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Updated: May 1, 2025
Nissr had already begun to slant to lower levels. Now at no more than twenty-five hundred feet, with greatly reduced speed, she was drifting down the valley toward the city, the details of which were every moment becoming more apparent. Its size, the wondering Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained three or four hundred thousand inhabitants.
In anticipation of possible attack, Nissr was forced to her best altitude, of now forty-seven hundred feet, all gun-stations were manned and the engines were driven to their limit. The hour was anxious; but the Legion passed the river in safety, just a little south of the twentieth degree, near the Third Cataract. Bohannan's gloomy forebodings proved groundless.
The others, some to a greater degree, some to a less, shared the major's perturbation. A daze, a numb stupefaction had fallen on them. The Master, however, soon recalled them to activity. Not much time now remained before Nissr must make her landing on the plain near the Golden City. None was to be wasted. Vigorous orders set the Legionaries to work.
Every man and boy in all that tremendous multitude spread over many square miles of rocky, sun-blistered aridity, seized whatever came first to hand, for the impending war, as the black shadow of Nissr lagged down toward the city and the Haram. Some snatched rifles, some pistols; others brandished spears and well-greased nebut clubs, six feet long and deadly in stout hands.
"No, by God! I'll either lift this thing or die, right here!" the Celt panted, redder still. But he did not lift the little cube. The best he could do was to drag it, against mighty resistance, to the edge of the trap; and with a last, mighty heave, project it into space. As it left the trap, Nissr rocked and swayed, showing how great a weight had been let drop.
Two days and one night of steady flying over the ocean of sand, with but an occasional oasis or caravan to break the appalling wastes of emptiness, brought Nissr to the Valley of the Nile. The river of hoar antiquity came to view in a quivering heat-haze, far to eastward.
Off to northward, a native dhow was beating down-wind with full-bellied lateen sail, with matting over its hatches. Heat was beginning to grow intense, for no longer was Nissr making a gale that cooled; no longer was she at high, cold levels. Africa, the tropics, had suddenly become real; and the sudden contrast oppressed them all.
And death they had reckoned as part of the payment to be made for their adventuring. This, too, helped knit the fine mass-spirit already binding them together into a coherent, battling group. A little after two in the afternoon, Nissr passed within far sight of the Azores, visible in cloud-rifts as little black spots sown on the waters like sparse seeds on a burnished plate of metal.
Your flying ship is very great," the Arab admitted. "But Allah and his Prophet are greater! Allahu akbar!" "Of course. But tell thou me, Rrisa, if I were to appear at Mecca in my Nissr Arrib ela Sema my Eagle of the Sky would not thy people give me great honors?"
"You, with only one arm faith, it's worse than useless! Back, you!" Then he and many plunged into the blazing engine-room. Thus they closed with the fire-devil now licking ravenous tongues about the vitals of Nissr. An hour from that time, the air-liner was drifting sideways at low altitudes, hardly five hundred feet above the waves.
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