ONWARD TOWARD THE FORBIDDEN CITY
The Master rang for full engine-power, and threw in all six
helicopters with one swift gesture.
"Major," commanded he, as _Nissr's_ burned and wounded body began to
quiver through all its mutilated fabric; "Major, man the machine-guns
again. All stations! _Quick_!"
Bohannan departed. The droning of the helicopters rose to a shrill
hum. The Master switched in the air-pressure system; and far
underneath, white fountains of spumy water leaped up about the floats,
mingled with sand and mud all churned to frenzy under the bursting
energy of the compressed air released through thousands of tubules.
_Nissr_ trembled, hesitated, lifted a few inches, settled back once
more.
Again the buzzer sounded. The noise of rapid feet became audible
above, in the upper galleries. Ferrara called into the phone:
"It's a British destroyer, sir! She's just rounded the point, three
miles south. Signals up for us to surrender!"
"Machine-guns against naval ordnance!" gritted the Master savagely.
"Surrender?" He laughed with hot defiance.
The first shell flung a perfect tornado of brine into air, glistening;
it ricochetted twice, and plunged into the dunes. A "dud," it failed
to burst.
_Nissr_ rose again as the second shell hit fair in the hard clay of
the wady, cascading earth and sand a hundred feet in air. Both reports
boomed in, rolling like thunder over the sea.
"Shoot and be damned to you!" cried the Master. _Nissr_ was rising
now, clearing herself from the water like a wounded sea-bird. A
tremendous cascade of water sluiced from her hissing floats, swirling
in millions of sun-glinted jewels more brilliant even than Kaukab el
Durri.
Higher she mounted, higher still. The destroyer was now driving in at
full speed, with black smoke streaming from four funnels, perfectly
indifferent to possible shoals, rocks or sand-bars along this
uncharted coast. Another shell screamed under the lower gallery and
burst in a deluge of sand near one of the mooring-piles.
"Very poor shooting, my Captain," smiled Leclair, leaning far out the
port window of the pilot-house. "But then, we can't blame the gunners
for being a bit excited, trying to bag a bit of international game
like this Legion."
"And beside," put in Alden coolly, "our shifting position makes us
rather a poor target. Ah! That shell must have gone home!"
_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.