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The Master strode to the corner where he stood, and flared his lamp over a score of distended goat-hides. "Well, by Allah!" he ejaculated. "Sacrificial wine," put in Leclair, at his elbow. "See the red seals, with the imprint of the star and crescent, here and here?" He touched a seal with his finger. "Rare old wine, I'll wager!"
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!"
"There goes a tray of blanks," said the Master. "Perhaps that will rout them out, eh? Once we can get them on the run " Leclair laughed scornfully. "Those dog-sons will not run from blanks, no, nor from shotted charges!" he declared. Ah, 'these dogs bare their teeth to fight more willingly than to eat. It will come to hot work soon, I think!"
The Frenchman's voice, wind-gusted, trembled with grief and passionate anger; yet through that rage and sorrow rang a note of joy. "Tell me, Leclair! Who, now?" demanded the Master, as he came close and peered down by the fire-gleam roaring on the beach, sending sheaves of sparks in comet-tails of vanishing radiance down-wind with rushing sand.
Jean Marie Leclair, a pupil of Somis, was a Frenchman, born at Lyons, and he began life as a dancer at the Rouen Theatre. He went to Turin as ballet master and met Somis, who induced him to take up the violin and apply himself to serious study.
"C'est égal!" exclaimed Leclair. "More than that, eh, my Captain?" The Master returned to the shaft, his bare feet red through the run and welter of the wine on the stone floor. "Now men," said he, crisply, as he flung down the pit his simitar which could have no further use, "this may be the final chapter. Our Legion was organized for adventure. We've had it. No one can complain.
A sand-storm, unprotected as we are " "Men with stern work to do cannot have time to fear the future!" Leclair grew silent. Rrisa alone was speaking, now. With a call of "Ya Latif!" He ended with another prostration and the usual drawing down of the hands over the face.
"Some situation! Two men dead and others injured. Engines crippled, propellers the same, and two floats so damaged we couldn't stay on the surface if we came down. Well, by God!" Leclair looked very grim. "I regret only," said he in broken English, "that the stowaway escaped us. Ah, la belle exécution, if we had him now!" The Master, at the starboard window, kept silence. No one sat at the wheel.
The major, Leclair, and Ferrara an expert swordsman he had been, in the Italian army possessed themselves of the others. Bohannan whistled his scimitar through the air. "Very fine I call it!" he exclaimed, with a joyful laugh. "Some little game of tag, what? And our Moslem friends are still 'it! We're still ahead!"
"Just where you've said, to Hell, it's far more than likely," the Master retorted. "Come, men, into it! Follow me!" He stooped, lamp in one hand, simitar in the other, and in a most cramped posture entered the passage. After him came Leclair, the woman, Bohannan, and the others. The air hung close and heavy.
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