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_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 Ullŕh_, 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
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