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On my part, I taught the girls such simple hymns as the one commencing "Une nacelle en silence," which I had learnt at Sunday-school in Switzerland. It is interesting to note that this was Bruno's favourite air. Poor Bruno! he took more or less kindly to all songs except the Swiss jodellings, which he simply detested.
Only fourteen minutes, thirty seconds now remain before the Hujjaj will begin to recover their muscular control. You have your work cut out for you, the next quarter-hour!" The Master raised his hand in signal to Grison, at the electric winch A turn of a lever, and the nacelle rose from the metals of the lower gallery. It swung over the trap and was steadied there, a moment, by many hands.
"Down, you blazing idiot!" commanded the major, dragging at him with hands that shook. The doctor thrust him away, and turned toward the Ka'aba, the roof of which was not three feet distant. "The golden spout see?" he cried, pointing. "Dio mio, what a treasure!" On to the edge of the nacelle he clambered. "Don't be a damn fool, Doctor!" the major shouted; but already Lombardo had leaped.
Rrisa viewed them with scorn, as he went down in the nacelle with a dozen of the crew. The work of stripping the caravan immediately commenced. In an hour some five hundred tin cases of petrol had been hoisted aboard. On the last trip down, the Master sent a packet wrapped in white cloth, containing a fair money payment for the merchandise.
There came a little ragged firing; but a round of blanks stopped that, and sent the villagers skurrying back into the shelter of the palms, mimosas, and jamelon trees. Nissr poised at seven hundred and fifty feet and let down tanks, nacelle, and men. There was no resistance. The local naib came with trembling, to make salaam.
The effect will be salutary, later. But they cannot move or interfere. All you have to look out for is the incoming swarm of fanatics already on the move. So there is no time to be lost. Into the nacelle, and down with you!" "But if they try to rush us you can drop the other bomb, can't you?" demanded the major, as they all clambered into the nacelle.
Its weight, as the Master stood up and lifted it, must have been about two hundred pounds. No doubt one man could have carried it from its place in the Ka'aba to the nacelle; but in the excitement of battle, and impeded by having to stumble over prostrate Moslems, the major had considered it advisable to ask for help.
The raiding-party leaped in. "Lower away!" commanded the chief Smoothly the winch released the fine steel cable, with a purring sound. Down shot the nacelle, steadily, swiftly, with the major, Leclair, and the others now engaged in the most perilous, dare-devil undertaking imaginable.
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.
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.
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