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Its weight, as the Master stood up and lifted it, must have been about two hundred pounds. No doubt one man could have carried it from its place in the Ka'aba to the nacelle; but in the excitement of battle, and impeded by having to stumble over prostrate Moslems, the major had considered it advisable to ask for help.
"Mecca, the Ka'aba, and the Black Stone are forbidden to all heretics?" relentlessly pursued the Master. "Wallah! Yea, so they are to all who are not of Islam," Rrisa tried to soften the answer. "They tell me," persisted the Master, "the Black Stone is in the western wall of the Ka'aba, about seven feet from the pavement." "That is a lie!" flared Rrisa, with indignation.
Down, swiftly down, to raid the Bayt Ullah, the sacred Ka'aba, holy of holies to more than two hundred million Moslem fanatics, each of whom would with joy have died to keep the hand of the unbelieving dog from so much as touching that hoar structure or the earth of the inviolate Haram. Down, swiftly down with picks and crowbars.
Such as had fallen with their eyes in the direction of the nacelle, could see what was going on; the others could only judge of this incredible desecration by what they could hear. The sound of foreign voices, speaking an unbelievers' tongue in the very shadow of the Ka'aba, must have been supremely horrible to every Mohammedan there.
"Faith, but this is some proposition!" grunted the major, as the seven men trampled over the prostrate bodies, without any delay whatever to peer at the Haram or the Ka'aba. "The stone's there, men, at the south-east corner! Get busy!" No exhortation was necessary. Every man, nerved to the utmost energy by the extreme urgency of the situation, leaped to work.
"And is it indeed covered with a wondrous silken and gold cloth, every year renewed, known as the kiswah?" "Those words are true." "All Moslems greatly revere the Ka'aba?" "It is the center of our mighty faith, Master." "And thou hast seen it with thine own eyes?" "With my own eyes, Master, for I am a Hadji. " Attentively the Arab was now watching the Master.
Never in all his dealings with the son of the East had he by word or look offended against Islam. There was, however, iron determination in his eyes as he demanded: "Is it indeed true that in Mecca stands a building called the Ka'aba, also called Bayt Ullah, or Allah's House?" "Yea, Master, that is true," answered the Arab, with strange eyes.
The scene, which ordinarily would have entranced them and filled them with awe, now had become as nothing. Every energy, every sense had centered itself only on this one vital work of extracting the Black Stone from the Ka'aba wall and of making a swift getaway with it before the rising murmur of rage, from without the area of paralysis, should sweep in on them with annihilating passion.
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.
At the corners of this colonnade, four tall white minarets towered toward the sky minarets from which now a pretty lively rifle-fire was developing. A number of small buildings were scattered about the square; but all were dominated by the black impressive cube of the Ka'aba itself, the Bayt Ull
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