"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!_"