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_!"