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Updated: May 1, 2025
His thoughts wandered from Nissr and the great adventure, from the coming attackers, from the vibratory apparatus, yes from the goal of all this undertaking itself, back to "Captain Alden." The who and why, the whence and whither of this strange woman urgently intruded on his mind; nor by any effort of the will could he exclude these thoughts.
The powerful glasses on Nissr showed fretwork carving everywhere; but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression of almost primitive severity. No touch of modernity affected it. Everything appeared immensely archaic. "The Jerusalem of Solomon's day," thought the Master, "must have looked like that barring only that this is solid gold."
He laughed with hot defiance. The first shell flung a perfect tornado of brine into air, glistening; it ricochetted twice, and plunged into the dunes. A "dud," it failed to burst. Nissr rose again as the second shell hit fair in the hard clay of the wady, cascading earth and sand a hundred feet in air. Both reports boomed in, rolling like thunder over the sea.
This silence lengthened impressively, with the massed horsemen on one side, the Legionaries on the other. Between them stretched a clear green space of turf. Behind loomed the vast bulk of Nissr, scarred, battle-worn, but powerful. Away in the distance, the glinting golden walls shimmered across the plain; and over all the Arabian sun glowed down as if a-wonder at this scene surpassing strange.
The Master entered the pilot-house and assumed control. As Nissr passed over the extraordinary Hejaz Railway, indifferent to the mob of frenzied, vituperating pilgrims, the chief peered far ahead for his first sight of Mecca, the Forbidden. He had not long to wait. On the horizon, the hills seemed suddenly to break away.
Finely balanced as they were, they still communicated some slight vibration to the ship. The Master snicked the switch of the magnetic-anchor release; and now the last bond that held Nissr to her cradle was broken. As soon as the air-skid currents should be set going, she would be ready for her flight. This moment was not long in coming.
These messages stated that Nissr had been sighted in flames and falling, in North latitude 19°, 35'; longitude 28°, 16', or about two hundred and fifty miles north-west of the Cape Verdes; that wreckage from her had been observed somewhat south of that point; and that bodies floating in vacuum-belts had been recovered by a Spanish torpedo-boat.
Nissr, staggering, tilted her beak sharply oceanward. At a sick angle, she slid, reeling, toward the burnished, watery floor that seemed surging up to meet her. A hoarse shout from the far end of the take-off drew the Master's eyes thither. With strange agility, almost apelike in its prehensile power, a human figure came clambering up over the outer works, clutching at stays, wires, struts.
"What the devil, sir ?" began the major; but the chief held up his hand for silence. Again he spoke whisperingly into the strange apparatus. This time a murmur rose to him; a murmur increasing to a confused tumult, that in an angry wave of malediction beat up about Nissr as she hung there with spinning helicopters, over the city.
Rack everything strain everything break everything, if you must, but lift her!" "Yes, sir!" came the engineer's voice. "I'll scrap the engines, sir, but I'll do that!" Almost as if a mocking echo of the command and the promise, a dull concussion shuddered through Nissr. The drone of the helicopters sank to a sullen murmur; and down below, waves began combing angrily over the gallery.
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