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.