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But most wonderful of all was the metallic shimmer of those walls, domes, minarets, under the high sun of this lost Arabian paradise. So amazing was the prospect that, as Nissr hurled herself in over the last ranges of the mountains and shot out across the open plain itself, only one man found words. This man was Leclair. Close beside the Master, he said in Arabic: "I too have heard, my Captain.
"Fighting-men, all," the Master repeated, while Leclair listened with keen enjoyment and the Legion stood attentive, with the white-burnoused horsemen giving ear to every word astonished, no doubt, to hear Arabic speech from the lips of an unbeliever. Is it not meritorious, O Sheik? Doth not thy Prophet himself say: 'Voyaging is victory, and he who journeyeth not is both ignorant and blind?"
Leclair began to curse with amazing fluency in French and Arabic, while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol stolid Englishman though he was had to make a strong effort to keep his teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on the jaw, burst out laughing, waving their arms extravagantly.
"One moment! Send Leclair back to me. Inform Ferrara that he is to command the second gun-crew." "Yes, sir!" And the woman was gone. Leclair appeared, some moments later. He suspected nothing of the subterfuge whereby the Master had obtained a few minutes' conversation alone with "Captain Alden." "You sent for me, sir?" asked the Frenchman. "I did. I have some questions to ask you.
But now he took his course again, as he had intended to do from the Legion's fire; and presently rifle work from the Arabs, too, verified, his direction. The Master smiled. Leclair fingered the butt of his revolver. Rrisa whispered curses: "Ah, dog-sons, may you suffer the extreme cold of El Zamharir!
When he was gone, the Master called Bohannan and Leclair, outlined the next coup in this strange campaign, and assigned crews to them for the implacable carrying-out of the plan determined on surely the most dare-devil, ruthless, and astonishing plan ever conceived by the brain of a civilized man.
And for a while the three men crouched in the wady with the two unconscious ones, torturer and victim. At length the Master spoke: "This won't do, Lieutenant. We must be getting back." Leclair peered at him in the screaming dark. "Why, my Captain?" asked he. "The Legionaries can care for themselves. If Nissr is breaking up, in the gale, we can do nothing. And on the way we may be lost.
They will not stand and fight, like men!" Scornfully he flung a hand at the Beni Harb. The fringes of the tribe were trickling up the sands, backward, away, toward the line of purple-hazed dunes that lined the coast. More and more of the war-party followed. Gradually all passed up the wady, over the dunes and vanished. "They are going to ambush us, my Captain," said Leclair.
And our last halting-place will be at sunrise the sunrise of the New West, with its waving grain-fields, fenced flocks and splendid cities, drawing upon the mountains for the water to make it fertile, and upon the whole world for men to make it rich. I was born on a farm near Leclair, Scott County, Iowa, February 26, 1846. My father, Isaac Cody, had emigrated to what was then a frontier State.
If it comes to a fight, and I am killed, Leclair will command you. His knowledge of Arabic temporarily ranks him above Bohannan. Don't shoot unless it comes to hard necessity; but if you do shoot, make every bullet count and save the last one for yourselves!" Bara Miyan clapped his hands. Through two arched doorways, to right and left, entered a silent file of the huge, half-naked Maghrabi men.
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