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"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.
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 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.
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.
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.
"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?
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!
The rest were now as drops of water in a hostile ocean. In the Master's breast-pocket still lay Kaukab el Durri and might not that possession, itself, be enough to start a jihad of extermination? Was not the fact of unbelieving dogs now for the first time being in the Sacred City was not this, alone, cause for a massacre? What, in sober reason, stood between the Legion and death?
And the peace be unto thee, O Bara Miyan, master of the gold!" Tension as of a wire about to snap contracted the Master's nerves, strong as they were. Leclair leaned forward, his face pale, teeth set hard into his lip. "Yea, gold!" the Master repeated with hard-forced calm. "This is the gift we ask of thee, for the Myzab and the holy Black Stone and Kaukab el Durri the gift of gold!"
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