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He took from the sack a wondrous thing, luminous with nacreous hues. "The Great Pearl Star," she cried. "Kaukab el Durri!" "Yes, the Great Pearl Star, itself!" She looked in silence. Then she reached out a hand and touched it, as if unbelieving. "Why, you never told me!" "I had a reason." "And through all that inferno, when every ounce had to be considered " "I was keeping this for you."
That soul shall eat of the fruit of the tree Al Zakkum, and be branded forever with the treasure he did attempt to ravish from us!" "Remember, great Olema, we did bring thee the Myzab and Kaukab el Durri, and the holy Black Stone!" "I remember, White Sheik, and will reward thee, but not with gold!" The old man's face was stern, deep-lined, hard; his eyes had assumed a dangerous glitter.
"Shoot and be damned to you!" cried the Master. Nissr was rising now, clearing herself from the water like a wounded sea-bird. A tremendous cascade of water sluiced from her hissing floats, swirling in millions of sun-glinted jewels more brilliant even than Kaukab el Durri. Higher she mounted, higher still.
From the swine and brothers of the swine it has been taken by Allah, and put back into the hands of Rrisa, Allah's slave! See, M'almé, see!" The shaking hands extended the leather sack. At it the Master stared, his face going dead white. "Thou dost not mean ?" he stammered. "Truly, I do!" "Not Kaukab el Durri?" "Aye it was lying near that heretic dog!"
"The Great Pearl Star, the sacred loot from the Haram?" "Kaukab el Durri, M'almé. The Great Pearl Star itself!" With hands that quivered in unison with his nerves, now no longer impassive, the strange chief of this still stranger expedition took from Rrisa the leather sack. Over the top of the wady a million sand-devils were screeching.
For nothing save the wondrous Great Pearl Star could these three adventurers find any gaze whatever, or any thoughts. While Leclair and Rrisa stared with widening eyes, the Master, tense with joy, held up their treasure-trove. "The Great Pearl Star!" he cried, in a strange voice. "Kaukab el Durri!
For years vague rumors have come to me from the desert-men, from far oases and cities of the Sahara. Now here, now there, news has drifted in to Algiers not news, but rather fantastic tales. Yes, I have often heard of the Kaukab el Durri. But till now I have always believed it a story, a myth." "No myth, but solid fact!" exulted the Master, with a strange laugh.
In her keeping lay three things more sacred than all else to Mohammedan hearts Kaukab el Durri, the Great Pearl Star; Ha jar el As wad, the Black Stone; and Myzab, the Golden Waterspout. Awed, silenced, the Legionaries stood there in the lower gallery, peering into the blood-stained nacelle.
The adventure still was critical; but the scales of success seemed lowering in favor of the Legion. The feel, in his breast pocket, of the leather sack containing Kaukab el Durri, which he had again taken possession of after the magic tests, gave added encouragement. This, the third gift, was to be delivered only at the last moment, just before Nissr should roar aloft.
"That is true, Master. And what then?" "Is it not a fact that they could not even safeguard the Kaukab el Durri from the hand of the Great Apostate Sheik? How much less, then, could they protect their other and more sacred things, if some Shiah dog should come to rob them of the things they value?
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