  Oh, dear to me!
  Paradise is in her eyes; and in her breasts, enchantment.
  Her body yields like the tamarisk,
  When the soft winds blow over the hills of Nedj!
  Dearest to me!

  _And the earth wet with rain!_

[Footnote 1: _W'al arz mablul bi matar._ A favorite refrain for songs
among the Arabs, to whom rain represents all comforts and delights.]

A little silence followed the ending of the song and the withdrawal
of the girls and musicians. The major seemed disposed to call for
an encore, but Janina silenced his forthcoming remarks with a sharp
nudge. All at once, old Bara Miyan removed the amber stem of the
water-pipe from his bearded lips and said:

"Now, White Sheik, thou hast eaten of our humble food, and seen
our dancing. Thou hast heard our song. Wilt thou also see jugglers,
wrestlers, trained apes from Yemen? Or wilt thou take the _kaylulah_
(siesta)? Or doth it please thee now to speak of the gifts that my
heart offers thee and thine?"

"Let us speak of the gifts, O Bara Miyan," answered the Master, while
Leclair listened intently and all the Arabs gave close heed. "We have
not many hours more to stay in this paradise of thine. We must be
away to our own Feringistan, in our flying house. Let us speak of the
gifts. But first, I would ask thee something."

"Speak, in Allah's name, and it shall be answered thee!"

"The salt is still in thy stomach for us?"

"It is still in my stomach."

"Thou dost swear that, O Bara Miyan, by a great oath?"

"By the rising of the stars, which is a great oath!"

"And by the greatest oath, the honor of thy women?"

"Yea, Frank, by the honor of my women! But thou and thine, too, have
covenants to keep."

Old Bara Miyan bent shaggy white brows at the Master, and peered out
intently from under the hood of his burnous. The Master queried:

"What covenants, great Olema?"

"These: That no harm shall befall Myzab and the Great Pearl Star and
the Black Stone, before thou and thine fly away to the Lands of the
Books. Then, that no blood of our people shall be shed in El Barr,
either the city of Jannati Shahr or the plain. These things thou must
understand, O Frank. If harm befall the sacred relics, or blood
be shed, then the salt will depart from my stomach, and we will be
_kiman_,[1] and the _thar_[2] will be between thine and mine. I have
spoken!"

[Footnote 1: Kiman, of hostile tribes.]

[Footnote 2: Thar, the terrible blood-feud of the Arabs.]

The Master nodded.

"These things be very clear to my heart," he answered. "They shall be
treasured in my memory."

"It is well. Now speak we of the gifts."

The fixed attention of the Arabs told the Legionaries, despite their
ignorance of Arabic, that at last the important negotiation of the
reward was under way. Pipes and cigarettes smoldered, unsmoked; all
eyes turned eagerly toward the Master and Bara Miyan. Silence fell
upon the banquet-hall, where still the thin, perfumed incense-smoke
writhed aloft and where still the motionless Maghrabi men stood in
those ominous lines along the silk-tapestried walls.

"And what things," began the Olema, "doth thy heart desire, in this
city of Jannati Shahr? Tell thy wish, and perchance it shall be
granted thee!"

The Master paused, deliberately. Well he understood the psychological
value of slow action in dealing with Orientals. Bargaining, with such,
is a fine art. Haste, greed, eagerness defeat themselves.

Contemplatively the Master chewed a khat leaf, then smiled a very
little, and asked:

"Is it permitted to tell thee that this gold, of which thou hast
carved thy city--this gold which to thee is as stones and earth to
the people of Feringistan--hath great value with us?"

"It is permitted, O Frank. This thing we already know." The old man
frowned ominously. "Dost thou ask gold?"

The Master nerved himself for the supreme demand, success in which
would mean fortune beyond all calculation, power and wealth to shame
all plutocrats.

"Gold?" he repeated. "Yea, that is what we ask! Gold! Give unto us
what gold our flying house can carry hence to our own land beyond the
salted seas, and we will depart. Before the rising of the stars we
will be gone. And the peace be unto thee, O Bara Miyan, master of the
gold!"

Tension as of a wire about to snap contracted the Master's nerves,
strong as they were. Leclair leaned forward, his face pale, teeth set
hard into his lip.

"Yea, gold!" the Master repeated with hard-forced calm. "This is the
gift we ask of thee, for the Myzab and the holy Black Stone and Kaukab
el Durri--the gift of gold!"




CHAPTER XLII


"SONS OF THE PROPHET, SLAY!"

The Olema shook an emphatic head of negation. "_Yafta Allah!_" he
exclaimed, using the absolute, decisive formula of refusal in Arab
bargaining. "This gold of ours is sacred. The angel Jibrail himself
struck the Iron Mountains with his wing, at the same hour when the
Black Stone fell from Paradise, and caused the gold to gush out. It is
not earthly gold, but the gold of angels.

"Not one grain can be taken from El Barr. The curses of Jehannun, of
Eblis, rest on Arab or _Ajam_ who dare attempt it. Surely, such a one
shall be put to the sword, and his soul in the bottom pits of Hell
shall be taken by the feet and forelock and cast into the hottest
flames! That soul shall eat of the fruit of the tree Al Zakkum, and be
branded forever with the treasure he did attempt to ravish from us!"

"Remember, great Olema, we did bring thee the Myzab and Kaukab el
Durri, and the holy Black Stone!"

"I remember, White Sheik, and will reward thee, but not with gold!"
The old man's face was stern, deep-lined, hard; his eyes had assumed a
dangerous glitter. "Thou hast a good tongue, but though it speak from
now till the angel Al Sijil roll up all the scrolls of life, it shall
not avail.

"Ask some other thing; and remember, if thou dost try by any magic
to remove even a sand-grain of this gold, the salt will be no longer
between thee and me. This must be added to the two things I have
already told thee of, that would take away the salt!"

Narrowly the Master eyed him, then nodded. Huge though this rebuff
had been, and great as the loss must be, the Master realized the utter
impossibility of coming to any terms with Bara Miyan on a gold basis.
All the fanaticism of these people would resist this, to the death.
Even to insist further might precipitate a massacre. Therefore, like
the philosopher he was, he turned to other possibilities, considering
what was best to be done.

The Olema spoke again, pausing now and then as he puffed reflectively
at his water-pipe. Said he:

"I will tell thee a great secret, O Frank. In this city lie the lost
books of the Arwam (Greek) wise men and poets. When the Alexandrian
library was burned by Amrou, at Omar's order, the four thousand baths
of the city were heated for six months by ancient scrolls. I have
heard that ye Feringi have greatly mourned the loss of the Arwam
learning and poetry. Not all this treasure was lost, White Sheik!"

The Master started, peered at Bara Miyan and forgot to chew his
soothing khat leaves.

"And then--?" asked he.

"Some twenty thousand of the most precious parchments were privately
carried by our _Sufis_ to Medina, and thence, after many years, to
Jannati Shahr. Here they still lie, in perfect form, clearly to be
read. This is a treasure that would set the world of the Feringi
ablaze and make thee as a god among thy people. Ask this gift,
O Frank, and it shall be granted thee! For the mere asking, this
treasure shall be thine!"

The Master shook his head. Deeply as he understood the incalculable
value of the lost books of antiquity, he well knew that to offer his
Legion such a booty would be all in vain. Men who have suffered and
bled, risked all, seen their comrades die, and even now stand in
the shadow of death--hoping some vast, tangible loot--are not proper
material for discussion of literary values.

"_Yafta Allah!_" the Master exclaimed, with emphasis equal to the
Olema's. "No, Bara Miyan, this cannot be."

"Our dancing and singing maidens are like a flame of Paradise. Their
enchantments make the heart of man glad with perpetual springtime.
Choose, O Frank, two handmaids for thyself and for each of thy men,
and let them be yours to go with you to your own country and to be
your chattels and your sweet delights!"

The eyes of "Captain Alden" narrowed with sudden, painful emotion as
she peered at the Master. With some smattering of Arabic, she may have
caught something of the sense of this offer. But the Master, unmoved
by this second offer of Olema's, merely shook his head again, saying:

"No, Bara Miyan. Though thy women be fair as the dawn over the Sea of
Oman, and soft-eyed as the gazelles in the oasis of the _Wady el
Ward_ (Vale of Flowers), not for us are they. We seek other rewards.
Therefore will I ask thee still another question."

"Thy question shall be answered, O Frank!"

"Is it true that the Caliph el Walid, in Hegira 88, sent forty
camel-loads of cut jewels to Mecca?"

"That is true."

"And that, later, all those jewels were brought hither?"

"Even so! It is also true that two Franks in Hegira 550, digged a
tunnel into the Meccan treasury from a house they had hired in the
guise of Egyptian _Hujjaj_. They were both beheaded, White Sheik, and
their bodies were burned to ashes."

"No doubt," the Master answered, nonchalantly. "But they had brought
no rich gifts to the Meccans. Therefore, now speaking of these forty
camel-loads of cut jewels, O Bara Miyan--"

"It is in thy mind to ask for those, White Sheik?"

"Allah giveth thee two hearts, Bara Miyan, as well as the riches of
Karun. Surely, 'the generous man is Allah's friend,' and thy hand is
not tied up."[1]

[Footnote 1: "To have two hearts" (_dhu'kulbein_) signifies to be
prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is
equivalent to calling a man niggardly.]

The Olema, a quick decision gleaming in his eyes--though what that
decision might be, who could tell?--put down the amber mouthpiece and
with an eloquent, lean hand gestured toward a silk-curtained doorway
at the right of the vast hall.

"Come with me, then, White Sheik!" said he, arising and beckoning his
white-robed sub-chiefs. He raised a finger in signal to the Maghrabis,
though what the signal might mean, the Legionaries could not know.
"Come, with all thy men. And, by Allah! I will show thee the things
whereof thou dost speak to me. I will show thee all these things--and
others!

"_Come_!"

In silence the Legionaries followed old Bara Miyan through the
curtained doorway; and after them came the sub-chiefs. The Maghrabi
stranglers, noiseless and bare-footed, fell in behind; a long ominous
line of black human brutes, seeming hardly above the intellectual
level of so many gorillas.

Stout-hearted as the Legionaries were, a kind of numbing oppression
was closing in upon them. City battlements and double walls of inner
citadel, then massive gates and now again more doors that closed
behind them, intervened between them and even the perilous liberty of
the plain of El Barr. And, in addition to all this, some hundreds of
thousands of Arabs, waiting without, effectually surrounded them, and
the Maghrabi men cast their black shadow, threatening and ominous,
over the already somber enough canvas.

A web, they all felt, was closing about them that only chance and
boldness could unravel. Everything now hung on the word of an aged
fanatic, who for any fancied breach of the Oath of Salt might deliver
them to slavery, torture, death.

"Remember, men," the Master warned his men as they penetrated the
dim, golden-walled passage also lighted with sandal-oil
_mash'als_--"remember the mercy-bullets. If it comes to war, none of
us must be taken prisoner!"

To the Olema he exclaimed, in suave tones:

"_Dakhilak, Ya Shayk!_ (Under thy protection, O Sheik!) Let not the
laws of hospitality or the Oath of Salt be forgotten!"

The Olema only smiled oddly, in the dim and perfumed obscurity of the
passageway, along which the slither of the many sandaled feet on
the gold pavement made a soft, creeping sound. Nothing more was
said--except for some grumbled mouthings of Bohannan--during the next
few minutes.

The passage seemed enormously long to the Master as, flanked by
Leclair, "Captain Alden," and the major, he peered curiously at its
smooth, dull-yellow walls all chased with geometrical patterns picked
out in silver and copper, between the dull-hued tapestries, and
banded with long extracts from the Koran inlaid in Tumar characters of
mother-of-pearl.

Several turnings, and three flights of steps descending through the
solid gold "dyke" that ran down into the bowels of the earth no
one could even guess how far, served still more to confuse the
Legionaries' sense of direction and to increase their conviction that,
in case of any outbreak of hostilities, they would find themselves
trapped more helplessly than rats in a cage.

It is no aspersion on their bravery to say that more than one among
them had already begun inwardly to curse this wild-goose chase
into Jannati Shahr. It all had now begun to assume absolutely the
appearance of a well-formulated plan of treachery. Even the Master
gave recognition to this appearance, by saying again: "Be ready for
a quick draw. But whatever you do, don't be the aggressor. Watch your
step!"

The passage suddenly reached its end. Another heavy door of the yellow
metal swung back, and all issued into a hall even more vast than the
one they had quitted.

No windows here admitted light. The air, though pure enough as from
some hidden source of ventilation, hung dead and heavy. Not even the
censers, depending from the dim roof, far above, could freshen it;
nor could the cressets' light make more than a kind of ghostly aura
through the gloom.

By this dim half-illumination the Master beheld, there before him in
the middle of the tremendous golden pavement, a strange,
pyramidal object rising four-square in the shape of an equilateral
triangle--just such a triangle as was formed by the locations of
Mecca, Bab el Mandeb, and El Barr.

This pyramid, polished and elaborately engraved, towered some ninety
feet above the floor. It was pierced by numbers of openings, like the
entrances to galleries; and up the smooth face nearest the entrance to
the hall, a stairway about ten feet wide mounted toward the apex.

Completely finished all save the upper part, which still remained
truncated, the golden pyramid gleamed dully in the vague light, a
thing of awe and wonder, grimly beautiful, fearsome to gaze up at. For
some unknown reason, as the Legionaries grouped themselves about their
Master, an uncanny influence seemed to emanate from this singular
object. All remained silent, as the Olema, an enigmatic smile on his
thin, bearded lips, raised a hand toward the pyramid.

"This thing, O Frank, thou shouldst see," he remarked dryly. "Above
all, the inner chambers. Wilt thou go with me?"

"I will go," the Master answered. "Lead the way!"

The Olema beckoned one of the Maghrabis, who delivered a torch of some
clear-burning, resinous, and perfumed material into his hand.

"Come," bade the old man, and gestured toward the steps of gold.

Together, in silence, they mounted toward the dim, high-arched
roof. From near the top, the Master, glancing down, could see the
white-robed mass of the Arabs, the small, compact group of his own
men; and, behind them all, the dim, black lines of the stranglers. But
already the Olema was gesturing for him to enter the highest of the
galleries.

Into this, carved in the virgin metal, both made their way. The
torchlight flung strange, wavering gleams on smooth walls niched with
dark embrasures. At the further end of the passage, the Olema stopped.

"Here is a new trophy, just added to all that Allah hath placed in our
hands," said he, gravely. "There are some three-and-twenty places yet
left, to fill. Wilt thou see the new trophy?"

The Master nodded silently. Raising the torch, the Olema thrust it
into one of the embrasures. There the Master beheld a human skull.

The empty eye-sockets, peering out at him, seemed to hold a malevolent
malice. That the skull had been but freshly cleaned, was obvious.

"Abd el Rahman?" asked the Master.

"Yea, the Apostate," answered Bara Miyan. "At last, Allah hath
delivered him to us of El Barr."

"Thou hast used a heavy hand on the Apostate, O Sheik."

"We of Jannati Shahr do not anoint rats' heads with jasmine oil. Tell
me, Frank, how many men hast thou?"

"Three-and-twenty, is it not so?"

"Yea, it is so. Tell me, Bara Miyan, this whole pyramid--"

"Skulls, yea."

"This is the Pyramid of Ayeshah that I have heard strange tales of?"
the Master demanded, feeling even his hard nerves quiver.

"The Pyramid of Ayeshah."

"No myth, then, but reality," the Master commented, fascinated in
spite of himself. "Even as the famous Tower of Skulls at Jerba, in
Tunis!"

"Thou hast said it, O Frank. Here be more than ten-score thousand
skulls of the enemies of Islam, of blasphemers against the Prophet, of
those who have penetrated the Empty Abodes, of those who have sought
to carry gold from El Barr. It is nearly done, this pyramid. But there
still remain three-and-twenty vacant places to be filled."

For a long minute, the eyes of the Master and of Bara Miyan met, in
silence, with the torch-flare glinting strange lights from them. Then
the Olema spoke.

"Hast thou seen enough?" demanded he.

"Mine eyes are filled."

"And dost thou still ask rewards of gold?"

"Nay, it is as I have already told thee; let the cut jewels of the
Caliph el Walid suffice!"

"It is well spoken. Let us descend."

In silence, again, they left the gruesome gallery and went down the
stairway with the Olema's torch leaving vague, fantastic wreaths of
odorous smoke curling up along the polished, dull-yellow slant of the
pyramid. Back on the floor again, the Master said to his men:

"This pyramid is filled with skulls of men who have tried to carry
gold from El Barr. For the present, we must dismiss gold from our
minds. Common prudence dictates that we abandon all idea of gold, take
whatever reward we can get, and leave this city at once.

"The gold is of no importance, whatever. On the way back over the
outer foothills of the Iron Mountains, many outcrops of gold exist.
_Nissr_ can poise above some of these; and a few hours' labor will
load her with all the gold we can carry. There can be no sense in
trying to get any here. It would simply add to our peril.

"Everything is therefore quite satisfactory. But watch every move. If
nothing breaks, in two hours from now we should be on our way. Again
I caution you all, keep silent and make no move without my orders. The
prize is at our very finger-tips. So long as we shed no blood and as
nothing happens to the Myzab and the Black Stone, we are safe. But
remember--_be careful!_"

The Olema touched him on the elbow.

"Now," the old man asked, "now, O Frank, wouldst thou see the cut
jewels of the Caliph el Walid?"

"Even so!"

"Come, then!" And Bara Miyan gestured toward another door that led, at
the left, out of the Chamber of the Pyramid.

Again the strange procession formed itself, as before, with the
gorilla-like Maghrabi stranglers a rear guard. A few minutes through
still another passage in the gold brought them to a door of ebony,
banded with silver. No door of gold, it seemed, sufficed for this
chamber they were about to enter. Stronger materials were needed here.

This door, like the others, swung silently on its massive hinges.

"Come, O Master of the fighting-men of Feringistan!" exclaimed the
Olema. "In Allah's name, take of the gifts that I have already offered
thee, and then in peace depart!"

Before the Master could reply, a shuddering concussion shivered
through the solid gold all about them. The tremor of this shock, like
that of an earthquake, trembled the cressets on the walls and made the
huge ebony door, ajar into a dim-lighted hall, groan on its hinges.

Stupefied, Legionaries and Arabs alike, stared silently under the
vague gleam of the torches.

Then, far and faint, as though coming along tortuous passages from
distances above, a muffled concussion smote their ears. The shock of
the air-wave was distinctly felt, eloquent of the catastrophe that in
a second of time had shattered every plan and hope.

As if an echo of that thunderous, far explosion, a faint wailing of
voices--echoing from very far above--drifted eerily along the passage;
voices in blended rage and fear, in hate, agony, despair.

"God above--!" the major gulped. "Captain Alden" whipped her pistol
from its holster, not a fraction of a second before the Master's
leaped into his hand. The torchlight flickered on Leclair's
service-revolver, and was reflected on the guns of every Legionary.

"If that's the explosive," Bohannan cried, "faith, we're in for it!
_Is_ it the explosive that's blown Hell out o' the Black Stone?"

A wild cry echoed down the passage. The Olema, his face suddenly
distorted with a passion of hate, snatched a pistol from beneath his
burnous.

"The dogs of Feringistan have spat on all Islam!" he screamed, in a
shrill, horrible voice. "The Black Stone is no more! Vengeance on the
unbelieving dogs! _Allah il Allah!_ Kill, kill, and let no dog escape!

"Sons of the Prophet! Slay me these dogs! Kill!"




CHAPTER XLIII


WAR IN THE DEPTHS

Horrible, unreal as a fever-born nightmare in its sudden frenzy, the
Arab's attack drove in at them. The golden passageway flung from wall
to wall screams, curses in shrill barbaric voices, clangor of steel
whirled from scabbards, echoes of shots loud-roaring in that narrow
space.

Bara Miyan's pistol, struck up by the woman's hand, spat fire over the
Master's head just as the Olema himself went down with blood spurting
from a jugular severed by the major's bullet. The Olema's gaudy
burnous crimsoned swiftly.

"Got _him_!" shouted Bohannan, firing again, again, into the tangle of
sub-chiefs and Maghrabi men. Adams pitched forward, cleft to the chin
by a simitar.

The firing leaped to point-blank uproar, on both sides. The men of
Jannati Shahr numbered more pistols, but the Legionaries had quicker
firers. Arabs, Legionaries, Maghrabis alike falling in a tumult of raw
passions, disappeared under trampling feet.

Deafening grew the uproar of howls, curses, shots. The smell of dust
and blood mingled with the aromatic perfume of the cressets.

The Master was shouting something, as he emptied his automatic into
the pack of white-robed bodies, snarling brown faces, waving arms. But
what he was commanding, who could tell?

Like a storm-wave flinging froth ashore, the rush of the Moslems
drove the Legionaries--fewer now--back into the treasure-chamber. The
Master, violent hands on "Captain Alden," swung her back, away; thrust
her behind him. Her eyes gleamed through the mask as she still fired.
The Master heard her laugh.

From dimness of gloom, within the doorway, two vague figures rained
dagger-blows. Janina, mortally stabbed, practically blew the head off
one of these door-keepers.

Cracowicz got the other with a blow from the butt of his empty
pistol--a blow that crushed in the right temporal bone. Then he, too,
and three others, fell and died.

Outside, in the passage, the Maghrabis were wringing the necks of the
wounded white men. The dull sound of crushed and broken bones blent
with the turmoil.

"_The door--shut the door!_"

The Master's voice penetrated even this Hell-tumult. The Master flung
himself against the door, and others with him.

The very frenzy of the attack defeated the Arab's object, for it drove
the survivors back into the treasure-crypt. And in the narrow doorway
the white men could for a moment hold back the howling tides of fury.

With cold lead, butts, naked fists, the remaining Legionaries smashed
a little clearance-room, corpse-heaped. They stumbled, fought, fell
into the crypt.

The heavy door, swung by panting, sweating men--while others fired
through the narrowing aperture--groaned shut on massive hinges.

As the space narrowed, frenzy broke loose. Arabs and Maghrabis crawled
and struggled over bodies, flung themselves to sure immolation in the
doorway. As fast as they fell, the Legionaries dragged them inside.
The place became an infernal shambles, slippery, crimson, unreal with
horror.

For one fate-heavy moment, the tides of war hung even. Furiously the
remaining Legionaries toiled with straining muscles, swelling veins,
panting lungs, to force the door shut, against the shrieking, frenzied
drive of Moslem fanatics lashed into fury by the _thar_, the feud of
blood.

"Captain Alden" turned the tide. She snatched down one of the copper
lamps that hung by chains from the dim ceiling of the treasure-crypt.
Over the heads of the Legionaries she flung blazing sandal-oil out
upon the white-robed jam of madmen.

The flaming oil flared up along those thin, white robes. It dripped on
wounded and on dead. Wild howls of anguish pierced the tumult. In the
minute of confusion, the door boomed shut. Bohannan dropped a heavy
teakwood bar into staples of bronze.

"God!" he panted, his right eye misted with blood from a jagged cut
on the brow. Shrieks of rage, from without, were answered by jeers and
shouts of exultation from the Legionaries.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" gasped Leclair. His neck was blackened with a
powder burn, and the tunic was ripped clean off him. Not one of the
Legionaries had uniforms completely whole. Hardly half of them still
kept their slippers.

Torn, barefooted, burned, bleeding, decimated, they still laughed.
Wild gibes penetrated the door of the treasure-crypt, against which
the mad attack was already beginning to clash and thunder.

"Faith, but this is a grand fight!" the major exulted. "It's
Donnybrook with trimmings!" He waved his big fists enthusiastically on
high, and blinked his one good eye. "If a man can die this way, sure,
what's the use o' living?"

"Steady men! Steady!" the Master cautioned, reloading his gun. "No
time, now, for shouting. Load up! This fight's only begun!"

Already, as they recharged their weapons, the door was groaning under
the frantic attack of the Arabs and Maghrabis. Wild curses, howls to
Allah and to the Prophet, came in dull confusion through the massive
plates. A hail of blows besieged them. The bronze staples began to
bend.

"Come, men!" commanded the Master. "No chance to defend this position.
They'll be in, directly. There are thousands of them in reserve! Away
from here!"

"Where the devil _to_?" demanded the major, defiantly. "Hang to
it--give 'em blue Hell as they come through!"

The Master seized and flung him back.

"If you're so keen on dying," he cried, "you can die right now, for
insubordination! Back, away from here, you idiot!"

The major obeyed. The others followed. Already the door was
creaking, giving, as the Legionaries--now hardly more than a dozen in
number--began the first steps of their retreat, that should rank in
history with that of Xenophon's historic Ten Thousand.

The Greeks had all of God's outdoors for their maneuvers. These
Legionaries had nothing but dark pits and runways, unexplored, in the
bowels of a huge, fanatic city. Thus, their retreat was harder. But
with courage unshaken, they turned their backs on the yielding door,
and set their faces toward darkness and the unknown.

Two of their number lay dead inside this chamber where the Legionaries
now were. Nothing could be done for them; the bodies simply had to be
abandoned where they lay. Eight were dead in the passage outside the
chamber, their corpses mingled with those of Arabs and Maghrabis.

In the chamber, as the Master glanced back, he could see a heap of
bodies round the door. These bodies of attackers who had been pulled
inside and butchered, made a glad sight to the Master. He laughed
grimly.

"We're more than even with them, so far," he exulted. "We've beaten
them, so far! The rest will get us, all right enough, but Jannati
Shahr will remember the coming of the white men!"

The survivors--the Master, Bohannan, "Captain Alden," and Leclair and
nine others--were in evil case, as they trailed down the low-roofed
chamber lighted with copper lamps. More than half bore wounds.
Some showed bleeding faces, others limp arms; still others hobbled
painfully, leaving bloody trails on the floor of dull gold. Curses on
the Arabs echoed in various tongues. This first encounter had taken
frightful toll of the Legion.

But every heart that still lived was bold and high. Not one of the
little party entertained the slightest hope of surviving or of ever
beholding the light of day. Still, not one uttered any word of despair
or suggestion of surrender.

Everything but a fight to the finish was forgotten. Only one man even
thought of _Nissr_ and of what probably had happened out there on the
plain. This man was Leclair.

"_Dieu_!" he grunted. "An accident, eh? Something must have gone
wrong--or did the brown devils attack? I hope our men outside
made good slaughter of these Moslem pigs, before they died. Eh, my
Captain?"

"Well?"

"Is it not possible that _Nissr_ and our men still live? That they
will presently bombard the city? That they may rescue us?"

The Master shook his head.

"They may live," he answered, "but as for rescuing us--" His gesture
completed the idea. Suddenly he pointed.

"See!" he cried. "Another door!"




CHAPTER XLIV


INTO THE JEWEL-CRYPT

It was time some exit should be discovered. The tumult had notably
increased, at the barred entrance. The staples could not hold, much
longer.


The Legionaries pressed forward. At the far end of the chamber,
another door was indeed visible; smaller than the first, low, almost
square, and let into a deep recess in the elaborately carved wall of
gold.

Barefooted, in their socks, or some still in slippers, they reached
this door. A little silence fell on them, as they inspected it.
One man coughed, spitting blood. Another wheezed, with painful
respiration. The smell of sweat and blood sickened the air.

"That's some door, all right!" judged Bohannan, peering at its dark
wood, heavily banded with iron. "Faith, but they've got a padlock on
that, big enough to hold the Pearly Gates!"

"It is only a question, now, of the key," put in Leclair, with French
precision.

"Faith, _here's_ a trap!" the Irishman continued. "A trap, for you!
And thirteen rats in it! Lucky, eh?"

"In Jananti Shahr," the memory of a sentence flashed to the Master,
"we do not anoint rats' heads with jasmine oil!" But all he said was:
"Light, here! Bring lamps!"

Three Legionaries obeyed. The flare of the crude wicks, up along the
door, showed its tremendous solidity.

"A little of our explosive would do this business," the Master
declared. "But it's obvious nothing short of that would have much
effect. I think, men, we'll make our stand right here.

"If we put out all lights, we'll have the attackers at a disadvantage.
We can account for fifty or more, before they close in. And--'Captain
Alden,' sir! Where are you going? Back, here!"

The woman gave no heed. She was half-way to the entrance door, round
the edges of which already torch-light had begun to glimmer as the
attackers strained it from its hinges.

Amazed, the Legionaries stared. The Master started after her. Now she
was on her knees beside one of the dead Maghrabis--the one killed
by Janina. She found nothing; turned to the other; uttered a cry of
exultation and held up a clumsy key.

Back over the floor of gold she ran. Her fingers held a crimson cord,
from which the key dangled.

"Those two--they were guardians of this vault, of course!" she cried.
"Here is the key!"

A cheer burst from the Legionaries. The Master clutched the key,
pressed forward to the inner door. A terrible intensity of emotion
seized all the survivors, as he fitted the key to the ponderous lock.

"God!" the Irishman grunted, as the wards slid back. The padlock
clattered to the floor. The hasp fell. In swung the door.

Through it pressed the Legionaries, with lamps swinging, pistols in
hand. As the last of them entered, the outer door collapsed with a
bursting clangor. Lights gleamed; a white-robed tumult of raging men
burst through. Shots crackled; yells echoed; and the sound of many
sandaled feet, furiously running, filled the outer chamber with sounds
of ominous import.

"_Ah, sacrés cochons!_" shouted Leclair, emptying his pistol at the
pursuers. The Master thrust him back. The door clanged shut; down
dropped another bar.

Bohannan laughed madly. The fighting-blood was leaping in his veins.

"Oh, the grand fight!" he shouted. "God, the grand old fight!"

Confused voices, crying out in Arabic, wheeled the Master from the
door.

This inner chamber, very much smaller than the outer, was well lighted
by still more lamps, though here all were of chased silver.

At the far end, four dim figures were visible. Black faces peered in
wonder. The Legionaries caught sight of giant simitars, of fluttering
white robes as the figures advanced.

"By Allah!" a hoarse shout echoed. "Look, Mustapha! The Feringi!"

In the shadows at the other end, the amazed Maghrabi swordsmen
hesitated one precious moment. White-rimmed eyes stared, teeth gleamed
through distorted lips.

These gigantic _mudirs_, or Keepers of the Treasure, had expected the
opening of the door to show them the Feringi, indeed, but preceded by
Bara Miyan and surrounded by men of Jannati Shahr.

Now they beheld the dogs of unbelievers all alone, there, with guns in
hands, with every sign of battle. They had heard sounds of war,
from without. Their dull minds, slowly reacting, could not grasp the
significance of all this.

"The Feringi, Yusuf," cried another voice. "And they are alone! What
meaneth this?"

"_M'adri_" (I know not), ejaculated still another. "But _kill--kill_!"

Their attack was hopeless, but its bravery ranked perfect. Their
shouting charge down the chamber, sabers high, ended in grunting
sprawls of white. Not half-naked like the low-caste Maghrabi outside,
but clad in Arab fashion, they lay there, with Legionaries' bullets in
breast and brain.

The Master smiled, grimly, as he walked to one of the bodies and
stirred it with his naked foot. He swung above it a silver lamp he had
pulled down from the wonderfully arabesqued wall.

"Four scimitars added to our equipment will be useful, at close
quarters," he opined very coolly, unmindful of the dull uproar now
battering at the inner door. "Pick up the cutlery, men, and don't
forget the admirable qualities of the _arme blanche_!"

Himself, he took one of the long, curved blades. The major, Leclair,
and Ferrara--an expert swordsman he had been, in the Italian
army--possessed themselves of the others.

Bohannan whistled his scimitar through the air.

"Very fine I call it!" he exclaimed, with a joyful laugh. "Some little
game of tag, what? And our Moslem friends are still 'it!' We're still
ahead!"

"And likely to be, till our friends bring powder, mine that door, and
blow it in!" The Master added: "We've still a few minutes--maybe more.
Now, then--"

A shrill cry in French, from Lebon, drew all eyes away to the left of
the small chamber.

"_Voilà_!" the lieutenant's orderly was vociferating. They saw his
distorted, torture-broken hand wildly gesticulating toward the floor.
"My Lieutenant, behold!"

"In the name of God, what now?" Leclair demanded, scimitar in hand.
The silver lamps struck high-lights from that gleaming blade, as he
turned toward his orderly. Never had he seen the man seized and shaken
by excitement as at this moment. "What hast thou found, Lebon? What?"

"But behold--behold!" choked the orderly. Articulation failed him. He
stammered into unintelligible cries. The Legionaries crowded toward
him. And in the dumb stupefaction that overcame them, the roaring
tumult at the door was all forgotten. The sentence of death hanging
above them, faded to nothing.

Even the Master's cold blood leaped and thrilled, at realization of
what he was now beholding as the silver lamps swung from out-stretched
hands. Bohannan, for once, was too dazed for exuberance.

Only the Master could find words.

"Well, men," said he, in even tones. "Here it is, at last. We're
seeing something no Feringi ever saw before--the hidden treasure of
Jannati Shahr!"




CHAPTER XLV


THE JEWEL HOARD

Men do strange things, at times, when confronted by experiences
entirely outside even the limits of imagination. At sight of the
perfectly overwhelming masses of wealth that lay there in square pits
chiseled out of the solid gold, most of the Legionaries reacted like
men drunk or mad.

The hoard before them was enough to unbalance reason.

Leclair began to curse with amazing fluency in French and Arabic,
while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol--stolid
Englishman though he was--had to make a strong effort to keep his
teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on
the jaw, burst out laughing, waving their arms extravagantly. Simonds
shouted jubilation and began to jump about in the most extraordinary
fashion. Wallace sat down heavily on the floor, held his lamp out over
one of the pits and stared with blank incomprehension.

As for the major, he dropped to his knees, threw down his weapons and
plunged his arms up to the elbows in the sliding sparkle of the gems.
To have heard him babble, one would have given him free entrance into
any lunatic asylum.

The only two who had remained appreciably calm were "Captain Alden"
and the Master. But even they, as fully as all the rest, forgot the
impending menace of attack. For a moment, even their ears were deaf
to the muffled tumult outside the door, their senses dulled to every
other thing in this world save the incredible hoard there in the
golden pits before them.

Pain, exhaustion, defeat ceased to be, for the Legionaries. Ruin and
the shadow of Azraël's wing departed from their minds. For, bring what
the future might, the present was offering them a spectacle such as
never before in this world's history had the eyes of white men rested
on.

Not even a man _in extremis_ could have turned away his gaze from the
unbelievable masses of shimmering wealth in those square pits of gold.

Fairy tales and legends, "Arabian Nights," and all the mystic lore
of the East never conjured forth more brain-numbing plenitudes of
fortune, nor painted more stupefying beauty, than now gleamed up from
those eight excavations hewn in the dull, soft metal.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" Leclair kept monotonously repeating. "_Mais, nom de
Dieu!_ Ah, the pigs--ah, the sacred pigs!"

Disjointed words from the others--cries, oaths, jubilations--filled
the low-arched chamber, mingling in the stuffy air with lamp-smoke and
the dull scent of blood and dust and sweat.

Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded.
And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a
dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the
gems, dredged up fistfuls and let them rain down crepitantly, again.

The sight was one very hard to grasp with any concrete understanding,
harder still to render in cold words. At first, it gave only a
confused impression of colors, like those in some vivid Oriental
rug. The details escaped observation; and these changed, too, as the
swaying of the lamps, in excited hands, shifted position.

A shimmer of unearthly light played over the pits, like the thin,
colored flames at the edge of a driftwood fire. Soft, opalescent
gleams were blent with prismatic blues, greens, crimsons. Melting
violets were stabbed through by hard yellows and penetrant purples.
And here an orange flash vied with a delicate old rose; there a rich
carnation sparkled beside a misty gray, like fading clouds along the
dim horizons of fairyland.

The Master murmured: "It's true, then--partly true. Rrisa knew part of
it!"

"Not all?" asked the woman.

"I hardly think the Caliph el Walid's gold was ever brought to Jannati
Shahr," he answered. "Coals to Newcastle, you know. And these jewels
are not all uncut. Some are finely faceted, some uncut. But in the
main Rrisa spoke the truth. He told what he believed."

"Yes," assented the woman. Then she added: "Spartan simplicity, is it
not? No elaborate coffers. Not even leather sacks. Just bins, like so
much wheat."

"The shining wheat of Araby!"

"Of the whole Orient!"

They fell silent, peering with fixed attention. And gradually some
calm returned to the others. At the door, too, the turmoil had ceased.
No doubt the Jannati Shahr men, baffled, had sent for much gunpowder
to blow in the massive planking. That silence became ominous.

Still the Legionaries could take no thought of anything but the
Caliph el Walid's hoard. As they stood, squatted, or knelt around
the pits--pits about two and a half feet square and deeper than the
deepest thrust of any arm--it seemed to them that bottomless lakes
and seas of light were opening down, down below them into unfathomed
depths of beauty.

Such beauty caused the soul to drink nepenthes of forgetfulness.
Hardships, wounds, blood, pain, menace of death faded under that
spell. That the Legionaries were trapped at the bottom of a vast
rabbit-warren, with swarms of Moslem ferrets soon to rush upon them,
now seemed to have no significance.

Tranced, "indifferent to Fate," the adventurers peered on greater
wealth of jewels than ever elsewhere in this world's history had been
garnered in one place. The liquid light of the hoard flashed strange
radiances on their tanned, deep-lined faces, now smeared with sweat
and dust, with powder-grime and blood. Their eyes were beholding
unutterable rainbows, flashings and burning glows like those of the
Moslem's own Jebel Radhwa, or Mountain of Paradise.

Each of these jewels--several million gems, at the least
computation--what a story it might have told! What a tale of remotest
antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What
a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of
Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese
pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim
starlight! Of passion and of pain!

On what proud hand of Sultan, emir, cadi, prince, had this huge ruby
burned? On what beloved breast or brow of princess, nautch-girl,
concubine--yes, maybe of slave exalted to the purple--had that
fire-gleaming diamond blazed?

From Roman times, from Greek, from ancient Jerusalem, from the
fire-breathing shrines of Baal at long-dead Carthage, perhaps, this
topaz might have come. This sapphire might have graced the anklet of
some beauty of old Nile, ages before King Solomon wielded the scepter,
ages even before the great god Osiris reigned.

That amethyst might have been loot of the swift black galleys of Tyre,
in joyous days when men's strong arms took what they could, of women
or of gems, and when Power was Law!

Imagination ran riot there, gazing down upon those jewel-pits. In them
lay every kind of precious stone for which, from remotest antiquity,
men had cheated, schemed, lied, fought, murdered. The jewels showed
no attempt at sorting or classification. With true Oriental
_laissez-faire_, they were all mingled quite at random; these gems,
any chance handfuls of which must have meant an incalculable fortune.




CHAPTER XLVI


BOHANNAN BECOMES A MILLIONAIRE

Like men in a dream, after the first wild emotions had died, the
Legionaries peered down into this sea of light. Smoke from the lamps
rose toward the dim, low-arched roof. Blood from the Maghrabi's wounds
slowly spread and clotted on the golden floor.

Without, a confused murmur told of resuming preparations to smash in
the door. And through it all, the dry clicking of the gems made itself
audible, as the major sifted them with shaking fingers.

"Well, men," the Master laughed dryly, "here they are! Here are the
jewels of Jannati Shahr. Old Bara Miyan would probably have given us a
peck or two of them, for Myzab and the Great Pearl Star and the Black
Stone, if those hadn't been destroyed--"

"How do you know they've been destroyed?" the major cried. "How do you
know but what we'll be rescued, here?"

"If the bombardment had been going to begin, I think we'd have heard
something of it, by now. My judgment tells me there'll be no explosive
dropped on Jannati Shahr.

"We've got to fight this thing through, unaided. And at any rate, we
don't have to limit ourselves to a peck or two of jewels. We've got
them all, now--or they've got us!"

The irony of his tone made no impression on Bohannan. His mercurial
temperament seemed to have gone quite to pieces, in view of the hoard.
He cried:

"Come on, then, boys! Fill up!"

And with a wild laugh he began scooping the gems, hap-hazard, into the
pockets of his torn, battle-stained uniform. Jewels of fabulous price
escaped his fingers, like so many pebbles in a sand-pit, and fell
clicking to the golden floor. With shaking hands the major dredged
into the pit before him, mad with a very frenzy of greed.

"Stop!" cried the Master, sternly. "No nonsense, now!"

"What?" retorted Bohannan, angrily. His bruised, cut face reddened
ominously.

"Drop those jewels, sir!"

"Why?"

"Principally because I order you to!" The Master's voice was cold,
incisive. "They're worthless, now. No make-weights! We can't have
make-weights at a time like this. To think of jewels at such an hour!
Throw them back!"

A flash of rage distorted the major's face. His blue eyes burned with
strange fire.

"Never!" he shouted, crouching there at the brink of the jewel-pit.
"Call it insubordination, mutiny, anything you like, but I'm going to
have my fill of these! Faith, but I _will_, now!"

"Sir--"

"I don't give a damn! Jewels for mine!" His voice rose gusty, raw,
wild. "I've been a soldier of fortune all my life, and that's how I'm
going to die. Poor, most of the time. Well, I'm going to die rich!"

His philippic against poverty and discipline tumbled out in a torrent
of wild words, strongly tinged with the Irish accent that marked his
passionate excitement. He sprang to his feet, and--raging--faced his
superior officer. He shouted:

"Sure, and I've knocked up and down this rotten old world all my life,
a rolling stone with never enough to bless myself with. And I've gone,
at the end, on this wild-goose chase of yours, that's led you and
me and all of us to a black death here in the bottom of a damned,
fantastic, Arabian city of gold!

"That's all right, dying. That was in the bargain, if it had to be
done. Two-thirds of us are dead, already, a damn sight better men
than I am! We've been dying right along, from the beginning of this
crack-brained Don Quixote crusade. That's all right. But, faith! now
that it's my turn to die, by the holy saints I'm going to be well paid
for it!"

Bohannan, eyes wild, struck his heaving breast with a huge fist and
laughed like a maniac.

"That's all right, you reaching for your gun!" he defied the Master.
"Go ahead, shoot! I'm rich already. My pockets are half full. Shoot,
damn you, shoot!"

The Master laughed oddly, and let his hand fall from the pistol-butt.

"This," said he quite calmly, "is insanity."

"Ha! Insanity, it is? Well then, let me be insane, can't you? It's a
good way to die. And I've _lived_, anyhow. We've all lived. We've all
had a Hell of a run for our money, and it's time to quit.

"Shoot, if you want to--a few minutes more or less don't matter. But,
faith, I'll die a millionaire, and that's something I never
expected to be. Fine, fine! Give me a minute more, and I'll die
a multi-millionaire! Sure, imagine that, will you? Major Aloysius
Bohannan, gentleman-adventurer, a multi-millionaire! That's what I'll
be, and the man don't live that can stop me now!"

With the laugh of a madman, the major fell to his knees again beside
the pit, plunged his hands once more into the gleaming, sliding mass
of wealth, and recommenced cramming his pockets.

The Master laughed again.

"It's quite immaterial, after all," said he. "I led you into this.
And now it's very nearly a case of _sauve qui peut_. The sooner your
pockets are full, to the extreme limit, the sooner something like
reason will return to you. Jewels being of interest to a man at
death's door--it's quite characteristic of you, Bohannan. Help
yourself!"

"Thanks, I will!" Bohannan flung up at him, blood-drabbled face pale
and drawn by the flaring lamplight. "A _multi_-millionaire! Death? I
should worry! Help myself? Faith, I just will, that!"

"Anyone else, here, feel so disposed?" the Master inquired. "If so,
get it over and done with. We've got fighting ahead, and we'd better
quench whatever thirst there is for wealth, first."

No one made any move. Only Bohannan's mind had been unsettled by the
hoard, to the extent of wanting to possess it. Now that death loomed,
empty pockets were as good, to all the rest, as any other sort.

"You're all a pack of damned fools!" Bohannan sneered. "You could die
richer than Rockefeller, every man-jack of you, and you--you don't
want to! Sure, it's _you_ that's mad, not me!"

No one answered. They all stood peering down at him, their faces
tense, wounded, dirty; their eyes gleaming strangely; the shadow of
Azraël's wing already enfolding them. Then, a few detached themselves
from the little group and wandered off into the gloom, away from the
pits. Leclair muttered:

"I prefer loading my automatic, to loading my pockets! Odd, the major
is, eh? Ah well, _à chacun sa chimère!_"

"Everybody's weapons fully loaded?" the Master demanded. "Be sure they
are! And don't forget the mercy-bullets, men. These Arabs are rather
ingenious in their tortures. They make a specialty of crucifying
unbelievers--upside down. That sort of thing won't do, for us not for
fighting-men of the Legion!"

Bohannan, laughing, stood up. Every pocket was a-bulge with
incalculable wealth.

"Now I'm satisfied," he remarked in more rational tones. "I reckon I
must be worth more money, as I stand here, than any human being that
ever lived. You're looking at the richest man in the world, gentlemen!
And I'm going to die, the richest. If that's not some distinction,
what is? For a man that was bone-poor, fifteen minutes ago! Now, sir--"

A sudden cry interrupted him. That cry came from "Captain Alden."

"Here! Look here!"

"What is it?" demanded the Master. He started toward her, while
outside the door sounded dull commands, as if the Arabs-now organized
to effective work-were already preparing to blow open the last barrier
between them and their victims.

"What now?" the Master repeated, striding toward her.

"_See! See here!_"




CHAPTER XLVII


A WAY OUT?

The woman stood pointing into a black recess at the far end of the
crypt. All that the Master could discern there, at first, was a
darkness even greater than that which shrouded the corners of the
vault.

"Light, here!" he commanded. Ferrara swung a lamp, by its chain,
into the recess. They saw a low, square opening in the wall of dull,
gleaming metal.

"A passage, eh?" the Master ejaculated.

"Maybe a _cul-de-sac_," she answered. "But--there's no telling--it may
lead somewhere."

"By Allah! Men! Here--all of you!"

The Master's voice rang imperatively. They all came trooping with
naked or slippered feet that slid in the wet redness of the floor.
Broken exclamations sounded.

Seizing the lamp, the Master thrust it into the opening, which
measured no more than four feet high by three wide. The light smokily
illuminated about three yards of this narrow passage. Then a sharp
turn to the right concealed all else.

Whither this runway might lead, to what peril or what trap it might
conduct them, none could tell. Very strongly it reminded the Master
of the gallery in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, which he had seen
twelve years before--the gallery which in ancient days had served as a
death-trap for treasure-seekers.

That gallery, he remembered, had contained a cleverly hidden stone
in its floor which once on a time had precipitated pilferers down a
vertical shaft more than a hundred feet, to death, in the bowels of
that huge, terrifying mausoleum.

Was this passage of similar purpose and design? In all probability,
yes. Oriental ways run parallel in all the lands of the East.

Nevertheless, the passage offered a means of escaping from the crypt.
And there, with the dead Maghrabi mudirs, the Legionaries could not
stay. In a few minutes now, at most, the men of Jannati Shahr would be
upon them.

"Faith, what the devil now?" exclaimed Bohannan, now seeming quite
rational, as he peered into the cramped corridor. "Where to Hell does
this lead?"

"Just where you've said, to Hell, it's far more than likely," the
Master retorted. "Come, men, into it! Follow me!"

He stooped, lamp in one hand, simitar in the other, and in a most
cramped posture entered the passage. After him came Leclair, the
woman, Bohannan, and the others.

The air hung close and heavy. The oppression of that stooping
position, the lamp-smoke, the unusual strain on the muscles, the
realization of a whole world of gold above and all about them, seemed
to strangle and enervate them. But steadily they kept on and on.

The turning of the passage revealed a long, descending incline, that
sloped down at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees. A marked rise in
temperature grew noticeable. What might that mean? None could imagine,
but not one even thought of turning back.

The walls and floor in this straight, descending passage were now no
longer smooth, arabesqued, polished. To the contrary, they showed a
rough surface, on which the marks of the chisel could be plainly seen
as it had shorn away the yielding metal in great gouges. Moreover,
streaks of black granite now began to appear; and these, as the
Legionaries advanced, became ever wider until at last the stone
predominated.

The Master understood they were now coming to the bottom of part of
the golden dyke. Undeviated by the hard rock, the tunnel continued to
descend, with here and there a turn. Narrowly the Master scrutinized
the floor, tapping it with the simitar as he crept onward, seeking
indications of any possible trap that might hurl him into bottomless,
black depths.

Quite at once, a right-angled turning opened into a small chamber not
above eight feet high by fifteen square. In this, silent, listening,
the sweating fugitives gathered.

The temperature was here oppressive, and the lamps burned blue with
some kind of gas that stifled the lungs. Gas and smoke together, made
breathing hard. A dull, roaring sound had begun to make itself vaguely
audible, the past few minutes; and as the Legionaries stood listening,
this was now rather plain to their ears.

"This is a devil of a place for a multi-millionaire, I must say!"
Bohannan exploded. Simonds laughed, with tense nerves. One or two
others swore, bitterly cursing the men of El Barr.

The Master, "Captain Alden," and Leclair, however, gave no heed.
Already they were peering around, at the black walls where now only an
occasional thread of gold was to be seen.

Five openings led out of this singular chamber, all equally dark,
narrow, formidable.

"This seems to be a regular labyrinth, my Captain," said Leclair, in
French. "Surely a trap of some kind. They are clever, these Arabs.
They let the mouse run and hope, then--_voilà_--he is caught!"

"It looks that way. But we're not caught yet. These infernal
passageways are all alike, to me. We must choose one. Well--this is as
good as any." He gestured toward an aperture at the left. "Men, follow
me!"

The passage they now entered was all of rock, with no traces whatever
of gold. For a few hundred feet its course was horizontal; then it
plunged downward like the first.

And almost immediately the temperature began to mount, once more.

"Faith, but I think we'd better be getting back!" exclaimed the major.
"I don't care much for this heat, or that roaring noise that's getting
louder all the time!"

"You'll follow me, or I'll shoot you down!" the Master flung at him,
crouching around. "I've had enough insubordination from _you_, sir!
Not another word!"

The stooping little procession of trapped Legionaries once more went
onward, downward. The muffled roar, ahead of them, rose in volume as
they made a final turning and came into a much more spacious vault
where moisture goutted from the black walls. A thin, steamy vapor was
rising from the floor, warm to the bare feet.

A moment the Legionaries stood there, blinking in the vague lamplight,
glad of the respite that permitted them to straighten up and ease
cramped muscles.

"No way out of _here_!" Bohannan grumbled. "Sure, we're at the end o'
nowhere. Now if we'd only taken another passage--"

Nobody paid him any heed. The major's exhibition of irrational greed
had lost caste for him. Even Lebon, the orderly, curled a lip of scorn
at him.

All eyes were eagerly searching for some exit from this ultimate pit.
Panting, reeking with sweat, fouled with blood and dirt, the doomed
men shuffled round the vault, blinking with bloodshot eyes.

No outlet was visible. The vault seemed empty. But all at once,
Bristol uttered a cry.

"Wine-sacks, by the living jingo!" he exclaimed.

"Wine-sacks--in a Moslem city?" demanded the Master. "Impossible!"

"What else are these, sir?" the Englishman asked, pointing.


The Master strode to the corner where he stood, and flared his lamp
over a score of distended goat-hides.

"Well, by Allah!" he ejaculated.

"Sacrificial wine," put in Leclair, at his elbow. "See the red seals,
with the imprint of the star and crescent, here and here?" He touched
a seal with his finger. "Rare old wine, I'll wager!"

"Wine!" gulped the major, whose excitable nerves had been frayed to
madness. "Wine, by God! Faith, but it's the royal thirst I have on me!
Who's got a knife?"

The Master thrust him back with such violence that he slipped on the
wet floor and nearly fell.

"You'll get no knife, sir, and you'll drink no sacrificial wine!" he
cried, with more of anger in his voice than any of the Legion had yet
heard. "The jewels--yes, I gave you your fool's way, on those. But no
wine!

"We of the Flying Legion are going to die, sober men! There'll be no
debauchery--no tradition handed down among those Moslem swine that
they butchered us, drunk. If any of you men want to die right now,
broach one of those wine-sacks!"

His simitar balanced itself for action. The glint in his eye, by the
wavering lamp-shine, meant stern business. Not a hand was extended
toward the tautly distended sacks.

Bohannan's whispered curse was lost in a startled cry from Wallace.

"Here's something!" he exclaimed. "Look at this ring, will you?"

They turned to him, away from the wine-bags. Wallace had fallen to his
knees and was scraping slime from the wet floor--the slime of ages of
dust mingled with viscid moisture from the steam that, thinly blurring
the dark air, had condensed on the walls and run down.

Emilio thrust down the lamp he held. There on the stone floor, they
saw a huge, rust-red iron ring that lay in a circular groove cut in
the black granite.

This ring was engaged in a metal staple let into the stone. And now,
as they looked more closely, and as some Legionaries scraped the floor
with eager hands, a crack became visible in the floor of the vault.

"Look out, men!" the Master cautioned. "This may be a trap that will
swing open and drop us into God knows what! Stand back, all--take your
time, now! Go slow there!"

They heeded, and stood back. The Master himself, assuming all risks,
got down on hands and knees and explored the crack in the floor. It
was square, with a dimension of about five feet on the edge.

"It's a trap-door, all right," he announced. "And we--are going to
open it!"

"One would need a rope or a long lever to do that, my Captain," put
in Leclair. "It is obvious that a man, or men, standing on the trap,
could not raise it. And it is too large to straddle."

The Master arose, stripped off his tunic and passed it through
the ring. He twisted the tunic and gave one end to the lieutenant.
Himself, he took the other.

"Get hold, everybody!" he commanded. "And be sure you're not standing
on the trap!"

All laid hold on the ends of the coat. With a "One, two,
three!" from the Master, the Legionaries threw all their muscle into
the lift. "Now, men! Heave her once more!"

The stone gave. The Legionaries doubled their efforts, with panting
breath, feet that slipped on the dank floor, grunts of labor.

"Heave her!"

Up swung the stone, aside. It slid over the wet rock. There, in its
place, gaped a black hole that penetrated unknown depths.

Steam billowed up--or rather, vapor distinctly warm to the touch. And
from very far below, much louder boomed the roar of rushing waters.
The Legionaries knew, now, what had caused the dull, roaring sound.
Unmistakably a furious cascade was boiling, swirling away, down there
at undetermined distances of blackness.

The boldest men among the little group of fugitives felt the crawl and
fingering of a very great dread at their hearts. Behind them lay the
labyrinth, with what pitfalls none could tell and with the Jannati
Shahr men perhaps already penetrating into the crypt. Around them
loomed the black, wet walls of this lowest stone dungeon with but one
other exit--the pit at their feet.

The Master threw himself prone on the slippery floor, took one of the
lamps and lowered it, by the chain, to its capacity. Smoke and vapor
arose about his head as he peered down.

"Well, what is it?" demanded Bohannan, also squinting down, as he bent
over the hole. "What do you see?"

"Nothing," the Master answered. "Nothing definite."

He could, in fact, be sure of nothing. But it seemed to him that, very
far below, he could make out something like a swift, liquid blackness,
streaked with dim-speeding lines of white that dissolved with
phantasmagoric rapidity; a racing flood that roared and set the solid
rock a-quiver in its mad tumult.

"Faith, an underground river of hot water!" ejaculated the Irishman
with an oath. "Some river!"

"Warm water, at any rate," the Master judged, getting up again. A
strange smile was in his eyes, by the smoky lamplight. "Well, men,
this is our way out. The Arabs are not going to have any slaughter
of victims, here. And what is more, they'll capture no dead bodies
of white men, in _this_ trap! There'll be at least ten skulls missing
from that interesting golden Pyramid of Ayeshah!"

"For God's sake!" the major stammered. "What--what are you going
to--do, now? Jump down that shaft?"

"Exactly. Your perspicacity does you credit, Major."

"Sure, you'll never catch _me_ jumping!"

"Gentlemen," the Master said, in a low, quiet voice, "I regret to
state that we have one coward among us."




CHAPTER XLVIII


THE RIVER OF NIGHT

The major's clenched fist was caught as it drove, by a scientific
guard from the Master's right. The Master dropped his lamp, and with a
straight left-hander sprawled Bohannan on the slimy pave. Impersonally
he stood over the crazed Celt.

"Will you jump, voluntarily," demanded he, "or shall we be under the
painful necessity of having to throw you down that pit?"

Enough rationality remained in the major to spur his pride. He crawled
to his feet, chastened.

"You win, sir," he answered. "Who goes first?"

A dull reverberation shuddered the rock, the air.

"_Vive Nissr_!" exulted Leclair. "Ah, now our men, they attack the
city!"

"I'm sorry to disillusion you," the Master answered, "but my explosive
produces an entirely different type of concussion. What we have just
heard is the blowing-in of the treasure-crypt door. There's no time to
lose, now. Who jumps, first?"

"Wait a minute!" cried "Captain Alden." Her eyes were gleaming through
the mask, with keen excitement. "Why neglect any chance of possibly
surviving?"

"What do you mean?" the Master demanded.

"Those wine-sacks!"

"Well?"

"Emptied, inflated, and tied up again, they'll float us! It's the
oldest kind of device used in the Orient!"

"By Allah, inspiration! Quick, men, the wine-skins!"

Himself, he set the example. Knife in hand, while Emilio held the lamp
for him, he crumbled the seals on one of the goat-skins, then cut
the leather thong that secured the neck, and quickly unwound it. He
dragged the sack to the black pit and tipped it up.

With a gulp and a gurgle, the precious old wine, clear ruby under the
dim light, gushed away down the steaming shaft that plunged to the
River of Night.

"Oh, faith now, but that's a damned shame, sir!" Bohannan protested,
rubbing an ugly welt on his brow. His voice was thick, dull,
unnatural. Madness glimmered in his blinking eyes. "With the blessed
tongue of me parched to a cinder! And wine like that! Here, sir--take
a handful of diamonds, or whatever, and give me just one little
drink!"

'"'Bristol! Restrain that man!" the Master ordered. "If you can't
handle him, get help!"

As a couple of Legionaries laid hands on the major, another voice
spoke up. It was that of Ferrara, the Italian ace:

"The major is right, sir, in spite of all! Good wine in our throats
would make death less bitter. 'We who are about to die, salute
thee'--and ask wine!"

The Master peered sharply from beneath black brows. Discipline seemed
crumbling. Now at what might be, perhaps, the last minute of his
command, was the Master's word to be made light of? Were his orders to
be gainsaid?

"No wine!" he flung at all of them, his voice tense as wire. "Who says
we are about to die? Why, there may be a fighting chance, even yet!
This underground river may come to light, somewhere. And if it does,
it may bear us back to day, again.

"But the confusion of wine may just turn the scale against our getting
through. No wine! We started on that basis. That's the basis we're going
through on. No wine, I say--no wine!"

Murmurs answered him, but no man dared rebel. Discipline still gripped
the Legionaries. The Master drove them to labor. "Come, quick now!
Prepare a sack, apiece! I'll show you how!"

He set lips to the emptied skin, and with many lungfuls of strong
breath inflated it. The leather thong tightly wrapped the neck. He
doubled that neck over, and took more turns with the thong, then tied
it in a tight square knot.

"Get to work, men!" he ordered. "To work!"

They obeyed. Even the major, brain-shaken as he was, fell in with
the orders. The floor, all round the black pit, ran red with precious
wine, a single cupful of which would have delighted the heart of the
world's most Lucullian gourmet.

Up from that floor and from the jetty, steaming walls of the pit
drifted ambrosial perfume that evoked visions of ancient vineyards
where, under the Eastern sun, bloomy clusters of grape--mayhap even
the very grape sung by the Tent-maker--hung ripening.

Still, none stooped to the mouths of the wine-skins, to taste. None
drank from cupped palm. Dry-mouthed, hot, panting, the Legionaries
still obeyed. And thus the rare wine of Araby ran guttering to the
unseen blackness of the mystery river far below.

The Master, hands on hips, watched this labor; and as he watched he
laughed.

"Whatever comes to us, men," judged he, "we are here and now doing
great evil to the men of El Barr. My only regret is that we haven't
time to return up through the labyrinth, to the jewel-crypt, fill the
skins with jewels and dump them all down this shaft like the wine.
These Moslem swine would then remember us, many a long day. Ah, well,
some day we may come back--who knows?"

He fell silent, while the last of the skins were being filled and
lashed. The last, that is to say, needed by the Legionaries. Ten in
all, were now blown up and securely tied. But a good many more still
remained full of the rare wine.

With his simitar, the Master slashed these quickly, one by one.

"They took our blood," he cried. "We have taken theirs--and their
wine, too. And have destroyed Myzab and the Black Stone, no doubt.
Well, it's a bargain!"

"C'est égal!" exclaimed Leclair. "More than that, eh, my Captain?"

The Master returned to the shaft, his bare feet red through the run
and welter of the wine on the stone floor.

"Now men," said he, crisply, as he flung down the pit his simitar
which could have no further use, "this may be the final chapter. Our
Legion was organized for adventure. We've had it. No one can complain.
If it's good-bye, now--so be it.

"There may be a chance, however, of winning through. Hold fast to
your goat-skins; and if the hidden river isn't too hot, and if there's
head-room, some of us may get through to daylight. Let us try to
reassemble where we find the first practicable stopping-place. If the
Jannati Shahr men are waiting for us, there, don't be taken alive.
Remember!

"Now, give me your hand, each one, and--down the shaft with you!"

Simonds went first, boldly, without a quiver of fear. Silently and
with set jaw, he shook hands with the Master, clutched a distended
wine-bag in both arms, and quickly leaped.

His body vanished, instantly, from sight. Steam and darkness swallowed
it. Far below, a dull splash told of his disappearance.

Lebon followed, after having given his torture-twisted hand to his
beloved lieutenant, as well as to the Master.

"Notre Père qui êtes aux cieux!" he stammered, as the pit received
him.

Then went Wallace, Ferrara, and Emilio. Of these three, only the last
showed anything resembling the white feather. Emilio's face was waxen,
with staring eyes reflecting unspeakable horror, as he took the leap
into the River of Night. But he went mutely, with no outcry.

Bristol, sheathed in imperturbable British aplomb, remarked:

"Well, so long, boys! This is jolly beastly, eh? But we'll meet on
that beautiful shore!"

Then he, too, jumped into the black.

Leclair, inappropriately enough, leaped with a shout of: "Vive la
France!"

Now only Bohannan, "Captain Alden," and the Master were left.

"You're next, Major!" the Master ordered, pointing at
the inexorable black mouth of the pit, whence rose the thin,
wraith-spirals of vapor.

"I'm ready!" exclaimed the major. "Sure, what's better than a hot bath
after the heavy exercise we've been having?" His voice rose buoyantly
over the drumming roar of the mysterious, underground torrent. "Ready,
sir! But if you'll only give me one wee sup of good liquor, sir, I'll
die like an Irishman and a gentleman--of fortune!"

"No, liquor, Major," the Master answered, shaking his head. "Can't you
see for yourself all the wine-sacks are cut?"

"Cut, is it? Well, well, so they are!" The major blinked redly.
Obviously his confused mind had not grasped the situation. "Well,
sure, that's a pity, now." And he fell to gnawing that tawny mustache
of his.

"Come Major, you're next!" the Master bade him. "Take your wine-skin
and jump!"

Clarity of mind for a moment returned to Bohannan. Gallantly he shook
hands with the Master, saluted "Captain Alden," and picked up his
wine-sack.

"It's a fine whirl we've had," he affirmed, with one of his old-time
smiles, his teeth gleaming by the light of the silver lamp in the
Master's hand. "No man could ask a better."

I'd rather have seen what I've seen, and done what I've done, and now
jump to Hell and gone, than be safe and sound this minute on Broadway.

"Please overlook any little irregularities of conduct, sir My brain,
you know, and--well, good-bye!"

Calmly he picked up his sack and without more ado jumped into the
void.

"Now," said the Master, when "Captain Alden" and he remained alone.
"Now--you and I!"

"Yes," the woman answered. "You and I, at last!"

The Master set down his lamp on the floor all wet with condensed vapor
and wine. He loosened the buckles of her mask, took the mask off and
tossed it into the pit.

"Finis, for _that_!" said he, and smiled strangely. "You aren't going
to be handicapped by any mask, in whatever struggle lies ahead of us.
If you get through to the world, and to life again, you get through as
a woman.

"If not, you die as one. But the disguise is done with, and gone. You
understand me!"

"Yes. I understand," she answered, and stood peering up at him. Not
even the white welts and ridges cut in her flesh by the long wearing
of the mask could make her face anything but very beautiful. Her
wonderful eyes mirrored far more, as they looked into this strange
man's, than would be easy to write down in words.

"I understand," she repeated. "If this is death, I couldn't have
dreamed or hoped for a better one. In that, at least, we can be
eternally together--you and I!"

Silence fell, save for the shuddering roar of the black river, that
rose with vapors from the dark pit. Man and woman, they searched out
each other's souls with their gaze.

Then all at once the Master took her hand, and brought it to his heart
and held it there. The lamp-shine, obliquely striking upward from the
floor, cast deep shadows over their faces; and these shadows seemed
symbolic of the shadows of death closing about them at this hour of
self-revelation.

"Listen," said the Master, in a wholly other voice from any that
had ever come from his lips. "I am going to tell you something. At a
moment like this, a man speaks only the exact truth. This is the exact
truth.

"In all the years of my life and in all my wanderings up and down this
world, I have never seen a woman--till now--whom I felt that I could
love. I have lived like an anchorite, celled in absolute isolation
from womankind. Incredible as it may seem to you, I have never even
kissed a woman, with a kiss of love. But--I am going to kiss you,
now."

He took her face in both his hands, drew it up for a moment, gazed
at it with a fixity of passion that seemed to burn. The woman's eyes
drooped shut. Her lips yearned to his. Then his stern arms in-drew her
to his breast, and for a moment she remained there, silently.

All at once he put her from him.

"Now, go!" he commanded. "I shall follow, close. And wait for me--if
there is any waiting!"

He picked up one of the two remaining wine-sacks, and put it into her
hands.

"Cling to this, through everything!" he commanded. "Cling, as you love
life. Cling, as you share my hope for what may be, if life is granted
us! And--the mercy-bullet, if it comes to that!

"Now--good-bye!"

She smiled silently and was gone.

The Master, now all alone, stood waiting yet a moment. His face was
bloodless. His lower lip was mangled, where his teeth had nearly met,
through it.

Already, a confused murmur of sound was developing, from the black
opening of the passage that had led the Legionaries down to this crypt
of the wine-sacks and the pit.

He smiled, oddly.

"Many a corpse has been flung down this _oubliette_," said he. "I hate
to go, without emptying my pistol into a few more of the Moslem swine,
and dropping them down here to join my people. But--I must!"

He bent, gathered together the silver lamps left by his men, and threw
them all into the abyss. Blackness, absolute, blotted the reeking
chamber from his sight.

The faintest possible aura of light began to loom from the mouth
of the passage. More distinctly, now, the murmur of Arab voices was
becoming audible.

The Master leaped.

Far below, at the bottom of the pit, as the Arabs burst into the
wine-vault, sounded a final impact of some heavy body striking swift
water that swept it instantly away.

Then silence filled the black, rock-hewn chamber in the labyrinthine
depths of Jannati Shahr.




CHAPTER XLIX


THE DESERT

The Desert.

Four men, one woman.

Save for these five living creatures, all was death. All was that
great emptiness which the Arabs call "La Siwa Hu"--that is to say, the
land "where there is none but He."

Over terrible spaces, over immense listening silences of hard,
unbroken dunes extending in haggard desolation to fantastic horizons
of lurid ardor, hung a heat-quivering air of deathlike stillness.
Redder than blood, a blistering sun-ball was losing itself behind far,
iron hills of black basalt. A flaming land it was, naked and bare,
scalped and flayed to the very bones of its stark skeleton.

Heavily, and with the dazed look of beings who feel themselves lost
yet still are driven by the life within them to press on, the five
fugitives--pitiable handful of the Legion--were plodding south-west,
toward the sunset.

The feet of all were cut and bleeding, in spite of rags torn from
their tattered uniforms and bound on with strips of cloth; for
everywhere through the sand projected ridges of vertical, sharp
stone--the black basalt named by the Arabs _Hajar Jehannum_, or "Rock
of Hell." As for their uniforms, though now dry as bone, the way in
which they were shrunken and wrinkled told that not long ago they had
been drenched in water of strongly mordant qualities.

Each figure bore, on its bent back, a goat-skin bag as heavily filled
with water as could be carried. Strongly alkaline as that water was,
corroding to the mouth and nauseous to the taste, still the refugees
were clinging to it. For only this now stood between them and one
of the most hideous deaths known to man--the death of thirst in the
wilderness.

The woman's face, in spite of pain, anxiety, weariness, retained
its beauty. Her heavy masses of hair, bound up with cloth strips,
protected her head from "the great enemy," the sun. As for the others,
they had improvised rough headgear from their torn shirts, ingeniously
tied into some semblance of _cherchias_. Above all, the Legionaries
knew that they must guard their heads from the direct rays of the
desert sun.

In silence, all plodded on, on, toward the bleeding sphere that, now
oblate through flaming mists, was mercifully sinking to rest. No look
of surprise marked the face of any man, that "Captain Alden" was in
reality a woman. The Legionaries' anguish, the numbing, brutalizing
effects of their recent experience had been too great for any minor
emotions to endure. They had accepted this fact like all others, as
one of a series of incredible things that had, none the less, been
true.

For a certain time the remnant of the Legion dragged itself
south-westward, panting, gasping, wasting no breath in speech. Leclair
was first to utter words.

"Let us rest a little while, _mon capitaine_," said he in a hoarse,
choking voice. "Rest, and drink again. I know the desert. Many
hundreds of miles lie between us and the coast. Nothing can be gained
by hastening, at first. All may be lost. Let us rest, at all events,
until that cursed sun has set!"

In silence the Master cast down his water-bag, at the bottom of the
little, desolate valley of gravel through which the fugitives were now
toiling. All did the same, and all sat down--or rather, fell--upon the
hot earth.

Very different, now, this land was from what it had seemed as they
had soared above it, at cool altitudes, in the giant air-liner; very
different from the cool, green plain of El Barr, behind the grim black
line of the Iron Mountains now a dim line off to eastward.

The sprawling collapse of the Legionaries told more eloquently than
any words the exhaustion that already, after only four hours' trek,
was strangling the life out of them.

For a while they lay there motionless, unthinking, brutalized by
fatigue and pain. With their present condition as an earnest of what
was yet to come, what hope had any that even one of them would live to
behold the sparkle of the distant Red Sea? Even though unmolested by
pursuit from Jannati Shahr or by attack from any wandering tribes of
the Black Tent People, what hope could there be?

Gradually some coherence of thought returned to the Master. He sat up,
painfully, and blinked with reddened eyes at the woman. She was lying
beside her water-bag, seemingly asleep. The Master's face drew into
lines of anguish as he looked at her.

With bruised fingers he loosened the thong of his own water-bag, and
tore still another strip from his remnant of shirt. He poured a little
of the precious water on to this rag, lashed the water-sack tight
again, and with the warm, wet rag bathed the woman's face, brow, and
throat.

Her closed lids did not open. No one paid any attention. No one
even stirred. The cloth grew dry, almost at once, as the thirsty air
absorbed its moisture. The Master pocketed it. Elbows on knees, head
between hands, he sat there pondering.

In thought he was living over again the incredible events of the
past hours, as they had been presented to his own experience. He was
remembering the frightful, dizzying plunge down the black pit into the
steaming waters of the River of Night--waters which, had they been but
a few degrees hotter, would incontinently have ended everything on the
instant.

He was recalling, as in a nightmare, his frenzied battle for life,
clinging to the inflated goat-skin--the whirl and thunder of
unseen cataracts in the blind dark--the confusion of deafening,
incomprehensible violences.

He was bringing back to mind the long, swift, smooth rushing of mighty
waters through midnight caverns where echoes had told of a rock-roof
close above; then, after an indeterminate time of horror that might
have been minutes or hours, a weltering maelstrom of leaping waters--a
graying of light on swift-fleeing walls; a sudden up-boiling gush of
the strangling flood that whelmed him--and all at once a glare of
sun, a river broadening out through palm-groves far beyond the Iron
Mountains.

All these things, blurred, unreal, heartshaking as evil visions of
fever, the Master was remembering. Then came other happenings: a
long drift with resistless currents, the strange phenomenon of the
lessening stream that dwindled as thirsty sands absorbed it, and the
ceasing of the palms.

Last of all, the river had diminished to a shallow, tortuous delta,
where the Master's numbed feet had touched bottom. There he had
dragged himself ashore, with his goatskin, far more dead than living.
And there, for a time he knew not, consciousness had wholly ceased.

A dull, toneless voice sounded in the Master's ears. Bohannan was
speaking.

"Faith, but it's strange how even the five of us found each other, out
there in the sand," said the major. "What happened to the rest of us,
God knows--maybe!" He choked, coughed, added: "Or to the boys with
Nissr. God rest their souls! I wish I had a sackful of that wine!"
After a long pause: "Don't you, now? What?"

The Master gave no heed. He was trying to ease the position in which
the woman was lying. His jacket was off, now, and he was folding it to
put under her head.

At his touch, she opened vague eyes. She smiled with dry lips, and put
his hand away.

"No, no!" she protested. "No special favors for me! I'm not a woman,
remember. I'm 'Captain Alden,' still--only a Legionary!"

"But--"

"If you favor me in any way, to the detriment of any of the others
or your own, I won't go on! I'm just one of you. Just one of the
survivors, on even terms with the rest. It's give-and-take. I mean
that! You've got to understand me!"

The Master nodded. He knew that tone. Silently he put on his jacket,
again.

The lieutenant's orderly, Lebon, groaned and muttered a prayer to the
Virgin. Leclair sat up, heavily, and blinked with sand-inflamed eyes.

"Time to drink again, _n'est-ce pas_, my Captain?" asked he. "Drink to
the dead!"

"I hope they are dead, rather than prisoners!" exclaimed the Master.
"Yes, we'll drink, and get forward. We've got to make long strides,
tonight. Those Jannati Shahr devils may be after us, tomorrow. Surely
will, if they investigate that delta and find only a few bodies.
They'll conclude some of us have got through. And if they pick up our
trail, with those white dromedaries of theirs--"

"The sacred pigs!" ejaculated Leclair. "Ah, _messieurs_, now you begin
to know the Arabs as I have long known them." With eyes of hate and
pain he peered back at the darkening line of the Iron Mountains.

Bohannan, already loosening the neck of his goat-skin, laughed
hoarsely.

"No wine!" he croaked, "and the water's rationed; even the stinking
water. But the food isn't--good reason, too; there isn't any. Pockets
full of gems!" He slapped one hard pocket. "I'd swap the lot for a
proper pair of shoes and a skin o' that wine! Faith--that wine, now--"

The woman suddenly sat up, too, one hand on the hot gravel, the other
raised for silence.

"Hark!" she whispered. "Sh!"

"What now?" demanded the Master.

"Bells! Camel-bells!"

"_Nom d'un, nom!_" And the lieutenant drew his gun.

The five fugitives stiffened for another battle. They looked well to
their weapons. The Master's weariness and pain were forgotten as he
crawled on hands and knees up the side of the little wady. The sound
of distant camel-bells, a thin, far quiver of sound, had now reached
his ears and those of the other men, less sensitive than the woman's.

Over the edge of the wady he peered, across a _wa'ar_, or stony ground
covered with mummified scrub. Beyond, a blanched salt-plain gleamed
hoar-white in the on-coming dusk; and farther off, the dunes began
again.

Strangely enough, the Master laughed. He turned and beckoned,
silently. The others joined him.

"From the west!" he whispered. "This is no pursuit! It is a caravan
going to Jannati Shahr!"

Bohannan chuckled, and patted his revolver.

"Faith, but Allah is being good to us!" he muttered. "Now, when it
comes to a fight--"

"Ten dromedaries--no, nine--" Leclair judged.

"And six camel-drivers," put in the woman, gun in hand. "A small
caravan!"

"Hold your fire, all!" commanded the Master. "They're headed right
across this wady. Wait till I give the word; then rush them! And--no
prisoners!"




CHAPTER L


"WHERE THERE IS NONE BUT ALLAH"

An hour after sundown, four Legionaries pushed westward, driving the
gaunt, mange-stained camels. In the sand near the wady lay buried
Leclair and all the camel-drivers, with the sand smoothed over them so
as to leave as little trace as possible.

Leclair had come to the death of all deaths he would have most
abominated, death by ruse at the hands of an Arab. Not all his long
experience with Arabs had prevented him from bending over a dead
camel-driver. The dead man had suddenly revived from his feigned death
and driven a _jambiyeh_ into the base of the lieutenant's throat. That
the lieutenant's orderly had instantly shattered the cameleer's skull
with a point-blank shot had not saved Leclair.

The four survivors, in addition to burying all the bodies, had buried
the copper bars the caravan had been freighting to Jannati Shahr.
They had saved the scant food and water of the drivers, also their
clothing, slippers, daggers, long rifles, and ammunition.

Now, dressed like Arabs--the best of all disguises in case of being
sighted by pursuers or by wandering Black Tent tribes, from far
off--they were trekking westward again, riding four of the camels and
leading the others.

For a week of Hell the failing beasts, already half dead of thirst
when captured, bore them steadily south-west, toward the coast. Twice
there rose spirals of smoke, in the desert distances; but whether
these were from El Barr pursuers or were merely Bedouin encampments
they could not tell.

Merciless goading kept the camels going till they dropped dead, one by
one.

By the end of the fourth day only three remained. Lebon methodically
cut up every one that perished, for water, but found none in any
stomach.

The fugitives sighted no oasis. They found no wady other than
stone-dry. By day they slept, by night pushed forward. Day by day
they grew weaker and less rational. The increasing nerve-strain that
possessed them was companioned by the excruciating torture of their
bodies racked by the swaying jolt of camel-riding.

But they still kept organization and coherence. Still, guided by
the stars that burned with ardent trembling in the black sky, they
followed their chosen course.

Morning heat-mist, noontide glare, wind like a beast with flaming
breath, a sky terrible in its stainless beauty, an inescapable
sun-furnace that seemed to boil the brains in their skulls--all these
and the mockery of mirages that made every long white line of salt
efflorescence a lake of cooling waters, brought the four tortured
Legionaries close to death.

Awaking toward evening of the fifth day, the Master discovered one of
the three camels gone--the one on which he had been riding with the
woman, lest she fall fainting to the sand. With this camel, Major
Bohannan had likewise disappeared. His big-shouldered, now emaciated
figure in its dirty-white burnous was nowhere visible. Only prints of
soft hoof-pads, leading off to north-eastward, betrayed the line of
flight.

The Master pondered a while as he sat there, dazed, blinking at the
desert all purple, gold, and tawny-red. His inflamed eyes, stubbly
beard and gaunt cheeks made him a caricature of the man he had been,
ten days before. After a little consideration, he awakened the woman
and Lebon.

The verdict on Bohannan was madness, mirage, desertion.

For two days the major had been babbling of wine and water, been
beholding things that were not, been hurling jewels at imaginary
vultures. Now, well, the desert had got him.

To pursue would have been insanity. They got the two remaining camels
up, by dint of furious beating and of hoarse eloquence in Arabic
from the Master and Lebon. Once more, knowing themselves doomed, they
pushed into the eye of the flaming west, over the savage gorgeousness
of the Empty Abodes. In less than an hour the double-laden camel fell
to its knees and incontinently died.

Lebon dismounted from the one surviving animal, and stepped fair into
a scorpion's nest. The horrible little gray creature, striking up over
its back with spiked tail, drove the deadly barb half an inch into the
orderly's naked ankle.

The Master scarified, sucked, and cauterized the wound. Nothing
availed. Lebon, in his depleted condition, could not fight off the
poison. Thirty minutes later, swollen and black, he died in a frothing
spasm, his last words a hideous imprecation on the Arabs who had
enslaved and tortured him-a curse on the whole race of Moslems.

Shaken with horror, the woman and the man buried Lebon, loaded the
remaining water-bags, the guns and food on to the one camel and
dragged themselves away on foot, driving the spent beast. Obviously
this camel could not go far. Blindness had stricken it, and its black
lips were retracted with the parch of thirst.

They gave it half a skin of water, and goaded it along with
desperation. Everything now depended on this camel. Even though
it could not carry them, it could bear the burden of their scant
supplies. Without it, hope was lost.

All that night they drove the tortured camel. It fell more and more
often. The Master spared it not. For on its dying strength depended
the life of the woman he loved.

The camel died an hour before dawn. Not even vultures wheeled across
the steely sky. The Master cut from its wasted flanks a few strips of
meat and packed them into one of the palm-stick baskets that had held
the cameleers' supplies. With them he packed all the remaining food--a
few lentils, a little goat's-milk cheese, and a handful of dates fried
in clarified butter.

This basket, with a revolver and a handful of cartridges, also the
extra slippers taken from Leclair and the orderly, made all the burden
the woman could carry. The Master's load, heavier far, was one of the
water-skins.

This load, he knew, would rapidly lighten. As it should diminish,
faster than the woman's, he would take part of hers. Thus, as best
they could, they planned the final stage of their long agony.

Before starting again, they sat a while beside the gaunt, mangled
camel, held council of war and pledged faith again. They drank a
little of the mordant water that burned the throat and seemed in no
wise to relieve the horrible thirst that blackened their lips and
shriveled all their tissues.

"I think," the Master gasped, "we can make an hour or so before the
sun gets too bad." He squinted at the crimson and purple banderoles
of cloud through which, like the eye of a fevered Cyclops, the sun was
already glowering. Already the range of obsidian hills ahead of them,
the drifted sands all fretted with wind-waves, the whole iron plain of
the desert was quivering with heat. "Every hour counts, now. Before we
start, let us agree to certain things."

She nodded silently, crouching beside him on the sand. He drew an
emaciated arm about her and for a moment peered down into her face.
But he did not kiss her. A kiss, as they both were--some fine delicacy
of the soul seemed telling him--would have been mockery.

"Listen," he commanded. "We must strictly ration the food and water.
You must help me keep to that ration. I will help you. We must be
careful about scorpions. Above all, we must beware of mirages. You
understand?"

"I understand," she whispered.

"If either of us sees palms or water, that one must immediately
tell the other. Then, if the other does not also see them, that is a
mirage. We must not turn aside for anything like that, unless we both
see it. I am speaking rationally, now that I can. Remember what I
say!"

Silently she nodded. He went on:

"Now that we can still think, we must weigh every contingency. Our
only hope lies in our helping each other. Alone, either of us will
be led away by mirages in a little while. That kind of death must be
spared us. We both live or die, together."

She smiled faintly, with parched lips.

"Do you think I would leave you," she asked, "any more than you would
leave me? The pact is binding."

He pressed her hand.

"Come," said he. "Let us go!"

Once more they got to their feet, and set out to south-westward, over
a scorching plain of crumbling, nitrous mud-flakes. Laden as they
were, they could barely shuffle one foot after the other. But blessed
lapses of consciousness now and then relieved their agony.

Conscious or not, the life within them drove them onward, ever onward;
slow, crawling things that all but blindly moved across the land of
death, _La Siwa Hu_--"where there is none but Allah."




CHAPTER LI


TORTURE

How that day passed, they knew not. Nature is kind. When agony grows
too keen, the All-mother veils the tortured body with oblivion.

Over blood-colored stretches swept by the volcano-breath of the
desert, through acacia barrens and across basaltic ridges the two
lonely figures struggled on and on. They fell, rested, slept a
nightmare sleep under the furious heat, got up again and dragged
themselves once more along.

Now they were conscious of plains all whitened with saltpeter, now of
scudding sand-pillars--wind-_jinnee_ of the Empty Abodes--that danced
and mocked them. Again, one or the other beheld paradisical, gleaming
lakes, afar.

But though they had lost the complete rationality that would have
bidden them lie quiet all day, and trek only at night, they still
remembered the pact of the mirages. And since never both beheld the
same lake, they held each other from the fatal madness that had slain
Bohannan.

Their only speech was when discussing the allurements of beckoning
waters which were but air.

At nightfall, toiling up over the lip of a parched, chalky _nullah_
that sunset turned to amethyst, a swarm of howling Arabs suddenly
attacked them. The Master flung himself down, and fired away all
his ammunition, in frenzy. The woman, catching his contagion, did
likewise.

No shots came back; and suddenly the Arabs vanished from the man's
sight. When he stumbled forward to the place where they had been, he
discovered no dead bodies, not even a footprint.

Nothing was there but a clump of acacias, their twisted thorns parched
white. They had been shooting at only fantasms of their own brains.
Now, even the mercy-bullets were gone.

Bitterly the man cursed himself, as he thrust the now useless pistol
back into its holster. The woman, however, smiled with dry lips, and
from her belt took out a little, flattened piece of lead--the bullet
which, fired at _Nissr_ from near the Ka'aba, had fallen at her feet
and been picked up by her as a souvenir.

"Here is a bullet," said she chokingly. "You can cut this in two and
shape it. We can reload two shells with some of the Arab powder. It
will do!"

They laughed irrationally. More than half mad as they now were,
neither one thought of the fact that they had no percussion-caps.

Still laughing, they sat down in the hot sand, near the clawlike
distortions of the acacias. Consciousness lapsed. They slept. The
sun's anger faded; and a steel moon, long after, slid up the sky.

Next day, many miles to south-westward of the acacias, Kismet--toying
with them for its own delectation--respited them a little while by
stumbling them on to a deserted oasis. They turned aside to this only
after a long, irrational discussion. The fact that they could both
see the same thing, and that they had really come to palm trees--trees
they could touch and feel--gave them fresh courage.

Little enough else they got there. The cursed place, just a huddle of
blind, mud huts under a dozen sickly trees, had been swept clean some
time ago by the passage of a swarm of those voracious locusts known as
_jarad Iblis_ (the locusts of Satan).

Nothing but bare branches remained in the _nakhil_, or grove. Nothing
at all was to be found in the few scrubby fields about the well now
choked with masses of the insects. Whoever the people of this squalid
settlement had been, all were gone. The place was almost as bare as if
the sun's flames, themselves, had flared down and licked the village
to dust and ashes.

All the sufferers found, of any worth, was a few handfuls of dry dates
in one of the hovels and a water-jar with about two quarts of brackish
water.

This water the Master discovered, groping half blind through the hut.
Stale as it was, it far surpassed the strongly chemicalized water of
the River of Night, still remaining in the goat-skin. It smote him
with the most horrible temptation of his life. All the animal in his
nature, every parched atom of his body shouted.

"Take it! Drink, drink your fill! She will never know. Take it, and
drink!"

He seized the water-jar, indeed, but only to carry it with shaking
hands to her, where she lay in the welcome shadow of the hut. His lips
were black with thirst as he raised her head and cried to her:

"Here is water--real water! Drink!"

She obeyed, hardly more than half conscious. He gave her all he dared
to have her drink at once, nearly half. Then he set down the jar,
loosened the sack from his shoulders which were cut raw with the
chafing of the thongs, and bathed her face with a little of that other
water which, though bad, still might keep life in them.

"This may be an insane waste," he was thinking, "but it will help
revive her. And--maybe--we shall find another, better oasis."

Out across the plain he peered, over the sun-dried earth, out into the
distances shrouded with purple mists. His blurred eyes narrowed.

"Why, my God! There's one, now!" he muttered. "A green
one--cool--fresh--"

The Master laid the woman down again in the shadow, got up and
staggered out into the blinding sun. He tottered forward, laughing
hoarsely.

"Cool--_fresh_--" The words came from between parched lips.

All at once the oasis faded to a blur in the brilliant tapestry of the
desert that beckoned: "Come to me--and die!"

The Master recoiled, hands over eyes, mouthing unintelligible words.
Back beside the woman he crouched, fighting his own soul to keep it
from madness. Then he heard her voice, weak, strange:

"Have you drunk, too?"

"Of course!"

"You are not--telling me the truth."

"So help me God!" His fevered lips could hardly form the words.
"There, in the hut--I drank. All I needed."

She grew silent. His conscience lapsed. They lay as if dead, till
almost evening, under the shelter of the blessed shadow.

The rest, even in that desolation, put fresh life into them. At
nightfall they bound up their feet again, ate the dry dates and again
set their blistered faces toward the Red Sea.

The woman's basket was now light, indeed, across her shoulders. Not
all her begging had induced the Master to let her carry the water-jug
there. This, too, he was carrying.

All night long, stopping only when one or the other fell, they
ploughed over basalt and hornblende schist that lacerated their feet,
over blanched immensities under the steel moon, across grim, black
ridges and through a basin of clay, circled by hills.

Strange apparitions mocked and mowed before them, but grimly they gave
no heed. This, they both realized in moments of lucidity, was the last
trek. Either they must find the sea, before another night, or madness
would sink its fangs into their brains. And madness meant--the end.

Their whole consciousness was pain. This pain localized itself
especially in their heads, round which some _jinnee_ of the waste had
riveted red-hot iron bands. There was other pain, too, in the limping
feet cased in the last of the _babooches_, now stiffened with blood.
And in the throat and lungs, what was this burning?




CHAPTER LII


"Thálassa! Thálassa!"

Another of those horrible, red mornings, with a brass circle of
horizon flaming all around in the most extraordinary fireworks topped
by an azure zenith, found them still crawling south-westwards making
perhaps a mile an hour.

Disjointed words and sentences kept framing themselves in the man's
mind; above all, a sentence he had read long ago in Greek, somewhere.
Where had he read that? Oh, in Xenophon, of course. In _The Retreat of
the Ten Thousand._ The Master gulped it aloud, in a dead voice:

"Most terrible of all is--the desert--for it is full-of a great want."

After a while he knew that he was trying to laugh.

"A great want!" he repeated. "A great--"

Presently it was night again.

The Master's mind cleared. Yes, there was the woman, lying in the sand
near him. But where was the date-stick basket? Where was the last of
the food? He tried to think.

He could remember nothing. But reason told him they must have eaten
the last of the food and thrown the basket away. His shoulders felt
strangely light. What was this? The water-bag was gone, too?

But that did not matter. There had been only a little of that
chemicalized water left, anyhow. Perhaps they had drunk it all, or
bathed their faces and necks with it. Who could tell? The water-sack
was gone; that was all he knew.

A great fear stabbed him. The water-jar! Was that still on his back?
As he felt the pull of a thong, and dragged the jar around so that he
could blink at it, a wonderful relief for a moment deadened his pain.

"_Allah isélmak!_" he croaked, blessing the scant water the jar still
held. He realized the woman was looking at him.

"Water!" he whispered. "Let us drink again--and go on!"

She nodded silently. He loosed the thong, took the jar and peered into
its neck, gauging the small amount of water still there. Then he held
it to her lips.

She seemed to be drinking, but only seemed. Frowning, as she finished,
he once more squinted into the jar with bleared eyes. His voice was
even, dull, ominous as he accused:

"You drank nothing. You are trying to save water for me!"

She shook her head in negation, but he penetrated the lie. His teeth
gleamed through his stubble of beard, and his eyes glinted redly under
the hood of his ragged burnous as he cried:

"Will you drink?"

"I tell you--I have drunk!"

Slowly he tilted the jar toward the thirsty sands.

"Drink, now, or I pour all this on the ground!"

Beaten, she extended a quivering hand. They shared the last of the
water. The man took less than a third. Then they set out again on the
endless road of pain.

Was it that same day, or the next, that the man fell and could not
rise again? The woman did not know. Something had got into her brain
and was dancing there and would not stop; something blent of sun
and glare, sand, mirage, torturing thirst. There was a little gray
scorpion, too--but no, _that_ had been crushed to a pulp by the man's
heel. Or had it not? Well--

The man! Was there a man? Where was he? Here, of course, on the baked
earth.

As she cradled his head up into her lap and drew the shelter of her
burnous over it, she became rational again. Her hot, dry hand caressed
his face. After a while he was blinking up at her.

"Bara Miyan! Violator of the salt!" he croaked, and struck at
her feebly. And after another time, she perceived that they were
staggering on and on once more.

The woman wondered what had happened to her head, now that the sun had
bored quite through. Surely that must make a difference, must it not?

A jackal barked. But this, they knew, must be illusion.

No jackals lived so far from any habitation of mankind. The man
blinked into the glare, across which sand-devils of whirlwinds were
once more gyrating over a whiteness ending in dunes that seemed to be
peppered with camel-grass.

Another mirage! Grass could grow only near the coast. And now that
they had both been tortured to death by Jannati Shahr men and been
flung into Jehannum, how could there be any coast? It seemed so
preposterous.

It was all so very simple that the man laughed--silently.

Where had that woman gone to? Why, he thought there surely had been a
woman with him! But now he stood all alone. This was very strange.

"I must remember to ask them if there wasn't a woman," thought he.
"This is an extraordinary place! People come and go in such a manner!"

The man felt a dull irritation, and smeared the sand out of his eyes.
How had that sand got there? Naturally, from having laid on one of
those dunes. There seemed to be no particular reason for lying on
a dune, under the fire-box of an engine, so the man sat up and kept
blinking and rubbing his eyes.

"This is the best mirage, yet," he reflected. "The palms look real.
And the water--it sparkles. Those white blotches--one would say they
were houses!"

Indifferent, yet interested, too, in the appearance of reality,
the man remained sitting on the dune, squinting from under his torn
burnous.

The mirage took form as a line of dazzling white houses along a sea of
cobalt and indigo. And to add to the reality of the mirage, some miles
away, he could see two boats with sails all green and blue from the
reflection of the luster of the water.

The man's eyes fell. He studied his feet. They were naked, now, cut
to the bone, caked with blood and sand. Odd, that they did not hurt.
Where were his babooches? He seemed to remember something about having
taken some ragged ones from the feet of some woman or other, a very
long time ago, and having bound his own upon her mangled feet.

"I'll ask the people in those houses, down there," thought he; and on
hands and knees started to crawl down the slope of the dunes toward
the dazzling white things that looked like houses.

Something echoed at the back of his brain:

"_You must ask her if this is real! Unless you both see it, you must
not go!_"

He paused. "There was a woman, then!" he gasped. "But--where is she
now?"

Realization that she had disappeared sobered him. He got up, groped
with emaciated hands before his face as he turned back away from the
white houses and stumbled eastward.

All at once he saw something white lying on the sand, under a cooking
glare of sunlight. Memory returned. He fell on his knees beside the
woman and caught her up in quivering arms.

After a while, he noticed there was blood on her left arm. Blood, in
the bend of the elbow, coagulated there.

This puzzled him. All he could think was that she might have cut
herself on her _jambiyeh_, when she had fallen. He did not know then,
nor did he ever know, that he himself had fallen at this spot; that
she had thought him dying; that she had tried to cut her arm and give
him her blood to drink; that she had fainted in the effort. Some last
remnants of strength welled up in him. He stooped, got her across his
shoulder, struggled to his feet and went staggering up the dune.

Here he paused, swaying drunkenly.

Strange! The very same mirage presented itself to his eyes--blue
sails, turquoise sea, feathery palms, white houses.

"By God!" he croaked. "Mirages--they don't last, this way! That's
real--that's real water, by the living God!"

Up from dark profundities of tortured memory arose the cry of
Xenophon's bold Greeks when, after their long torment, they had of
a sudden fronted blue water. At sight of the little British consular
station of Batn el Hayil, on the Gulf of Farsan:

"_Thálassa!_" he cried. "_Thálassa, thálassa!_" (The sea, the sea!)




CHAPTER LIII


THE GREATER TREASURE

New York, months later.

Spring had long departed--the spring of the year in which the Eagle of
the Air had flung itself aloft from the Palisades, freighted with such
vast hopes.

Summer was past and gone. The sparkling wine of autumn had already
begun to bubble in the cup of the year.

Sunset, as when this tale began. Sunset, bronzing the observatory of
_Niss'rosh_, on top of the huge skyscraper.

Two of the Legionaries--a woman and a man--were watching that sunset
from the western windows of that room where first had been conceived
the wonder-flight which had spelled death for so many a stout heart.

You could see great changes had come upon the man, as he paced slowly
up and down the singular room, hands deep in the pockets of his
riding-trousers. His hair was grayer, for one thing, his face leaner;
a certain sinewy strength had come to him that had not been there
before.

Some marks of suffering still remained on him, that not all of life
could take away. His eyes looked deeper and more wise, his mouth more
human in its smile. That he had learned to smile, at all, meant much.
And the look in his eyes, as he glanced at the woman, meant vastly
more. Yes, this man had learned infinitely much.

From a big, bamboo Chinese chair the woman was watching him.

Her eyes were musing, reminiscent. Her riding-costume well became her;
and by the flush on her cheek you might have guessed they had both
just come in from a long gallop together.

The costume gave her a kind of boyish charm; yet she remained entirely
feminine. A kind of bronze mist seemed to envelop her head, as the
dull-tawny sunset light fell on her from those broad windows. Near her
riding-crop stood a Hindu incense-holder, with joss-sticks burning.
As she took one of these and twirled it contemplatively, the blue-gray
vapor spiraling upward was no more dreamy than her eyes.

"The invincible Orient!" she said, all at once. "It absorbs everything
and gives back nothing. And we thought, we hoped, we might conquer
part of it! Well--no--that's not done."

The man stopped his slow pacing, sat on the edge of the table and
drummed with his fingers on the teak.

"Not at the first attempt, anyhow," said he, after a little thought.
"I think, though, another time--but there's no use dreaming. Of
course, it's not the treasure I'm thinking about. That was just a
detail. It's the men. Good men!"

She peered into the incense-smoke, as if exorcising the powers of
darkness.

"They're not dead, not all of them!" she exclaimed with conviction.

"I wish I could believe you!"

"But you _must_ believe me! Something tells me some of our good chaps
are still alive. All of them perhaps."

"Impossible!" He shook his head. "Even if they escaped the explosion,
the Jannati Shahr devils must have massacred them." He shuddered
slightly. "That's the worst of it. Death is all right. But the
crucifixion, and all--"

"Cold reason paints a cruel picture, I admit," the woman answered,
laying a hand on the man's. "But you know--a woman's intuition. I
don't believe as you do. And the major--and that rumor we got from old
Nasr ed Din, the Hejaz rug-merchant down on Hester Street, how about
that?"

"Yes, I know. But--"

"How could a rumor like that come through, about a big, white-skinned,
red-haired _Ajam_ slave held by that tribe near Jeddah? How could it,
unless there were some truth back of it?"

"He wandered away into the desert, quite insane. It's not impossible
he might have been captured. By Allah!" And the man struck the table
hard. "If I really believed Nasr ed Din--"

"Well?"

"I'd go again, if I died for it!"

"The pronoun's wrong. _We'd_ go!"

"Yes, _we_!" He took her hand. "We'd trail that rumor down and have
Bohannan out of there, and the others too, if--but no, no, the thing's
impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible, I tell you, in the East. And haven't we had
miracles enough? After we were judged pirates and condemned to die,
by the International Aero Tribunal, wasn't it a miracle about
that pardon? That immunity, for your vibratory secrets that have
revolutionized the defensive tactics of the League's air-forces?"

She smiled up at him, through the vapor. "It's the impossible that
happens, these days! The soul within me tells me some of our chaps are
still alive, out there!"

She waved her smoky wand toward the large-scale map of Arabia on the
wall.

"But Rrisa," said he. "About the others, there's no sense of guilt. I
feel, though, like a murderer about Rrisa."

"Rrisa still lives!"

He shook his head.

"The incense tells me." She insisted. "My heart tells me!"

"Allah make it so! But even if he is dead, he died like the others--a
man!"

"In pursuit of an ideal. We all had that, a dream and an ideal."

"Yes. It wasn't the treasure, of course," he mused. "It wasn't
material things. It was adventure. Well--you and I have had that, at
all events. And they had it too. They and we--all of us--we changed
the course of history for more than two hundred million human beings.
And as for you and me--"

He turned, looking at the map. Then he got up from the table, went to
that map and laid a hand on the vast, blank expanse across which was
printed only "Ruba el Khali"--the Empty Abodes.

"It would wreck the whole structure of civilization if we told," said
he. The woman put back the incense-stick into its holder, got up and
came to stand beside him. "Imagine the horrible, vulture-like scramble
of capitalism to exploit that dyke of gold! There'd be expeditions,
pools, combines, wars--we'd have the blood of uncounted thousands on
our heads!

"It's not the treacherous El Barr people I'm thinking of. If they
perished, as they would to the last man defending their gold, all well
and good. But in case any of our men are still alive there, _they'd_
be butchered. And then, the destruction of gold as a medium of
exchange, by its gross plenty, would wreck the world with panics. And
the greatest catastrophe of history would lie on our shoulders. That
is why--"

"Why the secret must remain here," she said, touching her breast.

"_But_!" he exclaimed, and turned and took a pencil from the table.

In a bold hand he wrote, across the blank white spaces of the map,
these characters in Arabic:

[Illustration]

"_Nac'hna arivna_!" he exclaimed. "'_We know!_'"

A long silence followed. Both, with deep memories, were peering at
those words, as the light slowly faded in the west over the Palisades.
The man was first to speak.

"This secret is ours," said he. "I have another, that even you don't
know!"

"You have kept something from--_me_?"

"Only until I have quite dared tell you."

"Dared?"

"It isn't the mere, simple thing itself. It's the symbolism back of
it. Maybe even now I'm premature in telling you. But, somehow--"

He hesitated. This man of action, hard, determined, strong, seemed
afraid.

"Somehow," he added, "you and I-have come so near to each other-and
tonight, here in this room where it all started, we have seemed to
understand each other so well, through the revocation of the past,
that--yes, I'll show you--"

He thrust a hand into his breast-pocket and brought out a small
leather sack. Startled, she looked at it as he drew open the cord. He
took from the sack a wondrous thing, luminous with nacreous hues.

"The Great Pearl Star," she cried. "Kaukab el Durri!"

"Yes, the Great Pearl Star, itself!"

She looked in silence. Then she reached out a hand and touched it, as
if unbelieving.

"Why, you never told me!"

"I had a reason."

"And--through all that inferno, when every ounce had to be
considered--"

"I was keeping this for--you."

There were tears in her eyes as he laid a hand on her shoulder.

"For you," he repeated. "It was mine, but it is mine no longer. This
crown-jewel of Islam is yours, now--if you will have it."

"If I will have it!" she whispered. "There's only one thing in this
whole world I more dearly long for!"

"I am offering you that, too," said the man, in a trembling voice. "I
knew nothing of it, nothing whatever, until I came to understand what
a woman really could be. I fought against it--and lost.

"It came to me not sought after and welcomed, but storming over the
ramparts of my soul. Yes, I fought love--and lost."

"I understand that, too," she said.

"I put the Great Pearl Star in my breast, sacred to you. I said to
myself: 'If we ever live through this, and I feel worthy to give this
gem to her, I'll ask her to complete it.'"

"To complete it?"

"Yes. You see, one pearl was missing. The most wonderful of all. Now,
as I clasp this necklace round your throat, the Great Pearl Star is
completed."

"I--don't understand--"

"Ah, but _I_ do! The missing pearl of great price-you are that pearl.
In giving the Great Pearl Star to you, I make it whole."

"And I give it back to you, completed!"

Her head lay on his heart. His lips were on her hair.

"Completion," he whispered. "Peace, to the troubled heart. Peace,
after the night that life has been to me. Peace, till the dawn!"

"'Peace,'" she said, in the line of the ancient Arabic poem. "'Peace,
until the coming of the stars.'"

"'Peace,'" he breathed. "'It is peace until the rising of the day!'"


THE END





End of Project Gutenberg's The Flying Legion, by George Allan England