CHAPTER XXI
SHIPWRECK AND WAR
"You call them dogs, eh?" asked the chief. "And why?"
"What else are such apostate fanatics? People who live by robbery andplunder--people who, if they find no gold in your money-belt, will ripyour stomach open to see if you've swallowed it! People who boastof being _harami_ (highwaymen), and who respect the _jallah_(slave-driver)!
"People who practice the barbaric _thar_, or blood-feud! People whotorture their victims by cutting off the ends of their fingers beforebeheading or crucifying them! People who glory in murdering the'idolators of Feringistan,' as they call us white men! Let me adviseyou now, my Captain, when dealing with these people or fighting them,never use your last shot on them. Always keep a mercy-bullet in yourgun!"
"A mercy-bullet?"
"For yourself!"
The Master pondered a moment or two, as _Nissr_ drifted on toward thenow densely massed Arabs on the beach, then he said:
"You seem to know these folk well."
"Only too well!"
The Master's next words were in the language of the desert:
"_Hadratak tet kal'm Arabi?_" (You speak Arabic?)
"_Na'am et kal'm!_" affirmed the lieutenant, smiling. And in the sametongue he continued, with fluent ease: "Indeed I do, _Effendi_. Yes,yes, I learned it in Algiers and all the way south as far as theheadwaters of the Niger.
"Five years I spent among the Arabs, doing air-work, surveying theSahara, locating oases, mapping what until then were absolutelyunknown stretches of territory. I did a bit of bombing, too, in thecampaign against Sheik Abd el Rahman, in 1913."
"Yes, so I have heard. You almost lost your life, that time?"
"Only by the thickness of a _semmah_ seed did I preserve it," answeredthe Frenchman. "My mechanician, Lebon, and I--we fell among them onaccount of engine trouble, near the oasis of Adrar, not far from here.We had no machine-gun--nothing but revolvers. We stood them off forseven hours, before they rushed us. They captured us only because ourlast cartridges were gone."
"You did not save the mercy-bullet that time, eh?"
"I did not, _Effendi._ I did not know them then as I do now. Theyknocked us both senseless, and then began hacking our machine topieces with their huge _balas_ (yataghans). They thought our plane wassome gigantic bird.
"Superstition festers in their very bones! The giant bird, theybelieved, would ruin their date crops; and, besides, they thirsted forthe blood of the Franks. As a matter of fact, my Captain, these peopledo sometimes drink a little of the blood of a slaughtered enemy."
"Impossible!"
"True, I tell you! They destroyed our plane with fire and sword,reviled us as pigs and brothers of pigs, and named poor Lebon 'kalbibn kalb,' or 'dog and son of a dog.' Then they separated into twobands. One band departed toward Wady Tawarik, taking Lebon. Theyinformed me that on the morrow they would crucify him on a cross ofpalm-wood, head downward."
"And they executed Lebon?"
Leclair shrugged his shoulders.
"I suppose so," he answered with great bitterness. "I have neverseen or heard of him since. As for me, they reserved me for somefestivities at Makam Jibrail. During the next night, a column ofSpanish troops from Rio de Oro rushed their camp, killed sixty orseventy of the brown demons, and rescued me. Since then I have lustedrevenge on the Beni Harb!"
"No wonder," put in the chief, once more looking at the beach, wherenow the war-party was plainly visible to the naked eye in some detail.The waving of their arms could be distinguished; and plainly glitteredthe blood-crimson sunset light on rifle-barrels, swords, and javelins.The Master loosened his revolver in its holster. "About twenty minutesfrom now, at this rate," he added, "some of the Beni Harb will havereason to remember you."
"Yes, and may Jehannum take them all!" exclaimed the Frenchman,passionately. His eyes glowered with hate as he peered across thenarrowing strip of waves and surf. "Jehannum, where every time theirskins are burned off, as the Koran says, new ones will grow to beburned off again! Where 'they shall have garments of fire fitted uponthem and boiling water poured upon their heads, and they shall bebeaten with maces of iron--"
"And their tormentors shall say unto them: 'Taste ye the pain ofburning!'" the Master concluded the familiar quotation with asmile. "Waste no time in wishing the Beni Harb future pain, my dearLieutenant. Jehannum may indeed reserve the fruit of the tree AlZakkum, for these dogs, but our work is to give them a foretaste ofit, today. Kismet seems to have willed it that you and the Beni Harbshall meet again. Is it not a fortunate circumstance, for you?"
"Fortunate, yes," the Frenchman answered, his eyes glowing as theyestimated the strength of the war-party, now densely massed along theshining sands, "But, thank God, there are no women in this party! Thatwould mean that one of us would have to kill a woman--for God helpa woman of Feringistan caught by these _jinnee_, these devils of thewaste!"
Silence again. Both men studied the Beni Harb. The Frenchman judged,reverting to his native tongue: "Certainly more than three hundredof these 'abusers of the salt,' my Captain. And we are hardly thirty.Even if we reach land, we must soon sink to earth. Without food,water, anything--_ce n'est pas gai, hein?_"
"No, it is not gay," the chief answered. "But with machine-guns--"
"Machine-guns cannot fight against the African sun, against famine,thirst, delirium, madness. Well--'blessed be certainty,' as the Arabssay."
"You mean death?"
"Yes, I mean death. We always have that in our grasp, at anyrate--after having taken full toll of these devils. I should notmind, so much, defeat at the hands of the nobler breed of the ArabianPeninsula. There, in the _Ruba el Khali_[1] itself, I know a chivalricrace dwells that any soldier might be proud to fight or to rule over.But these Shiah heretic swine--ah, see now, they are taking coveralready? They will not stand and fight, like men!"
[Footnote 1: _Ruba el Khali_ (The Empty Abodes), a name applied bythe Arabs to the Peninsula, especially the vast inner region neverpenetrated by any white man.]
Scornfully he flung a hand at the Beni Harb. The fringes of thetribe were trickling up the sands, backward, away, toward the lineof purple-hazed dunes that lined the coast. More and more of thewar-party followed. Gradually all passed up the wady, over the dunesand vanished.
"They are going to ambush us, my Captain," said Leclair. "'In rice,strength; in the Beni Harb, manhood!'"
Nearer the land, ever sagging down but still afloat--though now attimes some of the heavier surges broke in foam over the rail of thelower gallery--the Eagle of the Sky drifted on, on. Hardly a half-milenow lay between air-liner and shore. Suddenly the Master began tospeak:
"Listen, Lieutenant! Events are at a crisis, now. I will speak veryplainly. You know the Arabs, good and bad. You know Islam, and allthat the Mohammedan world is. You know there are more than 230,000,000people of this faith, scattered from Canton to Sierra Leone, andfrom Cape Town to Tobolsk, all over Turkey, Africa, and Arabia--anenormous, fanatic, fighting race! Probably, if trained, the finestfighting-men in the world, for they fear neither pain nor' death. Theywelcome both, if their hearts are enlisted!"
"Yes, yes, I know! Their Hell yawns for cowards; their Paradise opensto receive the brave! Death is as a bride to the Moslem!"
"Fanatics all, Lieutenant! Only a few white men have ever reachedMecca and returned. Bartema, Wild, and Joseph Pitt succeeded, and sodid Hurgronje, Courtelmont, Burton, and Burckhardt--though, the Arabsadmit only the two last.
"But how many hundreds have been beheaded or crucified? No pilgrimageever takes place without a few such victims. A race of this type is apotential world-power of incalculable magnitude. Men who will die forIslam 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 tightenedto a fist.
"_Mon Dieu_, what do you mean? Can it be possible you dream of rulingthe races of Islam?"
Something whined overhead, from t
he beach now only about aquarter-mile distant. Then a shot from behind the dunes cracked outacross the crumbling, hissing surf.
"Ah," laughed Leclair, "the ball has opened, eh? Well this is now notime 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 compactbetween two strong men, unafraid. Then each drew his pistol, crouchingthere at the windows of the pilot-house.
"Hear how that bullet sang?" questioned the Frenchman. "It wasnotched--a notched slug, you understand. That is a familiar trick withthese dog-people of the Beni Harb. Sometimes, if they have poison,they dip the notched slug in that too. And, ah, what a wound onemakes! Dum-dums are a joke beside such!"
Another shot sounded. Many cracked out along the dune. All up and downthe crest of the tawny sand-hills, red under the sun now close to thehorizon, the fusillade ran and rippled. On _Nissr_, metal plates rangwith the impact of the slugs, or glass crashed. The gigantic Eagle ofthe Sky, helpless, received this riddling volley as she sagged ashore,now almost in the grip of the famished surf.
"Yes, the ball is opening!" repeated Leclair, with an eager laugh. Hisfinger 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, byAllah! Our first encounter with Islam shall not be a surrender! Evenif we could survive that, it would be fatal to this vast plan ofmine--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 thepowerful Lewis sent a fine, swift shudder through the fabric of thewounded Eagle.
"There goes a tray of blanks," said the Master. "Perhaps that willrout 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 shottedcharges!" he declared. "Pariahs in faith, despoilers of the Haram--thesacred 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 butsand--though here, there, a gleam of steel showed where the Arabs hadnested themselves down in the natural rampart with their long-barreledrifles cuddled through carefully scooped rifts in the sand.
Again the machine-gun chattered. Another joined it, but no dust-spurtsleaped from the dune, where now a continual play of fire was leapingout. The Beni Harb, keenly intelligent, sensed either that theywere being fired at with blanks, or that the marksmanship aboard theair-liner was execrable. A confused chorus of cries and jeers drifteddown from the sand-hills; and all at once a tall, gaunt figure in abrown 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. Hisright was thrust up, with four fingers extended--the sign of wishingblindness to enemies. A splendid mark this Arab made. The Master drewa 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 slugcrashed through the upper pane of the port window, flattened itselfagainst the main corridor door and dropped to the sofa-locker.
The Master reached for the phone and switched in the connection withthe 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 makethe beach!"
"So?" asked the chief. He switched to the engine-room.
"Frazier! Lift her a little, now! Rack everything--straineverything--break everything, if you must, but lift her!"
"Yes, sir!" came the engineer's voice. "I'll scrap the engines, sir,but I'll do that!"
Almost as if a mocking echo of the command and the promise, a dullconcussion shuddered through _Nissr_. The drone of the helicopterssank to a sullen murmur; and down below, waves began combing angrilyover the gallery.
"Ah, _nom de Dieu_!" cried Leclair, in sudden rage at seeing hischance all gone to pot, of coming to grips with the hated Beni Harb.From the penetralia of the air-liner, confused shouts burst forth. Theupper galleries grew vocal with execrations.
Not one was of fear; all voiced disappointment, the passion of baffledfury. Angrily a boiler-shop clatter of machine-guns vomited uselessfrenzy.
Wearily, like a stricken bird that has been forced too long to wingits broken way, the Eagle of the Sky--still two hundred yards fromshore--lagged down into the high-running surf. Down, in a murderoushail of fire she sank, into the waves that beat on the stark,sun-baked Sahara shore.
And from hundreds of barbarous throats arose the killing-cry toAllah--the battle-cry of Beni Harb, the murder-lusting Sons of War.
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