The boisterous exultation of the wind, howling in from a thousand miles of hot emptiness, out over the invisible sea now chopped into frothy waves, seemed s.n.a.t.c.hing at them. But the dunes at their left flung the worst of the sand-storm up and over. And though whirls and air-eddies, sand-laden, s.n.a.t.c.hed viciously at them, they won along the beach.
That was lathering toil, burdened as they were, stumbling over driftwood and into holes, laboring forward, hardly able to distinguish more than the rising, falling line of white that marked the surf.
Voices of water and of wind conclamantly shouted, as if all the devils of the Moslem h.e.l.l had been turned loose to s.n.a.t.c.h and rave at them.
Heat, stifle, sand caught them by the throat; the breath wheezed in their lungs; and on their faces sweat and sand pasted itself into a kind of sticky mud.
After fifteen minutes of this struggle the Master paused. He dropped Abd el Rahman"s shoulders, and Rrisa the Sheik"s feet, while Leclair stood silently bowed with the weight of Lebon and of the belaboring storm.
"_Oooo-eeee! Oooooeeee! Oooooo-eeee!_" the Master hailed, three long times. An answering shout came back, faintly, from the black. The Master bent, a.s.sured himself the old Sheik"s mouth and nose were still covered by the hood of the burnous, and cried: "Forward!" And the three men stumbled on and on.
Five minutes later the Master once more paused.
"Remember, both of you," he cautioned, "not one word of the find!"
"The Great Pearl Star?" asked Leclair gruntingly.
Their voices were almost inaudible to each other in that mad tumult.
"That is to be a secret, my Captain?"
"Between us three; yes. Let that be understood!"
"I pledge my honor to it!" cried the Frenchman. Rrisa added: "The Master has but to command, and it is done!" Then once more they plowed on down the sh.o.r.e.
Only a few minutes more brought them, with surprising suddenness, to the end of the Legionaries" trench. Trench it no longer was, however.
All the paltry digging had been swiftly filled in by the sand-devils; and now the men were lying under the lee of the dunes, protecting themselves as best they could with the tunics of their uniforms over their heads.
They got up and came stumbling in confusion to greet the returning trio. Peering in the dark, straining their eyes to see, they listened to a few succinct words of the Master:
"Perfect success! Lethalizing was complete. Sand has buried the entire tribe. Leclair found his former orderly, who had been their slave.
We have here their Sheik, Abd el Rahman. Nothing more to fear. Down, everybody--tunics over heads again--let the storm blow itself out!"
The Legion lay for more than an hour, motionless, waiting in the night. During this hour both Lebon and the old Sheik recovered consciousness, but only in a vague manner. There was no attempt to tell them anything, to make any plans, to start any activities. In a Sahara simoom, men are content just to live.
CHAPTER XXVII
TOIL AND PURSUIT
Before midnight the storm died with a suddenness even greater than that of its onset. Like a tangible flock of evil birds or of the spirits Victor Hugo has painted in _Les Djinns_, the sand-storm blew itself out to sea and vanished. The black sky opened its eyes of starlight, once again; gradually calm descended on the desert, and by an hour after midnight the steady east wind had begun to blow again.
The "wolf"s tail," or first gray streak of dawn along the horizon, found the Legion all astir. Lebon had long since been told of his rescue; he and his lieutenant had embraced and had given each other a long story--the enslaved man"s story making Leclair"s face white with rage, his heart a furnace of vengeance on all Islam.
The Sheik, dimly understanding that these devils of Feringistan had by their super-magic overwhelmed him and his tribe with sleep-magic and storm-magic of the strongest, lay bound hand and foot, sullenly brooding. No one could get a word from Abd el Rahman; not even Rrisa, who exhausted a wonderful vocabulary of imprecation on him, until the Master sternly bade him hold his peace.
A gaunt, sunken-eyed old hawk of the desert he lay there in the sand, unblinkingly defiant. Tortures and death, he felt, were to be his portion; but with the stoicism of the barbarian he made no sound.
What his thoughts were, realizing the loss of tribesmen, capture, despoilment of the Great Pearl Star, who could tell?
A wondrous dawn, all mingled of scarlet, orange, and vivid yellows, with streaks of absinthe hue, burned up over the desert world. It showed _Nissr_ about as she had been the night before; for the simoom had not thrashed up sea enough--offsh.o.r.e, as it had been--to break up the partial wreck.
The air-liner had, however, settled down a good deal in the sand, and had canted at a sharp angle to port. Her galleries, fuselage, and wings were heavily laden with sand that materially increased her weight; and to the casual eye she gave the impression of a bird which never again would soar on level wing.
The major voiced discouragement, but no one shared it. Spirits were still high, in spite of thirst and exhaustion, and of the losses already sustained in men and material. Lombardo and "Captain Alden"
had patched up the wounded in rough, first-aid fashion; and they, in spite of pain, shared the elation of the others in the entire wiping-out of the Beni Harb.
As soon as the light permitted operations to begin again, the Legion trekked over to the Arabs" former lines. Nothing now remained to tell them of the enemy, save here or there the flutter of a bit of burnous or _cherchia_ (head-dress), that fluttered from the white sand now all ribbed in lovely scollops like the waves of a moveless sea. In one spot a naked brown arm and hand were projecting heavenward, out of the sand-ocean, as if in mute appeal to Allah.
The Legionaries heaped sand on this grim bit of death, completely burying it, and on the fluttering cloths. And as they peered abroad across the desert, in the glory of morning, now nothing could be seen to mind them of the fighting-men who, like the host of Sennacherib, had been brushed by the death-angel"s wing.
The jackals knew, though, and the skulking hyenas, already sneaking in the _nullahs_; and so did the _rion_ and the yellow _ukab_-birds--carrion-fowl, both--which already from the farthest blue, had begun to wheel and volplane toward the coast.
Back on the beach, exultant, yet rather silent in the face of all that death, the Legion at once got itself into action under the vigorous command of the Master. Twenty-three men were still fit and active for service; and both Enemark and Lebon would in a few days be of help.
"Man-power enough," thought the Master, as he laid out his campaign.
"The only troublesome factors, are, first, _Nissr"s_ condition; second, our lack of water and supplies; and third, the possibility of interference from Arabs or European forces, by land or sea. If we can overcome all these--_if_, did I say? We can! We will!"
First of all, three volunteers swam out to _Nissr_ through the surf now again beating in from the open sea. Their purpose was to bring the wounded Kloof ash.o.r.e. Even though Kloof"s oversight of the stowaway had wrecked the expedition, and though Kloof would probably be executed in due time, common humanity dictated succoring him.
The volunteers returned, after a hard fight, with a body past any human judgments. Kloof, Daimamoto, Sheffield, and Beziers, all of whom had lost their lives in the battle with the Beni Harb, were soon buried on the beach by the hungry, thirsty, sand-penetrated Legionaries. The shallow graves were piled with driftwood--rocks there were none, even in the wady, which" was of clay and gravel--and so, protected as best might be from beasts and birds, four of the Legion entered their long homes. The only ceremony over the fallen adventurers was the firing of a volley of six pistol-shots.
Swiftly returning heat, and a plague of black flies that poisoned with every bite, warned the Legionaries not to delay. Hunger and thirst, too, scourged them on. Their first care was food and drink.
Fortune favored them. In spite of the simoom the prevailing west wind had cast up all along the sh.o.r.e--for two or three miles each way--perhaps a quarter or a third of the stores they had been forced to jettison. Before doing anything else, the Legion brought in these cases of provisions and established a regular camp in the wady where they would be protected from observation from the Sahara. The piling up of these stores, the building of a fire to keep off the flies, and the portioning out of what little tobacco they had with them, wonderfully stiffened their morale.
Water, however, was still lacking; and all the Legionaries, as well as the old Sheik who would have died in the flames before asking for drink, were beginning to suffer extremely. The Master detailed Simonds, L"Heureux, and Seres to construct a still, which they did in only a little more than three hours.
The apparatus was ingeniously and efficiently built, out of two large provision tins and some piping which they got--together with a few tools--by swimming out to the air-liner. The still, with a brisk fire under it, proved capable of converting sea-water into flat, tasteless fresh water at the rate of two quarts an hour. Thirsty they might all get, to desperation; but with this supply they could survive till better could be had.
While the distilling apparatus was being built, work was already under way on _Nissr_; work which old Abd el Rahman watched with beady eyes of hate; work in which Dr. Lombardo, fellow-partner in Kloof"s guilt, was allowed to share--the condition being frankly stated to him that his punishment was merely being deferred.
Under the Master"s direction, stout mooring-piles of driftwood were sunk into the dunes, block-and-tackle gear was improvised, and lines were rove to the airship. She was lightened by shoveling several tons of sand from her and by removing everything easily detachable; the men working in baths of sweat, with a kind of ardent abandon.
Enough power was still left in her storage-batteries to operate the air-pressure system through the floats. This air, with a huge boiling and seething of the white surf, loosened the floats from the cling of the sand; and a score of men at the tackles succeeded at high-tide in hauling _Nissr_ far up on the beach.
Rough gear, broken ship, toiling men blind with sweat, blazing African sun, appalling isolation, vultures and jackals at work behind the dunes, and--back of all--ocean and Sahara, made a picture fit for any master-painter. We must throw only one glance at it, and pa.s.s on.
This much accomplished, nightfall, with the west glowing like a stupendous jewel, brought rest. They camped in the wady, with machine-guns mounted and sentinels out. Abd el Rahman, liberated from his bonds and under strict surveillance, still refused to talk. No information could be got from him; but Rrisa"s eyes brightened with unholy joy at sight of the old man ceremonially tearing his burnous and sifting sand on his gray head.
"Allah smite thy face, _ya kalb!_" (O dog!) he murmured. "Robber of the Haram, from Jehannum is thy body!"[1]
[Footnote 1: Alluding to the Arab superst.i.tion that every man"s body is drawn from the place where it will eventually be buried. Rrisa"s remark, therefore, was an Oriental way of wishing the Sheik back into h.e.l.l.]
Night pa.s.sed with no alarm, quietly save for the yelping and quarreling of the jackals and hyenas at work beyond the dunes. Early morning found the Legionaries again at work; and so for five days they toiled. The Legion was composed of picked men, skilled in science and deep in technical wisdom. With what tools still remained from the time when all surplus weight had been jettisoned, and with some improvised apparatus, they set vigorously to work repairing the engines, fitting new rudder-plates, patching up the floats and providing the burned propellers with metal blades.
Metal enough they had at hand, by cutting out dispensable part.i.tions from the interior. And beavers never worked as these men worked in spite of the fierce smitings of the tropic sun. Even the wounded men helped, holding or pa.s.sing tools. The Master labored with the rest, grimy, sweating, hard-jawed; and "Captain Alden" did her bit without a moment"s slackening. Save for Abd el Rahman, now securely locked without any means of self-destruction in a stateroom, no man idled.
Anxiety dogged their every moment. Sudden storm might yet hopelessly break up the stranded air-liner. Other tribes might have seen the signal-fire and might descend upon the Legionaries. Arab slavers might discover them, beating along the coast in well-armed dhows. Twice, in five days, latteen-sailed craft pa.s.sed south, and one of these put in to investigate; but a tray of blanks from a machine-gun, at half a mile, turned the invader"s blunt nose seaward again.