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.