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His eyes, mirroring admiration, peered with some curiosity at the dark, lean face of the Frenchman. "I," answered the other, "am Lieutenant André Leclair, formerly of the French flying forces, now a commander in the International Air Police." "Leclair?" demanded the Master quickly, his face lighting with a glad surprise. "Leclair, of the Mesopotamian campaign? Leclair, the world-famous ace?"
"Yes, the ball is opening!" repeated Leclair, with an eager laugh. His finger itched on the trigger of his weapon; but no target was visible. Why waste ammunition on empty sand-dunes? "Let it open!" returned the chief. "We'll not refuse battle, no, by Allah! Our first encounter with Islam shall not be a surrender!
The Leclair sonata in D minor we have played some three hundred times; and its slow movement is one of the most beautiful largos I know of in all chamber music. The same thing could be done in the way of transcription for chamber music which Kreisler has already done so charmingly for the solo violin. And I would dearly love to do it!
"They will show fight, surely enough, mon capitaine," put in Leclair, as he and the major made their way to the oddly tiptilted door leading back into the main corridor. "I know these folk. No blank cartridges will scatter that breed. Even the Turks are afraid of them. They have a proverb: 'Feed the Beni Harb, and they will fire at Allah! That says it all. "Mohammed laid a special curse on them.
Here he found the crew assembled by Bohannan and Leclair ready for the perilous descent they were about to make. He leaned over the rail, unmindful of the ragged patter of bullets from below, and with a judicial eye observed the prospect. His calm contrasted forcibly with the frenzied surging of the pilgrim mobs below, a screaming, raging torrent of human passion.
There was Bohannan, Leclair and pistol-barrels flickered in the evening glow, and half the men gripped knives in their left hands, as well. For this was to be a killing without quarter, to the very end. Panting, with a slither of dry sand under their laboring feet, the Legionaries charged. At any second, a raking volley might burst from the dunes.
"What, Rrisa?" "Behold! I I have found him!" "Found ?" shouted the Master, plunging forward. Leclair followed close, staggering in the sudden gale. "Abd el Rahman?" "The old hyena, surely! M'almé, M'almé! See!" The white men stumbled with broken ejaculations to where Rrisa was crouched over a gaunt figure in the drifting sand. "Is that he, Rrisa?" cried the Master. "Art thou sure?"
All those brown-faced fanatics remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement. The major, peering down through the trap, swore luridly. Leclair muttered something to himself, with wrinkled brow. "Captain Alden's" eyes blinked strangely, through the holes of the mask. The others stared in frank astonishment.
The passage seemed enormously long to the Master as, flanked by Leclair, "Captain Alden," and the major, he peered curiously at its smooth, dull-yellow walls all chased with geometrical patterns picked out in silver and copper, between the dull-hued tapestries, and banded with long extracts from the Koran inlaid in Tumar characters of mother-of-pearl.
They had accepted this fact like all others, as one of a series of incredible things that had, none the less, been true. For a certain time the remnant of the Legion dragged itself south-westward, panting, gasping, wasting no breath in speech. Leclair was first to utter words. "Let us rest a little while, mon capitaine," said he in a hoarse, choking voice. "Rest, and drink again.
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