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Updated: June 19, 2025
Around them loomed the black, wet walls of this lowest stone dungeon with but one other exit the pit at their feet. The Master threw himself prone on the slippery floor, took one of the lamps and lowered it, by the chain, to its capacity. Smoke and vapor arose about his head as he peered down. "Well, what is it?" demanded Bohannan, also squinting down, as he bent over the hole. "What do you see?"
It soared some forty feet in air, up past the black silken curtain, then unaccountably stopped, level with the Ka'aba roof. "Up! Up!" yelled Bohannan, frantically. The spud of bullets against the steel basket tingled the bodies of the men crouching against the metal-work. All at once Dr. Lombardo stood up, pick-axe in hand, fully exposed to rifle-fire.
"Were you invited to attend this meeting by either Major Bohannan or by me?" "No, sir, I was not." "Then, why are you here?" "Why am I here? For exactly the same reason that all the rest are here, sir!" The aviator swept his arm comprehensively at the ranks of eagerly listening men. "To resume active service. To get back to duty. To live, again!
Impatiently he thrust the thought aside, and turned with a quiet smile to Bohannan. The major, red with excitement and impatience, still had a hand on the machine-gun. He was patting it slightly, his face eloquent of longing and regret. "Still pinning your faith to steel-jacketed streams of bullets, are you, as against ion-jacketed streams of vibrations?" the Master rallied him.
The bright air seemed to quiver with the eagerness of these fighting-men once more to thrust out into the currents of activity, to feel the tightening of authority, the lure and tang of the unknown. Facing them from the end of the table, the Master stood and spoke to them, with Bohannan seated at his right.
"Stop!" cried the Master, sternly. "No nonsense, now!" "What?" retorted Bohannan, angrily. His bruised, cut face reddened ominously. "Drop those jewels, sir!" "Why?" "Principally because I order you to!" The Master's voice was cold, incisive. "They're worthless, now. No make-weights! We can't have make-weights at a time like this. To think of jewels at such an hour! Throw them back!"
There was Bohannan, Leclair and pistol-barrels flickered in the evening glow, and half the men gripped knives in their left hands, as well. For this was to be a killing without quarter, to the very end. Panting, with a slither of dry sand under their laboring feet, the Legionaries charged. At any second, a raking volley might burst from the dunes.
The torchlight flickered on Leclair's service-revolver, and was reflected on the guns of every Legionary. "If that's the explosive," Bohannan cried, "faith, we're in for it! Is it the explosive that's blown Hell out o' the Black Stone?" A wild cry echoed down the passage. The Olema, his face suddenly distorted with a passion of hate, snatched a pistol from beneath his burnous.
Technically, we're pirates, you know." "Pirates?" demanded the major, lowering his glass. The Master nodded. "Yes," he answered. "That's what the wireless tells us. We'll get short shrift if my apparatus fails." "How do they make us out pirates?" Bohannan ejaculated. It was not fear that looked from his blue eyes, but a vast astonishment.
You have come, so to speak, as an extemporization, an auxiliary; you will add one more unit to the flyers in the expedition, of which there are nine aces, including Major Bohannan here. The others are now on their way to their lodgings, to study their instructions, to memorize, and prepare to carry them out. You are to remain here, with Major Bohannan and with me." "Until what time, sir?"
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