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Updated: June 4, 2025
He stamped it down again with his boot-heel, dropped the pick and grappled it with both straining hands. By main force he wrenched it up almost at right angles. He gave another pull, snapped it short off, dragged it to the parapet of the Ka'aba, and with a frantic effort swung it, hurled it into the nacelle. Down sank the basket, a little, under this new weight.
It was of raw gold, apparently unalloyed as befitted its office of carrying the water from the roof of the Ka'aba and throwing it upon Ishmael's grave, where pilgrims have for centuries stood fighting to catch it. Its color verged on reddish; all its lateral surfaces were carved with elaborate arabesques and texts from the Koran.
Two or three approached the French ace, to hold speech with him about the exploit at the Ka'aba, but he withdrew from them to the extreme rear end of the gallery and remained for a long time in silent contemplation of the fading city, the Plain of Mina, and Mount Arafat, beyond.
To the major, peering over the side of the nacelle, it seemed as if the Haram central spot of pilgrimage and fanatic devotion for one-seventh of the human race were leaping up to meet him. With dizzying rapidity the broad square, the grim black Ka'aba, the prostrate white throngs all sprang up at the basket. Fascinated, the major watched; his eyes, above all, sought the mysterious Ka'aba.
The Master pondered a moment more, then demanded: "Is it true there is a sacred Black Stone in the walls of the Ka'aba, precious to all followers of the Prophet, from Africa to China and to the farthest isles? Revered by all the two hundred and thirty million of your faith?" "That is true, M'almé. I myself have touched and kissed the Black Stone."
On the Darb el Ma'ala, or Medina Road, a caravan bearing the annual mahmal gift of money, jewels, fine fabrics, and embroidered coverings for the Ka'aba temple, cut loose with rifles and old blunderbusses. Dogs began to bark, donkeys to bray, camels to spit and snarl. The whole procession fell into an anarchy of hate and fear.
Even the stone tank at the north-west side of the Ka'aba, under the famous Myzab, or Golden Waterspout on the Ka'aba roof, was heaped full of them; and all round the sacred Zem Zem well they lay in silent windrows, reaped down by some silent, invisible force.
The woman, however, smiled with dry lips, and from her belt took out a little, flattened piece of lead the bullet which, fired at Nissr from near the Ka'aba, had fallen at her feet and been picked up by her as a souvenir. "Here is a bullet," said she chokingly. "You can cut this in two and shape it. We can reload two shells with some of the Arab powder. It will do!" They laughed irrationally.
After them come tall Afghans, their hair well-oiled, in the baggiest of trousers; Makranis dressed like Afghans but distinguished by their sharper nose and more closely-set eyes; Sindis in many-buttoned waistcoats; Negroes from Africa clad in striped waist cloths, creeping slowly through the streets and pausing in wonder at every new sight; Negroes in the Bombay Mahomedan dress and red fez; Chinese with pig-tails: Japanese in the latest European attire; Malays in English jackets and loose turbans; Bukharans in tall sheep skin caps and woollen gabardines, begging their way from Mecca to to their Central Asian homes, singing hymns in honour of the Prophet, or showing plans of the Ka'aba or of the shrine of the saint of saints, Maulana Abdul Kadir Gilani, at Baghdad.
Knives, spears, scimitars, rifles glinted in the sun. The whine and patter of bullets filled the air, punctured the kiswah, slogged against the Ka'aba. Lebon and Rennes, turning loose the machine-guns, mowed into the white of the pack; but still they came crowding on and on, frenzied, impervious to fear. Up rose the nacelle, as the major wildly shouted into the phone.
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