The chief handed him a pencil. Rrisa intelligently studied the map for nearly two minutes, then raised his hand and made a dot a few miles north-east of the intersection of fifty degrees east and twenty degrees north. The Master's eye was not slow to note that the designated location formed one point of a perfect equilateral triangle, the other points of which were Bab el Mandeb on the south and Mecca on the north.
"There,M'almé," whispered the Arab, in a choking voice. "Now I have told you the secret of all secrets, and have lost my soul. I have revealed the inner mystery of Islam, that to this day no man of the Feringi hath ever known. I am a very great man of sin, and should have first torn out my tongue.
"But my life is in your hands, Master, and I have shared your salt.Allah knows I was forced to speak.Shal'lah!(It isAllah'swill!) Allah will weigh my heart and will forgive, for he is theCompassionate, the Merciful! I beg you, Master, now let me go!"
"Soon, Rrisa," the chief answered, turning away from the map. "But first there is something of highest import I must show thee."
"And what may that be, my sheik?" the Arab queried, his widening eyes fixed on the blanket that covered the loot from Mecca. Instinctively he sensed that some horrible sight was about to be presented to him. His face paled even more. He licked dry lips with a tongue equally dry, and leaned against the table to steady himself. "What have you now to show me, OM'almé?"
"Listen!" the chief commanded sternly. "The Meccans are a people corrupt and accursed. 'Their hearts are black as their skins are white.' They live by fleecing theHujjaj, by making sale and barter of relics, by turning the holy places into marts of trade. All this is well known throughout Islam. Ah, the degenerate breed of the sons of the Prophet!"
"That is true, Master. And what then?"
"Is it not a fact that they could not even safeguard the Kaukab el Durri from the hand of the Great Apostate Sheik? How much less, then, could they protect their other and more sacred things, if some Shiah dog should come to rob them of the things they value?
"Would it not be better that such things should be carried far from danger, to the hidden, inner city? I ask thee this, Rrisa; would it not be better far?"
"And what is the meaning of my master's strange words?" ventured Rrisa, a sort of dazed horror dawning in his eyes. "The other and more sacred things of Islam—are they there under that cloth, O Master?"
"Thou hast said it, Rrisa! Now, behold them!"
With a quick, dramatic gesture, well-calculated to strike at the roots of the superstitious Arab's nature, he flung away the blanket. To Rrisa's horrified gaze appeared the Myzab and the sacred Black Stone.
"Ya Allah!" gulped the orderly, in a choking whisper. His face became a dull gray. His eyes, rimmed with white, stared in terror. His teeth began to chatter; and on his forehead appeared little glistening drops.
"O Master, that is not—."
"Truly, yea! The Golden Waterspout, Rrisa, and the Black Stone itself! I am carrying them to the Very Heavenly City, far in the Iron Mountains! They shall be given to the Great Olema, there, who is more fit to guard and keep them than the Sheriff of Mecca or than his sons Feisal and the two Alis. No harm shall befall them, and—"
"And your hand—the hands of other Feringi who are not my masters—have touched these things?" stammered Rrisa. "O my calamity! O my grief!"
"Thou canst go now, Rrisa," the Master said. "Go, and think well of what I have told thee, and—"
But Rrisa, falling prone to the metal of the cabin floor, facing the Black Stone, gave vent to his feelings and burst into a wild cry of "La Illaha—" and the rest of the immemorial formula.
The Master smiled down at him, quizzical and amused yet still more than a little affected by the terror and devotion of his orderly. Wise, he waited till Rrisa had made the compulsory prayers ofLabbayk, Takbir, andTahiti, as all Moslems must do when coming near the Black Stone. Then, as the orderly's voice suddenly died away, he bent and laid a hand on the quivering Arab's shoulder.
"Come, come, Rrisa," said he, not unkindly. "Be thou not so distressed. Is it not better that these very precious things be kept in greater safety at the Jannati Shahr? Come, Rrisa! Arise!"
The orderly made no move, uttered no sound. The Master dragged him up, held him, peered into his face that had gone quite ashen under its brown.
"Why, Lord! the man has fainted dead away!" exclaimed the Master. He gathered Rrisa in his powerful arms, carried him to his own cabin and laid him in the berth, there; then he bathed his face with water and chafed his hands and throat.
In a few minutes, Rrisa's eyes vaguely opened. He gulped, gasped, made shift to speak a few feeble words.
"Master!" he whispered.
"Well, what dost thou wish?"
"One favor, only!"
"And what is that?"
"Leave me, a little while. I must be alone, all alone with Allah—to think!"
The Master nodded.
"It shall be as thou wishest," said he. "Think, yes. And understand that what I do is best for all of Sunnite Islam! As for the Shiah dogs, what hast thou to trouble about them?"
Saying no more, he withdrew to his own cabin, wrapped the Myzab and the Stone in the blanket and laid them carefully under his berth. Opening his desk-drawer, he assured himself the Pearl Star was still there. This done, he turned again to the map, carefully studied the location of the point Rrisa had designated, and—going to the pilot-house—gave directions for a new course to "Captain Alden," now at the wheel.
This course, he calculated by allowing for wind and lateral drift, would carryNissrdirectly toward the site of the still half-mythical Iron Mountains and the Bara Jannati Shahr.
He now returned to his cabin, locked himself in and—pondering over a few khat leaves—passed the remainder of the afternoon sunk in deep abstraction.
Evening and night still found him in profound thought, while the giant air-liner steadily rushed into the south-east, bearing him and the Legion onward toward dim regions now veiled in purple darkness under strange stars.
At nine o'clock he orderedNissrstopped, and had the body of Dr. Lombardo sent down with six men in the nacelle, for burial. No purpose could be served by keeping the body, and all unnecessary complications had to be dispensed with before the morrow. Lombardo, who had fully atoned for his fault by having given his life in the service of the now depleted Legion, was buried in his service-uniform, in a fairly deep grave on which the Legionaries heaped a great tumulus of sand. The only witnesses were the Arabian Desert stars; the only requiem the droning of the helicopters far above, whereNissrhung with her gleaming lights like other, nearer stars in the dense black sky.
By ten o'clock, the air-liner had resumed her course, leaving still another brave man to his last sleep, alone. The routine of travel settled down again on the ship and its crew of adventurers.
At half-past eleven, the Master issued from his cabin. All alone, and speaking with no man, he took a quarter-hour constitutional up and down the narrow gallery along the side of the fuselage—the gallery on which his cabin window opened. His face, by the vague light of the glows in this gallery, looked pale and worn; but a certain gleam of triumph and proud joy was visible in his dark eyes.
All about him, stretched night unbroken. Far behind, lay vast confusions involving hundreds of millions of human beings violently wrenched from their accustomed routines of faith and prayer, with potential effects beyond all calculation. Ahead lay—what?
"It may be glory and power, wealth past reckoning, incredible splendor," thought the Master, "and it may be ignominy, torture, death. 'Allah knows best and time will show.' But whatever it may be—is it completion? The human heart, alone—can that ever be complete in this world?"
He bent at the rail, gazing far out into the vague emptiness through which the air-liner was pushing.
"Come what may," he murmured, "for tonight, at any rate, it is peace.'It is peace, till the rising of the dawn!'"
In a strange mood, still holding no converse with any man, he returned to the main corridor and went toward his cabin. His way led past the door of "Captain Alden." There he paused a moment, all alone in the corridor. The lights in the ceiling showed a strange look in his eyes. His face softened, as he laid a hand on the metal panels of the door, silently almost caressingly.
To himself he whispered:
"I wonder who she really is? What can her name be—who can she be, and—and—"
He checked himself, impatiently:
"What thoughts are these? What nonsense? Such things are not for me!"
Silently he returned to his cabin, undressed, switched off the light and turned into his berth, under which lay the incalculable treasures of Islam. For a long time he lay there, thinking, wondering, angry with himself for having seemed to give way for a single moment to softer thoughts than those of conquest and adventure.
Gradually the cradling swing, the quivering power of the airship, lulled his fevered spirit. Sleep won upon him, dulled the excitements of the past twenty-four hours, sank him into oblivion. His deep, regular breathing sounded in the gloom of the cabin that contained the Great Pearl Star, the Myzab, the sacred Black Stone of infinite veneration.
An hour he slept. On, on roaredNissr, swaying, rising, falling a little as she hurled herself through the Arabian night toward the unknown Bara Jannati Shahr, hidden behind the Iron Mountains of mystery as yet unseen by any unbelieving eye.
Peace, all seemed peace, for one dark hour.
But as the hour ended, a shadow fell along the narrow gallery outside the cabin window. A silent shadow it was, that crept, paused, came on again. And now in the dark, had there been any eye to see, the shadow would have been identified as a barefoot man, lithe, alert, moving silently forward with the soundless stealth of an Arab versed in the art ofasar, or man-stalking.
To the Master's window this shadow crept, a half-invisible thing in the gloom. It paused there, listening to the deep, regular breathing within. Then a lean, brown hand was laid on the sill. It still seemed to hesitate.
Something gleamed vaguely in that hand—a crookedjambiyeh, needle-sharp at the point, keen-edged and balanced for the stroke that silently slays.
Motionless, unbreathing even, the shadow waited a long minute. Then all at once over the sill it writhed, quick, lithe as a starved panther.
Dagger in hand, the shadow slid to the berth where lay the Master of the Legionaries. There Rrisa paused, listening to the slow respiration of the White Sheik with whom he had shared the inviolable salt, to whom he owed life itself.
Up, in the gloom, came the dagger-blade.
Over the unconscious Master it poised, keen, cold, avenging in the dark of the cabin where lay the three supreme treasures of all Islam.
The upraised blade, poised for swift murder, did not descend. With a groan from the heart's core, Rrisa let fall his trembling hand, as he recoiled toward the vague patch of starlight that marked the cabin window.
"Bismillah!" he whispered hoarsely. "I cannot! This is my sheik—'and thrice cursed is the hand that slays the sheik.' I cannot kill him!"
For a moment he remained there, pondering. Swift, passionate thoughts surged through his brain, which burned with fever. In Rrisa's fighting-blood the supreme battle of his whole existence was aflame—duty of annihilating the violator of his Faith combating duty of loyalty absolute to one whose salt he had eaten, to one who had preserved his life.
So, in the dark he stood there, a shadow among shadows. He peered about with white-rimmed eyes, striving to discover where now the Myzab and the sacred Black Stone might be. The dim bulk of the blanket under the berth came to his senses. He knelt, touched the blanket, felt the hard solidity within.
Torn with anguish of a great conflict, he pondered, smearing the sweat of agony from his hard-wrinkled forehead. Better was it to fling these holy things from the cabin window, out into the night? Better the certainty that the desert sands, far below, would inevitably drift over them, forever burying them from the sight of his people; or better the chance that the Master, after all, really intended to deliver them back into Moslem hands at Bara Jannati Shahr?
"Allah, oh, guide thy servant now!" the orderly prayed with trembling lips. "Allah, show thou me the way!"
The Master, stirring in his sleep, sighed deeply and let his right hand fall outside the berth. Rrisa, fearful of imminent discovery, made up his mind with simple directness. He salaamed in silence, all but brushing the Master's hand with his lips.
"Wa'salem!" (Farewell!) he breathed. Then he got up, turned, laid his dagger on the table and slid out through the window as soundlessly as he had come. He crossed the marrow gallery in the gloom, and mounted the rail beyond which yawned black vacancy.
For a moment he stayed there, peering down first at the impenetrable abysses below, then up at the unmoved stars above. The ghostly aura of light in the gallery showed his face wan, deep-graven with lines, agonized, ennobled by strong decisions of self-sacrifice.
"Thou, Allah," he whispered, "dost know life cannot be for both my Master and thy servant, after what thy servant hath seen. I offer thee my life for his! Thou wilt judge aright, for thou knowest the hearts of men and wilt wrong no man by the weight of a grain of sand. Thou art easy to be reconciled, and merciful! There is no God but Allah, and M'hámed is his Prophet!"
With no further word, he leaped.
Just a fraction of a second, a dim-whirling object plummeted into space. It vanished.
As best he understood, Rrisa had solved his problem and had paid his score.
The Master wakened early, with the late May sun already Slanting in from far, dun and orange desert-levels, gilding the metal walls of his cabin. For a few moments he lay there, half dreamily listening to the deep bass hum of the propellers, the slight give and play of the air-liner as she shuddered under the powerful drive of her Norcross-Brail engines.
His thoughts first dwelt a little on yesterday's battle and on the wondrous treasure now in his hands. Then they touched the approaching campaign beyond the Iron Mountains in regions never yet seen by any white man's eye, and for a while enveloped some of the potentialities of that campaign.
But "Captain Alden" recurring to his mind, drove away such stern imaginings. The Master's lips smiled, a little; his black eyes softened, and for a moment his face assumed something that might almost have made it akin to those of men who feel the natural passions of the heart. Never before, in all his stern, hard life, had the Master's expression been quite as now.
"Who can she be, I wonder?" he mused. "A woman like that, possessed of that extraordinary beauty; a woman with education, languages, medical skill; a woman with courage, loyalty, and devotion beyond compare, and with all the ardor for service and adventure that any man could have—who can she be? And—damn it, now! Who am I, to be thinking of such nonsense, after all?"
His eyes fell on the table. Something lay there, agleam with the sunlight flicking blood-red spots from a polished metal surface. What could this thing be? Surely, it had not lain there, the night before.
The Master wrinkled heavy brows, focussing his sight on this metal object. Puzzled, not yet able to make it out clearly, he raised himself on his elbow and looked with close attention at the mysterious object.
Suddenly he leaped from the berth, strode to the table and caught up—Rrisa's dagger.
"Allah! What's this?" he exclaimed. "Rrisa—he's been here—and with a knife?—"
For a second or two he stood there, staring at thejambiyehin his grip. His powerful frame tautened; his thick, corded neck swelled with the intensity of his emotion as his head went forward, staring. His jaw set hard. Then with a kind of half-comprehension, he turned quickly toward the window.
Yes, there were traces on the sill, that could not be mistaken. The Master's keen eyes detected them, under the morning sun. He stepped to his desk, dropped the dagger into a drawer, and pressed the button for his orderly.
No one appeared. The Master rang again. Quite in vain. With more precipitation than was customary with him, he dressed and went to Rrisa's cabin.
Its emptiness confirmed his suspicions. Returning along the outer gallery, a little pale, he reached the railing opposite his own window. Here a scratch on the metal drew his attention. Closely he scrutinized this scratch. A hint of whitish metal told the tale—metal the Master recognized as having been abraded from a ring the Master himself had given him; a ring of aluminum alloy, fashioned from part of a Turkish grenade at Gallipoli.
The Master's face contracted painfully. In his mind he could reconstitute the scene—Rrisa's hands gripping the rail, his climb over it, his leap. For a moment the Master stood there with blank eyes, peering out over the burning, tawny desolation of the great sand-barrens that stretched away, away, to boundless immensity.
"Yes, he is surely gone," he whispered. "Shal'lah! Razi Allahu anhu!" (It is Allah's will; may Allah be satisfied with him!) "What would I not give to have him back!"
The trilling of his cabin phone startled him to attention. He entered, took the receiver and heard Leclair's voice from the pilot-house:
"Clouds on the horizon, my Captain. And I think there is a mountain range coming in sight. Would you care to look?"
The Master, very grim and silent, went into the pilot-house. He had decided to make no mention of what had happened. The suicide must pass as an accident. He himself must seem to have no knowledge of it. Morale forbade the admission either of treachery or self-destruction, for any member of the Legion.
The sight of vague, pearl-gray clouds on the far south-east horizon, and of a dim, violet line of peaks notched across the heat-quivering sky in remotest distances, struck him like a blow in the face. Clouds must mean moisture; some inner, watered plain wholly foreign to the general character of the Arabian Peninsula. And the peaks must be the Iron Mountains that Rrisa had told him about. They seemed to rebuff him, to be pointing fingers of accusation at him. Had it not been for his insistence—
"But that is all nonsense!" he tried to assure himself, as he took his binoculars from the rack and sighted at the forbidding, mysterious range. "Am I responsible for a Moslem's superstitions, or his fanatic irrationality?"
The Master's own narrow escape from death disturbed him not at all. He hardly even thought of it. All he strove for, now, was to exculpate himself for Rrisa's death. But this he could not do.
A sense of blood-guiltiness clung about him like a garment—the first that he had felt on this expedition. His soul, unemotional, practical, hard, was at last touched and wounded by the realization that Rrisa, pushed beyond all limits of endurance, had chosen death rather than inflict it on his sheik. And the thought that the faithful orderly's body was now lying on the flaming sands, hundreds of miles away—that it was already a prey to jackals, kites, and buzzards—sickened his shuddering heart and filled him with remorse.
"Allah send a storm of sand—jinneeto bury the poor chap, that's all I can wish now!" he pondered, as he studied the strange yellowish and orange tints in utmost horizon distances. The air, over the shimmering peaks, seemed of a different quality from that elsewhere. To north, to west, the desert rim of the world veiled itself in magic blue, mysteriously dim. But there, it glowed in golden hues. What, thought the Master, might be the meaning of all this?
The Master had no time for speculation. The urgent problem of locating the Bara Jannati Shahr, beyond that inhospitable sierra, banished thoughts of all else. He inspected his charts, together with the air-liner's record of course and position. He slightly corrected the direction of flight. "Captain Alden" was already in the pilot-house, with Leclair. The Master summoned Bohannan tersely, and briefly instructed him:
"You understand, of course, that we may now be facing perils beyond any yet encountered. We have already upset all Islam, and changed thekiblah—the direction of prayer—for more than two hundred million human beings. The 'fronting-place' is now aboardNissr."[1]
[Footnote 1: So long as the Black Stone was at the Ka'aba, this building was the only spot in the world where thekiblahwas circular, that is, where Moslems could pray all around it. The Legion's theft of the stone had completely dislocated all the most important beliefs and customs of Islam.]
"The most intense animosity of religious fanaticism will pursue us. If the news of our exploit has, in any unaccountable way such as the Arabs know how to employ, reached Jannati Shahr, we are in for a battle royal. If not, we still have a chance to use diplomacy. A few hours now will determine the issue.
"We are approaching what will probably be the final goal of this expedition; a city beyond unknown mountains; a city that no white man has ever yet seen and that few have even heard of. What the conditions will be there no one can tell; but—"
"Not even Rrisa?" put in the major. "Faith, now's the time, if ever, to consult that lad!"
"Correct, for once," assented the Master. With purpose to deceive, he phoned for Rrisa. No answer coming, he got Simonds on the wire and ordered him to find the orderly. The investigation thus started would, he knew, soon bring out the fact of the orderly's disappearance. This line of action fairly started, he went on formulating his plans:
"Major, look well to your guns. For once you may have a chance to use them. I have put my various pieces of apparatus in good condition, and have improvised some new features. In addition, we have the second kappa-bomb."
"But I trust we shall not be driven to a fight. If diplomacy can win, there will be no bloodshed. Otherwise, our only limit will be the total destruction of these unknown people, or our own annihilation. It's a case, now, of win what we are after, or end everything right there, beyond those mountains!"
He ascended to the upper port gallery, and concentrated himself on observation. A certain change in the desert was becoming noticeable, as the air-liner flung herself at high speed into the south-east. At times there must be a little rainfall here, or else some hidden source of water, for a scrub, of dwarf acacia, of camel-grass, and tamarisk had begun to show.
But as the black, naked mountains drew near, this gave place to flats white with salt, to jagged upcroppings of dull, yellowish rock—how little they then suspected its true nature!—and to detached cliffs sharp as a wolf's teeth, with strata of greenish schist.
It was at 9:30 a.m. of May 28, thatNissrtilted her planes and soared abruptly over the first crags of the Iron Mountains. At a height of forty-five hundred feet she sped above them, the heat of their sun-baked blackness radiating up against her wings and body. No more terrible desolation could be imagined than this rock fortress, split with chasms and unsounded gorges, where here and there more of the yellow outcrops showed. No life appeared, not even vultures. For more than an hour,Nissr'sshadow leaped across this utter solitude of death.
The Master summoned Leclair, Bohannan, and "Captain Alden," and for some time gave them careful instructions which none but they were allowed to hear.
All this time, the strange, yellowish sheen against the heavens was increasing. What might lie beyond the mountains—who could tell? But that its nature was wholly different from anything any white man ever had beheld seemed obvious.
Quite suddenly, at 10:05, the Master's binoculars detected a break far to southward, in the craggy wall of rock. He orderedNissr'sbeak turned directly thither. Swiftly the Eagle of the Sky held her course, speeding like an arrow. And now a vast, open plain was seen to be spreading away, away to indeterminable distances; a plain the further limits of which veiled themselves in bister and dull ocher vapors.
The aureate shimmer on the sky kept steadily increasing, from a point somewhat to the left ofNissr'sline of flight. What this might be, none could guess. None save the Master. More agitated than any had ever seen him, he stood there at the rail, lips tight, hands clutching the binoculars at his eyes.
"By Allah!" the major heard him mutter. "It can't be true—the thingI've heard. Only a fable, surely! And yet—"
Now the vast plain was coming clearly to view. It appeared fully under cultivation with patches of greenery that denoted gardens, palm-groves, fruit-orchards; all signs of a well-watered region here at the center of the world's most appalling desert.
This in itself was a thing of astonishment. But it faded to insignificance as all at once a far, dazzling sheen burst on the watchers. Up against the sky a wondrous, yellow blaze seemed to be burning. Enormously far away as it still was, it filled the heart of every observer with a strange, quick thrill of wonder, of hope. Something of wild exultation seemed to leap through the Legionaries' veins, at sight of that strange fire.
Leclair glanced at the Master. The dark, taciturn man, for all his self-control, had set teeth into his lip till the blood was all but starting.
On, on swoopedNissr.Now the plain was widening. Now, off at the left, behind the shimmer of the wondrous sight that seemed a fantastic city of dreams, long black cliffs had become visible—surely some spur of the Iron Mountains, making to southward at the eastern edge of the plain. This line of crags faded, in remote distance, into the brown vapors that ringed the mystic horizon.
"The city?" asked Bohannan. "That—can't be the city, can it, now? Faith, if itis, we're too late. Damn me, sir, but the whole infernal place is on fire! Just our rotten luck, eh?"
The Master made no reply. As if he would devour the place with his eyes, he was leaning over the rail, boring through those powerful glasses at the dazzle and bright sheen of the wonder-city now every moment becoming more clearly visible.
That it was in truth a city could no longer be doubted. Long walls came to view, pierced by gates with fantastic arches. Domes rose to heaven. Delicate minarets, carved into a fretwork of amazing fineness, pointed their fingers at the yellow shimmering sky. The contrast of that brilliance, with the soft green gardens and feathery palm-groves before, the grim black cliffs behind, filled the Legionaries with a kind of silent awe.
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, asNissrhurled 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. I too know the story of the BaraJannati Shahr—but I have always thought it fable. Now, now—."
"Faith!" interrupted the major, with sudden excitement. He smote the rail a blow with an agitated fist. "If that doesn't look like gold, I'm a—."
"Gold?" burst out the Master, unable longer to control himself. "Of course it's gold! And we—are the first white men in all the world to look on it—the Golden City of Jannati Shahr!"
Stupefaction overcame the Flying Legion. The sight of this perfectly incredible city, which even yet—despite its obvious character—they could not believe as reality, for a little while deprived all the observers of coherent thought.
Like men in a daze, they stood watching the far-distant mass of walls, buildings, towers, battlements all agleam with the unmistakable sheen of pure metal. The human mind, confronted by such a phenomenon, fails to react, and for a while lies inert, stunned, prostrate.
"Gold?" stammered the major, and fell to gnawing his mustache, as he stared at the incredible sight. "By God—gold? Sure, it can't bethat!"
"It not only can be, but is!" the Master answered. "The old legend is coming true, that's all. Have you no eyes in your head, Major? If that shine isn't the shine of gold, what is it?"
"Yes, but the thing's impossible, sir!" cried Bohannan. "Why, man alive! If that's gold, the whole of Arabia would be here after it! There'd be caravans, miners, swarms of—"
"It's obvious you know nothing of Moslem severity or superstition," the Master interrupted. "There is no Mohammedan beggar, even starving, who would touch a grain of that metal. Not even if it were given him. There's not one would carry an ounce away from the Iron Mountains. This whole region is under the ban of a most terrifictabu, that loads unthinkable curses on any human being who removes a single atom of any metal from it!"
"Ah, that's it, eh?"
"Yes, that's very much it! And what is more, Major, no word of this ever gets out to the white races—or hardly any. Nothing more than vague rumors that barely amount to fairy stories. Even though I forced Rrisa to tell me the location of this city, he wouldn't mention its being gold, and I knew too much to ask him or try to make him. Why, he'd have been torn to bits before he'd have betrayedthatInner Secret. So now you understand!"
"I see, I see," the major answered, mechanically. It was plain, however, that his mind had received a shock from which it had not yet fully recovered. He remained staring and blinking, first chewing at his mustache and then tugging it with blunt, trembling fingers. Now and then he shook his head, like a man just waking from a dream and trying to make himself realize that he is indeed awake.
The others, some to a greater degree, some to a less, shared the major's perturbation. A daze, a numb stupefaction had fallen on them. The Master, however, soon recalled them to activity. Not much time now remained beforeNissrmust make her landing on the plain near the Golden City. None was to be wasted.
Vigorous orders set the Legionaries to work. The machine-guns were loaded and fully manned; several pieces of apparatus that the Master had been perfecting in his cabin were brought into the lower gallery; everyone was commanded to smarten his personal appearance. The psychology of the Oriental was such, well the Master knew, that the impression the Legion should make upon the people of this wonder-city could not fail to be of the very highest importance.
The plain over whichNissrwas now sweeping, with the black mountains left far behind, seemed a fairyland of beauty compared with the desolation of the Central Arabian Desert.
"This is surely a fitting spot for the exact geometrical center of Islam," the Master said to Leclair, as they stood looking down. "My measurements show this secret valley to be that center. Mecca, of course, has only been a blind, to keep the world from knowing anything about this, the true heart of the Faith. The Meccans have been usurping the Black Stone, all these centuries, and these Jannati Shahr people have submitted because any conflict would have betrayed their existence to the world. That is my theory. Good, eh?"
"Excellent!" the lieutenant replied. "There must be millions ofMohammedans, themselves, who have hardly learned of this valley.Certainly, very few from the outside world ever have been able tocross the Empty Abodes, and reach it.
"These people here evidently represent a far higher culture than any other Moslems ever known. Who ever saw a finer city—even not considering its material—or more wonderful cultivation of land?"
His eyes wandered out over the plain, which lost itself to sight in the remote south. Roads in various directions, with here and there a few white dromedaries bearing bright-coloredshugdufs(litters), showed there was travel to some other inhabited spots inside the forbidding mountain girdle.
Here, there, herds of antelope and flocks of sheep were grazing on broad meadows, through which trickled sparkling threads of water, half glimpsed among feathery-tufted date-palms. Plantations of fig and pomegranate, lime, apricot, and orange trees, with other fruits not recognized, slid beneath the giant liner as she slowed her pace. And broad fields of wheat, barley, tobacco, and sugar-cane showed that the people of the city had no fear of any lack.
Birds were here—pelicans, cranes, and water-fowl along the brooks and gleaming pools; swift little yellow birds with crownlike crests; doves, falcons, and hawks of unknown species. Here was life abundant, after the death of the Empty Abodes. Here was rich color; here arose a softly perfumed air, balmy, incensed as with strange aromatics. Here was peace—eternalkayf—blessed rest—here indeed lay a scene that gave full explanation of the ancient name "Arabia Felix."
And at the left, dominating all this beauty, shone and glimmered in the ardent sun the wondrous Golden City of Jannati Shahr.
Nissrhad already begun to slant to lower levels. Now at no more than twenty-five hundred feet, with greatly reduced speed, she was drifting down the valley toward the city, the details of which were every moment becoming more apparent. Its size, the wondering Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Its frontage along the black mountains could not have been less than two and a half miles; and, as it seemed to lose itself up a defile in those crags, no way at present existed of judging its depth.
The general appearance was that of stern simplicity. A long wall of gleaming yellow bounded it, from north to south; this wall being pierced by seven gates, each flanked by minarets. Behind the wall, terraces arose, withmesjid(temple) domes, innumerable houses, and some larger buildings of unknown purpose.
The powerful glasses onNissrshowed fretwork carving everywhere; but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression of almost primitive severity. No touch of modernity affected it. Everything appeared immensely archaic.
"The Jerusalem of Solomon's day," thought the Master, "must have looked like that—barring only that this is solid gold."
Out from the city, a little less than two-thirds of the way down, issued a rather considerable stream. It seemed to come from under the wall fronting the plain. Its course, straight rather than sinuous, lay toward the south-west, and was marked by long lines of giant date-palms and pale-stemmed eucalyptus trees, till it lost itself in brown distances.
"Faith, but that looks like lotus-eating, all right," said the major, notching up his cartridge-belt another hole. "That looks like 'A book of verses underneath the bough,' with Fatima or Lalla Rookh, or the like, eh?" He drew at a cigarette, and smiled with sweet visionings of Celtic exuberance. "A golden city! Lord!"
"You'll do no dallying 'with Amaryllis in the shade,' inthisvalley!" the Master flung at him. "Nor any lotus-eating, either. To your stations, men! Wake up! Forget all about this gold, now—remember my orders! That's all you've got to do. The gold will take care of itself, later. For now, there's stern work ahead!"
The Legionaries assumed their posts, ready for whatever attack might come. They still moved like men in a trance. Whether they could quite even realize the true character of Jannati Shahr seemed doubtful. The Inca's room of gold stunned Pizarro and his men. How much more, then, must a whole city of gold numb any concrete thought?
Down, still down sankNissr, now beginning to circle in broad, descending spirals, seeking where she might land. The roar of the propellers lessened; and at the same time, the increasing hum of the helicopters made itself heard, counterbalancing the loss of lifting power of the planes, yet gradually letting the air-liner sink. Came, too, a sighing hiss of the air-intakes as the vacuum-floats filled.
High noon was now at hand. The sun burned, a copper ball, in the very forehead of a turquoise sky. A light breeze, lazying over the plain, stirred the fronded tufts of the date-palms' thick plantations. Beyond a massy grove, stretching for nearly two miles out from the northernmost gate of the city, a grassy level quite like a parade-ground invited the liner to rest.
As she sank still lower, the Master's glass again picked up the city wall and ran along it. Here, there, white dots were visible; human figures, surely—the figures of men in snowy burnouses, on the ramparts of heavy metal.
The Master smiled, and nodded.
"My men think they are surprised," he mused. "What will these Jannati Shahr men think, when I have opened my little box of tricks and shown them what's inside?"
He pressed a button on the rail. A bell trilled in the pilot-house; another in the engine-room. The Norcross-Brails died to inactivity.
With a last long swoop, an abandonment of all the furious energies that for so long had been hurling her over burning sand and black crag,Nissrslanted to the grassy sward. A sudden, furious hissing burst out beneath her, as the compressed-air valves were thrown and the air-cushions formed beneath her thousands of spiracles. Then, with hardly a shudder, easily as a tired gull slips down into the quiet of a still lagoon, the vast air-liner took earth.
She slid two hundred yards on her air-cushions, over the close-cropped turf, slowed, came to rest there fronting the northern gate of Bara Jannati Shahr. And the shimmer of those golden walls, one mile to east of her, painted her all a strangely luminous yellow.
Journey's end, at last!
Without delay, everything was put in complete readiness for whatever eventualities might develop. If these strange people meant peace and wanted it, the Legion would give them peace. If war, then by no means was the Legion to be unprepared.
The gangplank was put down from the starboard port in the lower gallery. The helicopters were cut off. Nothing was left running but one engine, at half-speed, to furnish current for the apparatus the Master had decided to use in dealing with the Jannati Shahr folk in case of need—some of this having been evolved on the run from Mecca.
Four hampers were carried down the gangplank and set on the grass, about fifty feet ahead ofNissr'shuge beak, that towered in air over the men like an eagle over sparrows. These hampers contained the chosen apparatus. Wires were attached, and run back to the ship, and proper connections made at once by Leclair and Menendez, under the Master's instructions.
The machine-guns were dismounted and taken "ashore," to borrow a nautical phrase. These were set up in strategic positions before the liner, and full supplies of ammunition both blank and ball were served to them.
About a quarter of a mile to north ofNissr'sposition, one of the small watercourses or irrigating ditches that cut the plain glimmered through a grove of Sayhani dates.[1] To this ditch the Master sent two men in search of the largest stone they could find there. When they returned with a rock some foot in diameter, he ordered it placed half-way betweenNissrand the palm-grove.
[Footnote 1: Sayhani (the Crier), so called because one of these palms is fabled to have cried aloud in salutation to Mohammed, when the Prophet happened to walk beneath it.]
These preparations made, the Master lined up his Legionaries for inspection and final instructions. Standing there in military array, fully armed, they made rather a formidable body of fighters despite their paucity of numbers. Courage, eagerness, and joy—still unalloyed by all the fatigues and perils of the long trek after adventure—showed on every face. Even through the eyeholes of "Captain Alden's" mask, daring exultation glimmered.
The dead, left behind, could not now depress the Legionaries' spirits. To be on solid earth again, in this wonderland with the Golden City fronting them, quickened every man's pulse.
What though they were but a handful, ringed round by grim, jagged mountains, beyond which lay hundreds of leagues of burning sand? What though an unknown people of great numbers already had begun to stir in that vast hive of gold? What though all of Islam, which had already learned of the sacrilege the accursed Feringí had wrought, was lusting their blood? Nothing of this mattered. It was enough for the Legionaries that adventure still beckoned onward, ever on!
The Master, standing there before them, called the roll. We should listen, by way of knowing just how the Legion was now composed. It consisted of the following: Adams, "Captain Alden," Bohannan, Bristol, Brodeur, Cracowicz, Emilio, Enemark, Frazíer, Grison, Janina, Lebon, Leclair, L'Heureux, Manderson, Menendez, Prisrend, Rennes, Seres, Simonds, Wallace. All the wounded had recovered sufficiently to be of some service. The dead were: Travers, who had died on the passage of the Atlantic; Auchincloss and Gorlitz, burned to death; Kloof, Daimamoto, Beziers and Sheffield, killed by the Beni Harb; Lombardo, killed by the Meccans; Rrisa, suicide.
In addition to these, we must not forget the Sheik Abd el Rahman, still locked a prisoner in the cabin that for some days had been his swift-flying prison-cell of torment.
The Master had just finished checking his roster, when quite without any preliminary disturbance a crackle of rifle-fire began spattering from the city. And all at once, out of the gate oppositeNissr, appeared a white-whirling swarm of figures, at the same time that a green banner, bearing a star and crescent, broke out from the highest minaret.
The figures issuing in a dense mass from the gate were horsemen, all; and they were riding full drive,ventre à terre. Out into the plain they debouched, with robes flying, with a green banner, steel flashing, and over all, a great and continual volleying of rifle-fire.
This horde of rushing cavaliers must have numbered between five and six hundred; and a fine sight they made as the Master got his binoculars on them. Here, there, a bit of lively color stood out vividly against the prevailing snowy white of the mass; but for the most part, horses and men alike came rushing down like a drive of furious snow across that wondrous green slope between the palm-groves and the city wall.
As they drew near, the snapping of burnouses and cherchias in the wind, the puffs of powder-smoke, the glint of brandished arms grew clearer; and now, too, the muffled sound of kettle-drums rolled down-breeze, in booming counterpoint to the sharp staccato of the rifles.
Furious as an army ofjinneewith wild cries, screams, howls, as they stood in their stirrups and discharged their weapons toward the sky, the horsemen of Jannati Shahr drove down upon the little group of Legionaries.
The major loosened his revolver in its holster. Others did the same. At the machine-guns, the gunners settled themselves, waiting the Master's word of command to mow into the white foam of that insurging wave—a wave of frantic riders and of lathering Nedj horses, the thunder of whose hoofs moment by moment welled up into a heart-breaking chorus of power.
"Damn it all, sir!" the major exclaimed. "When are you going to rip into them? They'll be on us, in three minutes—in two! Give 'em Hell, before it's too late! Stop 'em!"
Leclair smiled dryly behind his lean hand, as the Master emphatically shook a head in negation.
"No, Major," he said. "No machine-guns yet. You and your eternal machine-guns are sometimes a weariness to the flesh." He raised his voice, above the tumult of the approaching storm of men and horses. "I suppose you've never even heard of theLa'ab el Barut, the powder-play of the Arabs? They are greeting us with their greatest display of ceremony—and you talk about machine-guns!"
He turned, lifted his hand and called to the gunners:
"No mistakes now, men! No accidents! The first man that pulls a trigger at these people, I'll shoot down with my own hand!"
The lieutenant touched the Master's arm.
"We must give them a return salute, my Captain," he said in Arabic. "To omit that would be a grave breach of the laws of host and guest—almost as bad as violating the salt!"
The Master nodded.
"That is quite true, Lieutenant," he answered. "Thank you for reminding me!"
Once more he turned to the gunners.
"Load with blanks," he commanded, "and aim at an elevation of forty-five degrees. Hold your fire till I give the word!"
"It is well,Effendi!" approved the lieutenant, his eyes gleaming with Gallic enthusiasm. "These are no People of the Black Tents, no Beni Harb, nor thieving Meccans. These are men of the very ancient, true Arabic blood—and we must honor them!"
Already the rushing powder-play was within a few hundred yards.The roar of hoofs, the smashing volleys of fire, raging of thekettle-drums, wild-echoing yells of the white company deafened theLegionaries' ears.
What a sight that was—archaic chivalry in all the loose-robed flight and flashing magnificence of rushing pride! Not one, not even the least imaginative of the Legion, but felt his skin crawl, felt his blood thrill, with stirrings of old romance at sight of this strange, exalting spectacle!
In the van, an ancient horseman with bright colors in his robe was riding hardest of all, erect in his high-horned saddle, reins held loose in a master-hand, gold-mounted rifle with enormously long barrel flourished on high.
Tall old chief and slim white horse of purest barb breed seemed almost one creature. Instinctively the Master's service-cap came off, at sight of him. The lieutenant's did the same. Both men stepped forward, cap over heart. These two, if no others, understood the soul of Arabia.
Suddenly the old Sheik uttered a cry. An instant change came over the rushing horde. With one final volley, silence fell. The kettle-drums ceased their booming. Every rider leaned far back in his pearl-inlaid, jewel-crusted saddle, reining in his horse.
And in a moment, as innumerable unshod hoofs dug the heavy turf, all that thundering host—which but a second before had seemed inevitably bound to trample down the Legion under a hurricane of white-lathered horses and frenzied, long-robed men—came to a dead halt of silence and immobility.
It was as if some magician's wand, touching the crest of an inbreaking storm-wave, had instantaneously frozen it, white-slavering foam and all, to motionless rigidity.
Ahead of all, standing erect and proud in his arabesque stirrups, with the green banner floating overhead, the chief of this whole marvelous band was stretching out the hand of salaam.
"Fire!" cried the Master.
The crash of six machine-guns clattered into a chattering tumult, muzzles pointed high over the heads of the Jannati Shahr men. Up into the still, hot air jetted vicious spurts of flame.
The Legion's answer lasted but a minute. As the trays of blanks became empty, the tumult ceased.
Silence fell, strangely heavy after all that uproar. This silence lengthened impressively, with the massed horsemen on one side, the Legionaries on the other. Between them stretched a clear green space of turf. Behind loomed the vast bulk ofNissr, scarred, battle-worn, but powerful. Away in the distance, the glinting golden walls shimmered across the plain; and over all the Arabian sun glowed down as if a-wonder at this scene surpassing strange.
Forward stepped the Master, with a word to Leclair to follow him but to stand a little in the rear. The old Sheik dismounted; and followed by another graybeard, likewise advanced. When the distance was but about eight feet between them, both halted. Silence continued, broken only by the dull drone of one engine still running on board the ship, by the creaking of saddle-leather, the whinny of a barb.
Lithe, powerful, alert, with his cap held over his heart, the Master stood there peering from under his thick, dark brows at the aged Sheik. A lean-faced old man the Sheik was, heavily bearded with white, his brows snowy, his eyes a hawk's, and the fine aquilinity of his nose the hallmark of pure Arab blood.
Hard as iron he looked, gravely observing, unabashed in face of these white strangers and of this mysterious flying house. The very spirit of the Arabian sun seemed to have been caught in his gleaming eyes, to glitter there, to reflect its pride, its ardor. He reminded one of a falcon, untamed, untamable. And his dress, its colors distinguishing him from the mass of his followers, still further proclaimed the rank he occupied.
His cherchia of jade-green silk was bound with aukal, or fillet of camel's-hair; his burnous, also silk, showed tenderest shades of lavender and rose. Under its open folds could be seen a violet jacket with buttons of filigree ivory. He had handed his gun to the man behind him, and now was unarmed save for agadaymi, or semicircular knife, thrust into his silk sash of crimson, with frayed edges.
A leather bandolier, wonderfully tooled and filled with cartridges, passed over his right shoulder to his left hip. His feet, high-arched and fine of line, were naked save for silk-embroideredbabooshes.
The Master realized, as he gazed on this extraordinary old man, whose dignity was such that even the bizarremélangeof colors could not detract from it, that he was beholding a very different type of Arab from any he yet had come in contact with.
The aged Sheik salaamed. The Master returned the salutation, then covered himself and saluted smartly. In a deep, grave voice the old man said:
"A'hla wasá'halan!" (Be ye welcome!)
"Bikum!" (I give thee thanks!) replied the Master.
"In Allah's name, who are ye?"
"Franks," the Master said, vastly relieved at this unexpected amity.Strange contrast with the violent hostility heretofore experienced!What might it mean? What might be hidden beneath this quiet surface?
Relief and anxiety mingled in the Master's mind. If treachery were intended, in just this manner would it speak.
"Men of Feringistan?" asked the aged Sheik. "And what do ye here?"
"We be fighting-men, all," replied the Master. He had already noted, with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was nobility of blood, breed, speech, if anywhere!
"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. "We have traveled far, from the Lands of the Books. 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?"'
The old man pondered a moment, then fell to stroking his beard. The act was friendly, and of good portent. He murmured:
"I see, O Frank, that thou hast read the Strong Book. Thou dost know our law, even though thou be from Feringistan. What is thy name?"
"Men know me only as The Master. And thine?"
"Bara Miyan(The Great Sir), nothing more."
"Dost thou wish us well?" the Master put a leading question.
"Kull'am antum bil khair!" (May ye be well, every year!) said the old Sheik. The Master sensed a huge relief. Undoubtedly—hard as this was to understand, and much as it contradicted Rrisa's prediction—the attitude of these Jannati Shahr folk was friendly. Unless, indeed, all this meant ambush. But to look into those grave, deep eyes, to see that furrowed countenance of noble, straight-forward uprightness, seemed to negative any such suspicion.
"We have come to bring ye wondrous gifts," the Master volunteered, wanting to strike while the iron was hot.
"That is well," assented Bara Miyan. "But never before have the Franks come to this center of the Empty Abodes."
"Even Allah had to say 'Be!' before anything was!" (i.e., there must be a first time for everything).
This answer, pat from a favorite verse of the Koran, greatly pleasedBara Miyan. He smiled gravely, and nodded.
"Allah made all men," he affirmed. "Mayhap the Franks and we be brothers. Have ye come by way of Mecca?"
"Yea. And sorry brotherhood did the Mecca men offer us, O Sheik! So, too, the men of Beni Harb. Together, they slew five of us. But we be fighting-men, Bara Miyan. We took a great vengeance. All that tribe of Beni Harb we brushed with the wing of Azraël, save only the Great Apostate. And from the men of the 'Navel of the World'—Mecca—we exacted greater tribute than even death!"
The Master's voice held a quiet menace that by no means escaped Bara Miyan. Level-eyed, he gazed at the white man. Then he advanced two paces, and in a low voice demanded:
"Abd el Rahman still lives?"
"He lives, Bara Miyan."
"Where is the Great Apostate?"
"In our flying house, a prisoner."
"Bismillah! Deliver him unto me, and thy people and mine shall be as brothers!"
"First let us share the salt!"
Speaking, the Master slid his hand into the same pocket that contained the Great Pearl Star, and took out a small bag of salt. This he opened, and held out. Bara Miyan likewise felt in a recess of his many-hued burnous. For a moment he hesitated as if about to bring out something. But he only shook his head.
"The salt—not yet, O White Sheik!" said he.
"We have brought thy people precious gifts," began the Master, again. Behind him he heard an impatient whisper—the major's voice, quivering with eagerness:
"Ask him if this place is really all gold! Faith, if I could only talk their lingo! Ask him!"
"I shall place you under arrest, if you interfere again," the Master retorted, without turning round.
"What saith the White Sheik?" asked Bara Miyan, hearing the strange words of a language his ears never before had listened to.
"Only prayer in my own tongue, Bara Miyan. A prayer that thine and mine may becomeakhawat"[1]
[Footnote 1: Friends bound by an oath to an offensive and defensive alliance.]
"Deliver unto me Abd el Rahman, and let thineimams(priests) work stronger magic than mine," said the old Sheik with great deliberation, "and I will accept thy gifts and we will say: 'Nahnu malihin!' (We have eaten salt together!) And I will make thee gifts greater than thy gifts to me, O White Sheik. Then thou and thine can fly away to thine own country, and bear witness that there be Arabs who do not love to slay the Feringi, but count all men as brethren.
"But if thou wilt not deliver Abd el Rahman to me, or test thy magic against my magic, then depart now, in peace, before the setting of the sun. I have spoken!"
"Take him at his word, my Captain!" murmured Leclair. "We can get no better terms. Even these are a miracle!"
"My opinion, exactly," replied the Master, still facing Bara-Miyan, who had now stepped back a few paces and was flanked by two huge Arabs, in robes hardly less chromatic, who had silently advanced.
"I accept," decided the Master. He turned, ordered Enemark and L'Heureux to fetch out the Apostate, and then remained quietly waiting. Silence fell on both sides, for a few minutes. The Arabs, for the most part, remained staring atNissr, to them no doubt the greatest miracle imaginable. Still, minds trained to believe in the magic carpet of Sulayman and quite virgin of any knowledge of machinery, could easily account for the airship's flying by means ofjinneeconcealed in its entrails.
As for the Legionaries, their attention was divided between the strange white host, still sitting astride those high-necked, slim-barreled Nedj horses, and the luring glimmer of the golden walls. In a few minutes, however, all attention on both sides was sharply drawn by the return of the two Legionaries with the Apostate.
Without ado, the lean, wild man of the Sahara was led, in wrinkled burnous, with disheveled hair, wild eyes, and an expression of helpless despair, to where the Master stood. At sight of the massed horsemen, the grassy plain—a sight never yet beheld by him—and the distant golden, glimmering walls, a look of desperation flashed into his triple-scarred face.
The whole experience of the past days had been a Jehannum of incomprehensible terrors. Now that the climax was at hand, strength nearly deserted him even to stand. But the proud Arab blood in him flared up again as he was thrust forward, confronting Bara Miyan. His head snapped up, his eyes glittered like a caged eagle's, the fine, high nostrils dilated; and there he stood, captive but unbeaten, proud even in this hour of death.
Bara Miyan made no great speaking. All he asked was:
"Art thou, indeed, that Shaytan called Abd el Rahman, the Reviler?"
The desert Sheik nodded with arrogant admission.
Bara Miyan turned and clapped his hands. Out from among the horsemen two gigantic black fellows advanced. Neither one was Arab, though no doubt they spoke the tongue. Their features were Negroid, of an East African type.
The dress they wore distinguished them from all the others. They had neithertarbooshnor burnous, but simply red fezes; tight sleeveless shirts of striped stuff, and trousers of Turkish cut. Their feet were bare.
Strange enough figures they made, black as coal, muscled like Hercules, and towering well toward seven feet, with arms and hands in which the sinews stood out like living welts. Their faces expressed neither intelligence nor much ferocity. Submission to Bara Miyan's will marked their whole attitude.
"Sa'ad," commanded Bara Miyan, "seest thou this dog?"
"Master, I see," answered one of the gigantic blacks, speaking with a strange, thick accent.
"Lead him away, thou and Musa. He was brought us by thesezawwar(visitors). Thy hands and Musa's are strong. Remember, no drop of blood must be shed in El Barr.[1] But let not the dog see another sun. I have spoken."
[Footnote 1: Literally "The Plain." This name, no doubt, originally applied only to the vast inner space surrounded by the Iron Mountains, seems to have come to be that of Jannati Shahr itself, when spoken of by its inhabitants. El Barr is probably the secret name that Rrisa would not divulge.]
The gigantic executioner—the strangler—named Sa'ad, seized Abd el Rahman by the right arm. Musa, his tar-hued companion, gripped him by the left. Never a word uttered the Apostate as he was led away through the horsemen. But he gave one backward look, piercing and strange, at the Master who had thus delivered him to death—a look that, for all the White Sheik's aplomb, strangely oppressed him.
Then the horsemen closed about the two Maghrabi, or East Africans, and about their victim. Abd el Rahman, the Great Apostate, as a living man, had forever passed from the sight of the Flying Legion.
His departure, in so abrupt and deadly simple a manner, gave the Master some highly conflicting thoughts. The fact that no blood was ever to be shed in this city had reassuring aspects. On the other hand, how many of these Maghrabi stranglers did Bara Miyan keep as a standing army? A Praetorian guard of men with gorilla-hands like the two already seen might, in a close corner, prove more formidable than men armed with the archaic firearms of the place or with cold steel.
A sensation of considerable uneasiness crept over the Master as he pondered the huge strength and docility of these two executioners. It was only by reflecting that the renegade Sheik would gladly have murdered the whole Legion, and that now (by a kind of poetic justice) he had been delivered back into the hands of the Sunnites he had so long defied and outraged, that the Master could smooth his conscience for having done this thing.
The direct, efficient way, however, in which Bara Miyan dealt with one held as an enemy, urged the Master to press forward the ceremony of giving and taking salt.
At all hazards, safeguards against attack must be taken. Once more theMaster addressed Bara Miyan:
"Effendi! Our gifts are great to thee and thine. Great, also, is our magic. Let thineimamsdo their magic, and we ours. If the magic of El Barr exceeds ours, we will depart without exchange of gifts. If ours exceeds thine, then let the salt be in our stomachs, all for all, and let the gifts be exchanged!
"Thy magic against our magic! Say, O Sheik, dost thou dare accept that challenge?"
The old man's head came up sharply. His eyes gleamed with intense pride and confidence.
"The magic of the unbelievers against that of the People of the Garment!" (Moslems!) cried he. "Bismillah! To the testing of the magic!"