"Yes, yes, I know! Their h.e.l.l yawns for cowards; their Paradise opens to receive the brave! Death is as a bride to the Moslem!"
"Fanatics all, Lieutenant! Only a few white men have ever reached Mecca and returned. Bartema, Wild, and Joseph Pitt succeeded, and so did Hurgronje, Courtelmont, Burton, and Burckhardt--though, the Arabs admit only the two last.
"But how many hundreds have been beheaded or crucified? No pilgrimage ever takes place without a few such victims. A race of this type is a potential world-power of incalculable magnitude. Men who will die for Islam and for their master without a quiver--"
"My Captain! What do you mean?"
The lieutenant"s eyes had begun to fill with flame. His hand tightened to a fist.
"_Mon Dieu_, what do you mean? Can it be possible you dream of ruling the races of Islam?"
Something whined overhead, from the beach now only about a quarter-mile distant. Then a shot from behind the dunes cracked out across the crumbling, hissing surf.
"Ah," laughed Leclair, "the ball has opened, eh? Well this is now no time for talk, for empty words. I think I understand you, my Captain; and to the death I stand at your right hand!"
Their palms met and clasped, a moment, in the firm grip of a compact between two strong men, unafraid. Then each drew his pistol, crouching there at the windows of the pilot-house.
"Hear how that bullet sang?" questioned the Frenchman. "It was notched--a notched slug, you understand. That is a familiar trick with these dog-people of the Beni Harb. Sometimes, if they have poison, they dip the notched slug in that too. And, ah, what a wound one makes! Dum-dums are a joke beside such!"
Another shot sounded. Many cracked out along the dune. All up and down the crest of the tawny sand-hills, red under the sun now close to the horizon, the fusillade ran and rippled. On _Nissr_, metal plates rang with the impact of the slugs, or gla.s.s crashed. The gigantic Eagle of the Sky, helpless, received this riddling volley as she sagged ash.o.r.e, now almost in the grip of the famished surf.
"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! Even if we could survive that, it would be fatal to this vast plan of mine--of ours, Lieutenant. No, we will stand and fight--even till "certainty," if Allah wills it so!"
A sudden burst of machine-gun fire, from the upper starboard gallery, crashed out into the sultry, quivering air. The kick and recoil of the powerful Lewis sent a fine, swift shudder through the fabric of the wounded Eagle.
"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. "Pariahs in faith, despoilers of the Haram--the sacred inner temple--still this breed of _Rafaz_ (heretic) is bold.
Ah, "these dogs bare their teeth to fight more willingly than to eat."
It will come to hot work soon, I think!"
Keenly he scanned the dunes, eager for sight of a white _tarboosh_, or headgear, at which to take a pot-shot. Nothing was visible but sand--though here, there, a gleam of steel showed where the Arabs had nested themselves down in the natural rampart with their long-barreled rifles cuddled through carefully scooped rifts in the sand.
Again the machine-gun chattered. Another joined it, but no dust-spurts leaped from the dune, where now a continual play of fire was leaping out. The Beni Harb, keenly intelligent, sensed either that they were being fired at with blanks, or that the marksmanship aboard the air-liner was execrable. A confused chorus of cries and jeers drifted down from the sand-hills; and all at once a tall, gaunt figure in a brown and white striped burnous, with the hood drawn up over the head, leaped to sight.
This figure brandished a tremendously long rifle in his left hand. His right was thrust up, with four fingers extended--the sign of wishing blindness to enemies. A splendid mark this Arab made. The Master drew a fine bead on him and fired.
Both he and Leclair laughed, as the Arab pitched forward in the sand.
Unseen hands dragged the warrior back, away, out of sight. A slug crashed through the upper pane of the port window, flattened itself against the main corridor door and dropped to the sofa-locker.
The Master reached for the phone and switched in the connection with the upper starboard gallery.
"Major Bohannan!" he ordered. "No more blanks! The real thing, now--but hold your fire till we drift over the dune!"
"Drift over!" echoed Leclair. "But, _monsieur_, we"ll never even make the beach!"
"So?" asked the chief. He switched to the engine-room.
"Frazier! Lift her a little, now! Rack everything--strain everything--break everything, if you must, but lift her!"
"Yes, sir!" came the engineer"s voice. "I"ll sc.r.a.p the engines, sir, but I"ll do that!"
Almost as if a mocking echo of the command and the promise, a dull concussion shuddered through _Nissr_. The drone of the helicopters sank to a sullen murmur; and down below, waves began combing angrily over the gallery.
"Ah, _nom de Dieu_!" cried Leclair, in sudden rage at seeing his chance all gone to pot, of coming to grips with the hated Beni Harb.
From the penetralia of the air-liner, confused shouts burst forth. The upper galleries grew vocal with execrations.
Not one was of fear; all voiced disappointment, the pa.s.sion of baffled fury. Angrily a boiler-shop clatter of machine-guns vomited useless frenzy.
Wearily, like a stricken bird that has been forced too long to wing its broken way, the Eagle of the Sky--still two hundred yards from sh.o.r.e--lagged down into the high-running surf. Down, in a murderous hail of fire she sank, into the waves that beat on the stark, sun-baked Sahara sh.o.r.e.
And from hundreds of barbarous throats arose the killing-cry to Allah--the battle-cry of Beni Harb, the murder-l.u.s.ting Sons of War.
CHAPTER XXII
BELEAGUERED
"La Illaha illa Allah! M"hamed rasul Allah!" Raw, ragged, exultant, a scream of pa.s.sion, joy, and hate, it rose like the voice of the desert itself, vibrant with wild fanaticism, pitiless and wild.
The wolflike, high-pitched howl of the Arab outcasts--the robber-tribe which all Islam believed guilty of having pillaged the Haram at Mecca and which had for that crime been driven to the farthest westward confines of Mohammedanism--this war-howl tore its defiance through the wash and reflux of the surf.
The pattering hail of slugs continued to zoon from the sand-hills, bombarding the vast-spread wings and immense fuselage of Nissr. For the most part, that bombardment was useless to the Beni Harb. A good many holes, opened up in the planes, and some broken gla.s.s, were about the Arabs" only reward.
None of the bullets could penetrate the metal-work, unless making a direct hit. Many glanced, spun ricochetting into the sea, and with a venomous buzzing like huge, angry hornets, lost themselves in quick, white spurts of foam.
But one shot at least went home. Sheltered though the Legion was, either inside the fuselage or in vantage-points at the gun-stations, one incautious exposure timed itself to meet a notched slug. And a cry of mortal agony rose for a moment on the heat-shimmering air--a cry echoed with derision by fifteen score barbarians behind their natural rampart.
There was now no more shooting from the liner. What was there to shoot at, but sand? The Arabs, warned by the death of the gaunt fellow in the burnous, had doffed their headgear. Their brown heads, peeping intermittently from the wady and the dunes, were evasive as a mirage.
The Master laughed bitterly.
"A devil of a place!" he exclaimed, his blood up for a fight, but all circ.u.mstances baffling him. A very different man, this, from the calm, impersonal victim of ennui at _Niss"rosh_, or even from the unmoved individual when the liner had first swooped away from New York. His eye was sparkling now, his face was pale and drawn with anger; and the blood-soaked cotton and collodion gave a vivid touch of color to the ensemble. That the Master had emotions, after all, was evident.
Obvious, too, was the fact these emotions were now fully aroused.
"What a devil of a place! No way to get at those dog-sons, and they can lie there and wait for _Nissr_ to break up!"
"Yes, my Captain, or else starve us where we lie!" the lieutenant put in. "Or wait for thirst and fever to do the work. Then--rich plunder for the sons of theft!"
"Ah, Leclair, but we"re not going to stay here, for any such contingency!" exclaimed the chief, and turned toward the door. "Come, _en avant_! Forward, Leclair!"
"My Captain! You cannot charge an entrenched enemy like that, by swimming a heavy surf, with nothing but revolvers in hand!"