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Suddenly he leaped from the berth, strode to the table and caught up Rrisa's dagger. "Allah! What's this?" he exclaimed. "Rrisa he's been here and with a knife? For a second or two he stood there, staring at the jambiyeh in his grip. His powerful frame tautened; his thick, corded neck swelled with the intensity of his emotion as his head went forward, staring. His jaw set hard.
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.
Is it not better that these very precious things be kept in greater safety at the Jannati Shahr? Come, Rrisa! Arise!" The orderly made no move, uttered no sound. The Master dragged him up, held him, peered into his face that had gone quite ashen under its brown. "Why, Lord! the man has fainted dead away!" exclaimed the Master.
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. What will be, must be.
He dropped Abd el Rahman's shoulders, and Rrisa the Sheik's feet, while Leclair stood silently bowed with the weight of Lebon and of the belaboring storm. "Oooo-eeee! Oooooeeee! Oooooo-eeee!" the Master hailed, three long times. An answering shout came back, faintly, from the black.
The only factor that could possibly have astonished him, just now, would have been the nonappearance of that slight, luminous cloudlet at the precise spot and moment designated. Neither Bohannan, Alden, nor Rrisa was watching the slow descent of the lethal gas. All three had their eyes fixed on their own lethal-gas pistols and on their watches.
"Unless you choose to remain behind?" "Never, sir!" "Can you swim with one arm?" "With both tied!" "Very well! All ready, men! Overboard, to the beach! There, dig in for further orders. No individual action! No charge, without command! Overboard come on who follows me?" He vaulted the rail, plunged in a white smother, surged up and struck out for shore. Rrisa was not half a second behind him.
"The map, here, shows nothing, Rrisa. And of a surety, the makers of maps do not lie," the Master commented, and turned a little to pour the thick coffee. Its perfume rose with grateful fragrance on the air. The Master sipped the black, thick nectar, and smiled oddly. For a moment he regarded his unwilling orderly with narrowed eyes. "Thou wilt not say they lie, son of Islam, eh?" demanded he.
This is my hour of night prayer, and I must bow to Mecca. Whither, from here, lieth The City?" The Master raised a hand, glanced at a compass set like a wrist-watch, peered a moment at one of the charts, and then nodded toward the door that led into the pilot-house. Without delay, Rrisa faced that door and prostrated himself. The ancient cry: "La Illaha illa Allah!
A sand-storm, unprotected as we are " "Men with stern work to do cannot have time to fear the future!" Leclair grew silent. Rrisa alone was speaking, now. With a call of "Ya Latif!" He ended with another prostration and the usual drawing down of the hands over the face.
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