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All did the same, and all sat down or rather, fell upon the hot earth. Very different, now, this land was from what it had seemed as they had soared above it, at cool altitudes, in the giant air-liner; very different from the cool, green plain of El Barr, behind the grim black line of the Iron Mountains now a dim line off to eastward.
Nothing more natural than that a cold draught should have soughed from the pent interior of the temple, or that the air-liner, slowly turning as she hung above the Haram, should with her vast planes have for a moment thrown her shadow over the square. But the Celt's imaginative nature quivered as he gripped the stone. "You, quick, on the other end!" he cried to Emilio. "You, Lombardo, steady her!
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.
Anxiety dogged their every moment. Sudden storm might yet hopelessly break up the stranded air-liner. Other tribes might have seen the signal-fire and might descend upon the Legionaries. Arab slavers might discover them, beating along the coast in well-armed dhows.
Above, in the burning Arabian sky, the air-liner hovered like a gigantic bird of prey, her gallery-rails lined with motionless watchers. The Master observed every move through powerful glasses. Over his ears a telephone headpiece, which he had slipped on, kept him in close touch with the men in the nacelle, via the steel cable.
The Master gave no reply, but took from the rail the little phone that hung there, and pressed a button, four times. He cupped the receiver at his ear. "You, Enemark?" asked he, of the man at the neutralizer far down in the penetralia of the giant air-liner. "Throw in the first control. Half-voltage, for three minutes. Then three-quarters, for two; and then full, with all controls. Understand?"
The voice, in ordinary tones, carried perfectly; and yet in that small space nearly 7,000 H.P. were being produced and transmitted to the propellers and to the storage batteries that operated helicopters and compressed-air system, as well as the lighting-plant of the air-liner. As the two men entered the engine-room, the Master nodded to Auchincloss.
It's a case, now, of win what we are after, or end everything right there, beyond those mountains!" He ascended to the upper port gallery, and concentrated himself on observation. A certain change in the desert was becoming noticeable, as the air-liner flung herself at high speed into the south-east.
In four minutes the men had safely landed in the lower gallery once more, and the plane was being hoisted by davits and made fast on the upper platform, known as the take-off, which served as a runway for planes leaving the ship or alighting thereon. Over the light-spangled city the giant air-liner gathered way. Three or four searchlights had already begun trying to pick her up.
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.
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