JOURNEY'S END
All this time, the strange, yellowish sheen against the heavens was
increasing. What might lie beyond the mountains--who could tell? But
that its nature was wholly different from anything any white man ever
had beheld seemed obvious.
Quite suddenly, at 10:05, the Master's binoculars detected a break far
to southward, in the craggy wall of rock. He ordered _Nissr's_ beak
turned directly thither. Swiftly the Eagle of the Sky held her course,
speeding like an arrow. And now a vast, open plain was seen to be
spreading away, away to indeterminable distances; a plain the further
limits of which veiled themselves in bister and dull ocher vapors.
The aureate shimmer on the sky kept steadily increasing, from a point
somewhat to the left of _Nissr's_ line of flight. What this might be,
none could guess. None save the Master. More agitated than any had
ever seen him, he stood there at the rail, lips tight, hands clutching
the binoculars at his eyes.
"By Allah!" the major heard him mutter. "It can't be true--the thing
I've heard. Only a fable, surely! And yet--"
Now the vast plain was coming clearly to view. It appeared fully
under cultivation with patches of greenery that denoted gardens,
palm-groves, fruit-orchards; all signs of a well-watered region here
at the center of the world's most appalling desert.
This in itself was a thing of astonishment. But it faded to
insignificance as all at once a far, dazzling sheen burst on the
watchers. Up against the sky a wondrous, yellow blaze seemed to be
burning. Enormously far away as it still was, it filled the heart
of every observer with a strange, quick thrill of wonder, of hope.
Something of wild exultation seemed to leap through the Legionaries'
veins, at sight of that strange fire.
Leclair glanced at the Master. The dark, taciturn man, for all his
self-control, had set teeth into his lip till the blood was all but
starting.
On, on swooped _Nissr._ Now the plain was widening. Now, off at the
left, behind the shimmer of the wondrous sight that seemed a fantastic
city of dreams, long black cliffs had become visible--surely some spur
of the Iron Mountains, making to southward at the eastern edge of the
plain. This line of crags faded, in remote distance, into the brown
vapors that ringed the mystic horizon.
"The city?" asked Bohannan. "That--can't be the city, can it, now?
Faith, if it _is_, we're too late. Damn me, sir, but the whole
infernal place is on fire! Just our rotten luck, eh?"
The Master made no reply. As if he would devour the place with his
eyes, he was leaning over the rail, boring through those powerful
glasses at the dazzle and bright sheen of the wonder-city now every
moment becoming more clearly visible.
That it was in truth a city could no longer be doubted. Long walls
came to view, pierced by gates with fantastic arches. Domes rose to
heaven. Delicate minarets, carved into a fretwork of amazing fineness,
pointed their fingers at the yellow shimmering sky. The contrast of
that brilliance, with the soft green gardens and feathery palm-groves
before, the grim black cliffs behind, filled the Legionaries with a
kind of silent awe.
But most wonderful of all was the metallic shimmer of those walls,
domes, minarets, under the high sun of this lost Arabian paradise. So
amazing was the prospect that, as _Nissr_ hurled herself in over
the last ranges of the mountains and shot out across the open plain
itself, only one man found words.
This man was Leclair. Close beside the Master, he said in Arabic:
"I too have heard, my Captain. I too know the story of the Bara
Jannati Shahr--but I have always thought it fable. Now, now--."
"Faith!" interrupted the major, with sudden excitement. He smote the
rail a blow with an agitated fist. "If that doesn't look like gold,
I'm a--."
"Gold?" burst out the Master, unable longer to control himself. "Of
course it's gold! And we--are the first white men in all the world to
look on it--the Golden City of Jannati Shahr!"
Stupefaction overcame the Flying Legion. The sight of this perfectly
incredible city, which even yet--despite its obvious character--they
could not believe as reality, for a little while deprived all the
observers of coherent thought.
Like men in a daze, they stood watching the far-distant mass of walls,
buildings, towers, battlements all agleam with the unmistakable sheen
of pure metal. The human mind, confronted by such a phenomenon, fails
to react, and for a while lies inert, stunned, prostrate.
"Gold?" stammered the major, and fell to gnawing his mustache, as
he stared at the incredible sight. "By God--gold? Sure, it can't be
_that_!"
"It not only can be, but is!" the Master answered. "The old legend is
coming true, that's all. Have you no eyes in your head, Major? If that
shine isn't the shine of gold, what is it?"
"Yes, but the thing's impossible, sir!" cried Bohannan. "Why, man
alive! If that's gold, the whole of Arabia would be here after it!
There'd be caravans, miners, swarms of--"
"It's obvious you know nothing of Moslem severity or superstition,"
the Master interrupted. "There is no Mohammedan beggar, even starving,
who would touch a grain of that metal. Not even if it were given him.
There's not one would carry an ounce away from the Iron Mountains.
This whole region is under the ban of a most terrific _tabu_, that
loads unthinkable curses on any human being who removes a single atom
of any metal from it!"
"Ah, that's it, eh?"
"Yes, that's very much it! And what is more, Major, no word of this
ever gets out to the white races--or hardly any. Nothing more than
vague rumors that barely amount to fairy stories. Even though I forced
Rrisa to tell me the location of this city, he wouldn't mention its
being gold, and I knew too much to ask him or try to make him. Why,
he'd have been torn to bits before he'd have betrayed _that_ Inner
Secret. So now you understand!"
"I see, I see," the major answered, mechanically. It was plain,
however, that his mind had received a shock from which it had not yet
fully recovered. He remained staring and blinking, first chewing at
his mustache and then tugging it with blunt, trembling fingers. Now
and then he shook his head, like a man just waking from a dream and
trying to make himself realize that he is indeed awake.
The others, some to a greater degree, some to a less, shared the
major's perturbation. A daze, a numb stupefaction had fallen on them.
The Master, however, soon recalled them to activity. Not much time now
remained before _Nissr_ must make her landing on the plain near the
Golden City. None was to be wasted.
Vigorous orders set the Legionaries to work. The machine-guns were
loaded and fully manned; several pieces of apparatus that the Master
had been perfecting in his cabin were brought into the lower gallery;
everyone was commanded to smarten his personal appearance. The
psychology of the Oriental was such, well the Master knew, that the
impression the Legion should make upon the people of this wonder-city
could not fail to be of the very highest importance.
The plain over which _Nissr_ was now sweeping, with the black
mountains left far behind, seemed a fairyland of beauty compared with
the desolation of the Central Arabian Desert.
"This is surely a fitting spot for the exact geometrical center of
Islam," the Master said to Leclair, as they stood looking down. "My
measurements show this secret valley to be that center. Mecca, of
course, has only been a blind, to keep the world from knowing anything
about this, the true heart of the Faith. The Meccans have been
usurping the Black Stone, all these centuries, and these Jannati Shahr
people have submitted because any conflict would have betrayed their
existence to the world. That is my theory. Good, eh?"
"Excellent!" the lieutenant replied. "There must be millions of
Mohammedans, themselves, who have hardly learned of this valley.
Certainly, very few from the outside world ever have been able to
cross the Empty Abodes, and reach it.
"These people here evidently represent a far higher culture than
any other Moslems ever known. Who ever saw a finer city--even not
considering its material--or more wonderful cultivation of land?"
His eyes wandered out over the plain, which lost itself to sight in
the remote south. Roads in various directions, with here and there
a few white dromedaries bearing bright-colored _shugdufs_ (litters),
showed there was travel to some other inhabited spots inside the
forbidding mountain girdle.
Here, there, herds of antelope and flocks of sheep were grazing on
broad meadows, through which trickled sparkling threads of water,
half glimpsed among feathery-tufted date-palms. Plantations of fig and
pomegranate, lime, apricot, and orange trees, with other fruits not
recognized, slid beneath the giant liner as she slowed her pace. And
broad fields of wheat, barley, tobacco, and sugar-cane showed that the
people of the city had no fear of any lack.
Birds were here--pelicans, cranes, and water-fowl along the brooks
and gleaming pools; swift little yellow birds with crownlike crests;
doves, falcons, and hawks of unknown species. Here was life abundant,
after the death of the Empty Abodes. Here was rich color; here arose
a softly perfumed air, balmy, incensed as with strange aromatics. Here
was peace--eternal _kayf_--blessed rest--here indeed lay a scene that
gave full explanation of the ancient name "Arabia Felix."
And at the left, dominating all this beauty, shone and glimmered in
the ardent sun the wondrous Golden City of Jannati Shahr.
_Nissr_ had already begun to slant to lower levels. Now at no more
than twenty-five hundred feet, with greatly reduced speed, she was
drifting down the valley toward the city, the details of which
were every moment becoming more apparent. Its size, the wondering
Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained
three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Its frontage along the
black mountains could not have been less than two and a half miles;
and, as it seemed to lose itself up a defile in those crags, no way at
present existed of judging its depth.
The general appearance was that of stern simplicity. A long wall
of gleaming yellow bounded it, from north to south; this wall being
pierced by seven gates, each flanked by minarets. Behind the wall,
terraces arose, with _mesjid_ (temple) domes, innumerable houses, and
some larger buildings of unknown purpose.
The powerful glasses on _Nissr_ showed fretwork carving everywhere;
but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression
of almost primitive severity. No touch of modernity affected it.
Everything appeared immensely archaic.
"The Jerusalem of Solomon's day," thought the Master, "must have
looked like that--barring only that this is solid gold."
Out from the city, a little less than two-thirds of the way down,
issued a rather considerable stream. It seemed to come from under the
wall fronting the plain. Its course, straight rather than sinuous,
lay toward the south-west, and was marked by long lines of giant
date-palms and pale-stemmed eucalyptus trees, till it lost itself in
brown distances.
"Faith, but that looks like lotus-eating, all right," said the major,
notching up his cartridge-belt another hole. "That looks like 'A book
of verses underneath the bough,' with Fatima or Lalla Rookh, or the
like, eh?" He drew at a cigarette, and smiled with sweet visionings of
Celtic exuberance. "A golden city! Lord!"
"You'll do no dallying 'with Amaryllis in the shade,' in _this_
valley!" the Master flung at him. "Nor any lotus-eating, either. To
your stations, men! Wake up! Forget all about this gold, now--remember
my orders! That's all you've got to do. The gold will take care of
itself, later. For now, there's stern work ahead!"
The Legionaries assumed their posts, ready for whatever attack might
come. They still moved like men in a trance. Whether they could quite
even realize the true character of Jannati Shahr seemed doubtful. The
Inca's room of gold stunned Pizarro and his men. How much more, then,
must a whole city of gold numb any concrete thought?
Down, still down sank _Nissr_, now beginning to circle in broad,
descending spirals, seeking where she might land. The roar of the
propellers lessened; and at the same time, the increasing hum of the
helicopters made itself heard, counterbalancing the loss of lifting
power of the planes, yet gradually letting the air-liner sink. Came,
too, a sighing hiss of the air-intakes as the vacuum-floats filled.
High noon was now at hand. The sun burned, a copper ball, in the very
forehead of a turquoise sky. A light breeze, lazying over the plain,
stirred the fronded tufts of the date-palms' thick plantations.
Beyond a massy grove, stretching for nearly two miles out from
the northernmost gate of the city, a grassy level quite like a
parade-ground invited the liner to rest.
As she sank still lower, the Master's glass again picked up the city
wall and ran along it. Here, there, white dots were visible; human
figures, surely--the figures of men in snowy burnouses, on the
ramparts of heavy metal.
The Master smiled, and nodded.
"My men think they are surprised," he mused. "What will these Jannati
Shahr men think, when I have opened my little box of tricks and shown
them what's inside?"
He pressed a button on the rail. A bell trilled in the pilot-house;
another in the engine-room. The Norcross-Brails died to inactivity.
With a last long swoop, an abandonment of all the furious energies
that for so long had been hurling her over burning sand and black
crag, _Nissr_ slanted to the grassy sward. A sudden, furious hissing
burst out beneath her, as the compressed-air valves were thrown and
the air-cushions formed beneath her thousands of spiracles. Then, with
hardly a shudder, easily as a tired gull slips down into the quiet of
a still lagoon, the vast air-liner took earth.
She slid two hundred yards on her air-cushions, over the close-cropped
turf, slowed, came to rest there fronting the northern gate of Bara
Jannati Shahr. And the shimmer of those golden walls, one mile to east
of her, painted her all a strangely luminous yellow.
Journey's end, at last!