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Updated: June 21, 2025
A square, somewhat less than a mile each way, was pegged out with poles, and the Maghrabi astrologers, in whom Moizz reposed extravagant faith, consulted together to determine the auspicious moment for the opening ceremony. Bells were hung on ropes from pole to pole, and at the signal of the sages their ringing was to announce the precise moment when the laborers were to turn the first sod.
The Olema's gaudy burnous crimsoned swiftly. "Got him!" shouted Bohannan, firing again, again, into the tangle of sub-chiefs and Maghrabi men. Adams pitched forward, cleft to the chin by a simitar. The firing leaped to point-blank uproar, on both sides. The men of Jannati Shahr numbered more pistols, but the Legionaries had quicker firers.
Never a word uttered the Apostate as he was led away through the horsemen. But he gave one backward look, piercing and strange, at the Master who had thus delivered him to death a look that, for all the White Sheik's aplomb, strangely oppressed him. Then the horsemen closed about the two Maghrabi, or East Africans, and about their victim.
Not half-naked like the low-caste Maghrabi outside, but clad in Arab fashion, they lay there, with Legionaries' bullets in breast and brain. The Master smiled, grimly, as he walked to one of the bodies and stirred it with his naked foot. He swung above it a silver lamp he had pulled down from the wonderfully arabesqued wall.
In silence the Legionaries followed old Bara Miyan through the curtained doorway; and after them came the sub-chiefs. The Maghrabi stranglers, noiseless and bare-footed, fell in behind; a long ominous line of black human brutes, seeming hardly above the intellectual level of so many gorillas. Stout-hearted as the Legionaries were, a kind of numbing oppression was closing in upon them.
"Now," the old man asked, "now, O Frank, wouldst thou see the cut jewels of the Caliph el Walid?" "Even so!" "Come, then!" And Bara Miyan gestured toward another door that led, at the left, out of the Chamber of the Pyramid. Again the strange procession formed itself, as before, with the gorilla-like Maghrabi stranglers a rear guard.
Quoth the Maghrabi, "O Judar, I have need of thee and, given thou obey me, thou shalt get great good and shalt be my companion and manage my affairs for me." Quoth Judar, "O my lord, tell me what is in thy mind and I will obey thee, without demur." Give him the mule and he will give thee an hundred dinars, which do thou take and go thy ways and keep the matter secret with all secrecy."
Abd el Rahman, the Great Apostate, as a living man, had forever passed from the sight of the Flying Legion. His departure, in so abrupt and deadly simple a manner, gave the Master some highly conflicting thoughts. The fact that no blood was ever to be shed in this city had reassuring aspects. On the other hand, how many of these Maghrabi stranglers did Bara Miyan keep as a standing army?
Quoth he, "I want my ass; that's all;" and quoth she, "I saw that thou wast poor: so I deposited thine ass for thee with the Moorish barber. Stand off, whilst I speak him fair, that he may give thee the beast." So she went up to the Maghrabi and kissed his hand and shed tears. He asked her what ailed her and she said, "O my son, look at my boy who standeth yonder.
Very striking is the account of the Mahrabis whom Judar pushed into the lake, and who appeared with the soles of their feet above the water and none can forget the sights which the necromancy of the third Maghrabi put before the eyes of Judar. "Oh, Judar, fear not," said the Moor, "for they are semblances without life."
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