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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.
The manner in which you came ahead, even after all your companions had fallen in which you boarded us, with the strong probability of death confronting you, proves you the kind of man who wins and keeps respect among fighting men. "If you still desire my arrest and the delivery to you of this air-liner, I am at your complete disposal. You have only to sign the receipt I have already written.
Now vast ambitions dominated and infused it with virile force. As he held the speeding air-liner to her predetermined course through voids of night and mystery, he peered with burning eagerness at the beckoning stars along the world's far, eastern rim. "Behold now, Allah!" he cried suddenly. "Labbayk! I come!"
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!" The descent of the giant air-liner and her crew of masterful adventurers on the Forbidden City had much the quality of a hawk's raid on a vast pigeon-cote.
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.
"Revolvers and lethal pistols!" he ordered. "And knives in belts! Come on!" Up the ladder they swarmed to the take-off gallery. Their feet rang and clattered on the metal rounds. Other than that, a, strange silence filled the giant air-liner. The engines now lay dead. Nissr was motionless, save for the pitch and swing of the surf that tossed her; but forward she could no longer go.
By the dim, fitful gleam of the fire, probably the strangest and most costly necklace in the world became indistinctly visible. At sight of it, everything else was forgotten the wrecked air-liner, the waiting Legion, the unconscious Arabs now being buried in the resistless charge of the sand-armies. Even poor Lebon, tortured slave of the Beni Harb, a lay neglected.
"You, with only one arm faith, it's worse than useless! Back, you!" Then he and many plunged into the blazing engine-room. Thus they closed with the fire-devil now licking ravenous tongues about the vitals of Nissr. An hour from that time, the air-liner was drifting sideways at low altitudes, hardly five hundred feet above the waves.
Fruits, pomegranate, syrup, honey, and jild el faras were brought as offerings of gratitude. The crew ascended to the air-liner amid wild shouts of praise and jubilation. Apricot paste in dried sheets, cut into convenient sizes. "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!
A wondrous dawn, all mingled of scarlet, orange, and vivid yellows, with streaks of absinthe hue, burned up over the desert world. It showed Nissr about as she had been the night before; for the simoom had not thrashed up sea enough offshore, as it had been to break up the partial wreck. The air-liner had, however, settled down a good deal in the sand, and had canted at a sharp angle to port.
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