"It looks," thought the Master, with a smile, "as if our little surprise-party might be a lively affair. Well, I am ready for it.
"Allah knows best, and time will show!""
All over the plain and through the city, myriads of little white puffs, drifting down-wind, showed the profusion of firing. Now came the boom of a cannon from the Citadel--an unshotted gun, used only for calling the Faithful to prayer. Its booming echo across the plain and up against the naked, reddish-yellow hills, still further whipped the blood-frenzy of the mad mobs.
Even the innumerable pigeons, "Allah"s announcers,"[1] swirled in clouds from the arcades, mosques, and minarets surrounding the Haram, and from the Ka"aba itself, and began winging erratic courses all about the Forbidden City. Men, birds, and animals alike, all shared the terror of this unheard-of outrage when--according to ancient prophesy--the Great Devils of Feringistan should desecrate the holy places.
[Footnote 1: So called because of their habit of cooing and bowing.
Moslems fancy they are praying to Allah and making salaam to him.]
"Slow her!" commanded the Master into the engine-room phone, and began compensating with the helicopters, as _Nissr_ lagged over the crowded city. "Shut off--let her drift! Stand by to reverse!"
Mecca the Unattainable now lay directly beneath, its dun roofs, packed streets, ivory minarets all open to the heretics" gaze from portholes, from the forward observation pit and from the lower gallery. As _Nissr_ eased herself down to about one thousand feet, the plan of the city became visible as on a map. The radiating streets all started from the Haram. White mobs were working themselves into frenzy, trampling the pilgrims" shrouds that had been dipped in the waters of the well, Zem Zem, and laid out to dry.
Not even the Master"s aplomb could suppress a strange gleam in his eye, could keep his face from paling a little or his lips from tightening, as he now beheld the inmost shrine of two hundred and thirty million human beings. Nor did any of the Legionaries, bold as they were, look upon it without a strange contraction of the heart. As for the Apostate Sheik, that old jackal of the desert was crouched in his place of confinement, with terror clutching at his soul; with visions of being torn to pieces by furious Sunnite mobs oppressing him.
And Rrisa, what of him? Shut into his cabin, with the door locked against intrusion, he was lying face downward on the metal floor, praying. For the first time in the world"s history, a Moslem"s _kiblah_, or direction of prayer, was directly downward!
"Reverse!" ordered the Master. Nissr hovered exactly above the Haram enclosure. "Lower to five hundred feet, then hold her!"
The air-liner sank slowly, with a hissing of air-intakes into the vacuum-floats, and hung there, trembling, quivering with the slow back-revolution of her screws, the swift energy of her helicopters.
The Master put her in charge of Janina, the Serbian ace, and descended to the lower gallery.
Here he found the crew a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sion.
Clearly he could discern every detail of the city whereof Mohammed wrote in the second chapter of the Koran: "So we have made you the center of the nations that you should bear witness to men." He could see the houses of dark stone, cl.u.s.tering together on the slopes like swallows" nests, the unpaved streets, the _Mesjid el Haram_, or sacred square, enclosed by a great wall and a colonnade surmounted by small white domes.
At the corners of this colonnade, four tall white minarets towered toward the sky--minarets from which now a pretty lively rifle-fire was developing. A number of small buildings were scattered about the square; but all were dominated by the black impressive cube of the Ka"aba itself, the _Bayt Ullah_, or Allah"s house.
The Master gave an order. Ferrara obeying it, brought from his cabin a piece of apparatus the Master had but perfected in the last two days of flight over the Sahara. This the Master took and clamped to the rail.
"Captain Alden," said he, "stand by, at the engine-room phone from this gallery, here, to order any necessary adjustments as weights are dropped or raised. Keep the ship at constant alt.i.tude as well as position. Major Bohannan and Lieutenant Leclair, are your crews ready for the descent?"
"Yes, sir," the major answered. "_Oui, mon capitaine_," replied the Frenchman.
"Tools all ready? Machine-guns installed? Yes? Very well. Open the trap, now, and swing the nacelle by the electric crane and winch.
Right! Steady!"
The yells of rage and hate from below were all this time increasing in volume and savagery. Quite a pattering of rifle-bullets had developed against the metal body of the lower gallery and--harmlessly glancing--against the fuselage.
Smiling, the Master once more peered over. He seemed, as indeed he was, entirely oblivious to any fear. Too deeply had the Oriental belief of Kismet, of death coming at the appointed hour and no sooner, penetrated his soul, to leave any place there for the perils of chance.
The swarming Haram enclosure presented one of the most extraordinary spectacles ever witnessed by human eyes. The strangeness of the scene, witnessed under the declining sun of that desert land, was heightened by the fact that all these furious Moslems were seen from above. Men cease to appear human, at that angle. They seem to be only heads, from which legs and arms flail out grotesquely.
The Haram appeared to have become a vast pool of brown faces and agitated white _ihrams_ (pilgrim robes) of weaving brown hands, of gleaming weapons. This pool, roaring to heaven, showed strange, violent currents in flow and refluent ebb of hate.
To descend into that maelstrom of frenzied murder-l.u.s.t took courage of the highest order. But neither Bohannan nor the Frenchman had even paled. Not one of their men showed any hesitancy whatever.
"Ready, sir," said the major, crisply. "Faith, give the signal and down we go; and we"ll either bring back what we"re going after, or we"ll all come back and report ourselves dead!"
"Just a minute, Major," the Master answered. He had opened a small door of the box containing the apparatus he had just clamped to the rail, and had taken out a combination telephone earpiece and receiver.
With this at mouth and ear, he leaned over the rail. His lips moved in a whisper inaudible even to those in the lower gallery with him.
An astonishing change, however, swept over the infuriated mob in the Haram and throughout the radiating streets. One would have thought a bolt from heaven had struck the Moslems dumb. The angry tumult died; the vast hush that rose to _Nissr_ was like a blow in the face, so striking was its contrast with the previous uproar. Most of the furious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanatics remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
EAST AGAINST WEST
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.
"What the devil, sir--?" began the major; but the chief held up his hand for silence. Again he spoke whisperingly into the strange apparatus. This time a murmur rose to him; a murmur increasing to a confused tumult, that in an angry wave of malediction beat up about Nissr as she hung there with spinning helicopters, over the city.
The Master smiled as he put up the receiver in the little box and closed the door with a snap. Regretfully he shook his head.
"These Arabic gentlemen, _et al_," he remarked, "don"t seem agreeably disposed to treat with us on a basis of exchanging the Sheik Abd el Rahman for what we want from them. My few remarks in Arabic, via this etheric megaphone, seem to have met a rebuff. Every man in the Haram, the minarets, the arcade, and the radiating streets heard every word I said, gentlemen, as plainly as if I had spoken directly into his ear.
Yet no sound at all developed here."
"The principle is parallel to that of an artillery sh.e.l.l that only bursts when it strikes, and might be extremely useful in warfare, if properly developed--as I haven"t had time, yet, to develop it. No matter about that, though. My proposal has been rejected. Peace having been declined, we have no alternative but to use other, means.
There is positively no way of coming to an agreement with our Moslem friends, below."
As if to corroborate his statement, a rifle-bullet whistled through the open trap and flattened itself against the metal underbody of the fuselage, over their heads. It fell almost at "Captain Alden"s" feet.
She picked it up and pocketed it.
"My first bit of Arabia," said she. "Worth keeping."
The firing, below, had now become more general than ever. Shrill cries rose to Allah for the destruction of these infidel flying dogs. The Master paid no more heed to them than to the buzzing of so many bees.
"I think, Major," said he, "we shall have to use one of the two kappa-ray bombs on these Arabic gentry. It"s rather too bad we haven"t more of them, and that the capsules are all gone."
"Pardon me, my Captain," put in Leclair, "but the paralysis-vibrations, eh? As you did to me, why not to them?"
"Impossible. The way we"re crippled, now, I haven"t the equipment. But I shall nevertheless be able to show you something, Lieutenant. Major will you kindly drop one of the kappa-rays?"
He gestured at two singular-looking objects that stood on the metal floor of the lower gallery, about six feet from the trap. Cubical objects they were, some five inches on the edge, each enclosed in what seemed a tough, black, leather-like substance netted with stout white cords that were woven together into a handle at the top.
Strong as Bohannan was, his face grew red, with swollen veins in forehead and neck, as he tried to lift this small object. Nothing in the way of any known substance could possibly have weighed so much; not even solid lead or gold.
"Faith!" grunted the major. "What the devil? These two little metal boxes didn"t weigh a pound apiece when--ugh!--when we packed "em in our bags. How about it, chief?"
The Master smiled with amus.e.m.e.nt.