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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 Etrangčre_ 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--"
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