CHAPTER XXII
BELEAGUERED
"La Illaha illa Allah! M'hamed rasul Allah!" Raw, ragged, exultant, ascream of passion, joy, and hate, it rose like the voice of the desertitself, vibrant with wild fanaticism, pitiless and wild.
The wolflike, high-pitched howl of the Arab outcasts--the robber-tribewhich all Islam believed guilty of having pillaged the Haram at Meccaand which had for that crime been driven to the farthest westwardconfines of Mohammedanism--this war-howl tore its defiance through thewash 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. Forthe most part, that bombardment was useless to the Beni Harb. A goodmany holes, opened up in the planes, and some broken glass, were aboutthe Arabs' only reward.
None of the bullets could penetrate the metal-work, unless making adirect hit. Many glanced, spun ricochetting into the sea, and with avenomous 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 cryof mortal agony rose for a moment on the heat-shimmering air--a cryechoed with derision by fifteen score barbarians behind their naturalrampart.
There was now no more shooting from the liner. What was there to shootat, but sand? The Arabs, warned by the death of the gaunt fellow inthe burnous, had doffed their headgear. Their brown heads, peepingintermittently 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 allcircumstances baffling him. A very different man, this, from the calm,impersonal victim of ennui at _Niss'rosh_, or even from the unmovedindividual when the liner had first swooped away from New York. Hiseye was sparkling now, his face was pale and drawn with anger; and theblood-soaked cotton and collodion gave a vivid touch of color tothe 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 theycan lie there and wait for _Nissr_ to break up!"
"Yes, my Captain, or else starve us where we lie!" the lieutenant putin. "Or wait for thirst and fever to do the work. Then--rich plunderfor the sons of theft!"
"Ah, Leclair, but we're not going to stay here, for any suchcontingency!" exclaimed the chief, and turned toward the door. "Come,_en avant_! Forward, Leclair!"
"My Captain! You cannot charge an entrenched enemy like that, byswimming a heavy surf, with nothing but revolvers in hand!"
"Can't, eh? Why not?"
"The rules of war--"
"To Hell with the rules of war!" shouted the Master, for the firsttime in years breaking into profanity. "Are you with me, or are you--"
"Sir, do not say that word!" cried the Frenchman, reddening ominously."Not even from you can I accept it!"
The Master laughed again, and strode out into the main corridor, withLeclair close behind him.
"Men!" he called, his voice blaring a trumpet-call to action."Volunteers for a shore-party to clean out that kennel of dogs!"
None held back. All came crowding into the spacious corridor, itsfloor now laterally level but sloping toward the stern, as _Nissr's_damaged aft-floats had filled and sunk.
"Revolvers and lethal pistols!" he ordered. "And knives in belts! Comeon!"
Up the ladder they swarmed to the take-off gallery. Their feet rangand clattered on the metal rounds. Other than that, a, strange silencefilled the giant air-liner. The engines now lay dead. _Nissr_ wasmotionless, save for the pitch and swing of the surf that tossed her;but forward she could no longer go.
As the men came up to the top gallery, the hands of the setting sunreached out and seized them with red ardor. The radiance was halfblinding, from that sun and from light reflected by the heavilyrunning waves, all white-caps to shore. On both aileron-tips, themachine-guns were spitting intermittently, worked by crews under themajor and Ferrara, the Italian ace.
"Cease firing!" ordered the Master. "Simonds, you and Prisrend dealout the lethal guns. Look alive, now!"
Sheltering themselves from the patter of slugs behind stanchions andbulwarks, the Legionaries waited. The sea wind struck them with hotintensity; the sun, now almost down, flung its river of blood fromship to horizon, all dancing in a shimmer of heat.
By the way _Nissr_ was thumping her floats on the bottom, she seemedabout to break up. But, undismayed, the Legionaries armed themselves,girt on their war-gear and, cool-disciplined under fire, waited theorder to leap into the sea.
Not even the sight of a still body in the starboard gallery--a bodyfrom under which a snaky red line was crawling, zigzagging with eachpitch of the liner--gave them any pause. This crew was well blooded,ready for grim work of give-and-take.
"A task for me, sir!" exclaimed "Captain Alden," pointing at the body.The Master refused.
"No time for nursing, now!" he negatived the plea. "Unless you chooseto remain behind?"
"Never, sir!"
"Can you swim with one arm?"
"With both tied!"
"Very well! All ready, men! Overboard, to the beach! There, dig infor further orders. No individual action! No charge, without command!Overboard--come on--who follows me?"
He vaulted the rail, plunged in a white smother, surged up and struckout for shore. Rrisa was not half a second behind him. Then cameall the others (save only that still figure on the buffed metals), adeluge of leaping, diving men.
The surf suddenly became full of heads and shoulders, vigorous arms,fighting beachward. Strong swimmers every one, the Legion battled itsway ashore, out from under _Nissr's_ vast-spreading bulk, out fromunder her forward floats. Not one Legionary but thrilled with thekilling-lust, the eager spur of vengeance for Kloof, first victim ofthe Beni Harb's attack.
Along the dune, perhaps five hundred yards back of the beach, verymany heads now appeared. The Arabs well knew themselves safe fromattack, so long as these hated white swine of _Ajam_[1] were in thebreakers. Golden opportunity to pick them off, at ease!
[Footnote 1: Arabs divide the world into two categories; themselves,and _Ajam_, or all non-Arabs.]
A long, ragged line of desert men appeared, in burnouses and_benishes_, or loose floating garments, and all heavily armed. Thelast bleeding rays of the sunset flickered on the silver-mountedrifles as they spat fire into the heat-quivering air.
All about the swimmers, waterspouts jetted up. Two men grunted,flailed wild arms and sank, with the water about them tinged red asthe sunset. Another sank face downward, a moment, then with only onearm, continued to ply for land, leaving a crimson trail behind.
None of the untouched Legionaries took any heed of this, or stoppedtheir furious swimming to see what damage had been done or to offerhelp. Life was at stake. Every second in the breakers was big withdeath. This was stern work, to be put through with speed. But thefaces of the swimming men grew hard to look upon.
The Master and Leclair were first to touch foot to the shelvingbottom, all churned up by the long cavalry-charges of the sea-horses,and to drag themselves out of the smother. Rrisa and Bohannancame next, then Enemark, and then the others--all save Beziers andDaimamoto, French ace and Japanese surgeon, whose work was foreverat an end. Enemark, engineer and scientist, shot through the leftshoulder, was dragged ashore, strangling, by eager hands.
"Down! Down!" shouted the Master. "Dig in!"
Right well he knew the futility, the suicidal folly of trying tocharge some three hundred entrenched men with a handful of panting,exhausted soldiers armed only with revolvers.
"Take cover!" his cry rang along the beach. They obeyed. Under agalling fire that flung stinging sand into their faces and that tooktoll of two more Legionaries, wounded, the expedition dug for its verylife.
The best of strategy! The only strateg
y, the Master knew, as--pantinga little, with thick, black hair glued by sea-water to his head--heflattened himself into a little depression in the sand, where thefirst ripple of the dunes began.
Hot was the sand, and dry. Withered camel-grass grew in dejected tuftshere, there, interspersed with a few straggles of half a. A jackal'sskull, bleached, lay close to the Master's right hand. Its polishattested the care of others of its kind, of hyenas, and of vultures.Just so would a human skull appear, in no long time, if left tonature's tender ministrations. Out of an eyehole of the skull a dustygray scorpion half crawled, then retreated, tail over back, venomous,deadly.
Death lurked not alone in sea and in the rifles of the inhabitants ofthis harsh land, but even in the crawling things underfoot.
The Master paid no heed to shriveled grass, to skull, or scorpion.All his thoughts were bent on the overcoming of that band of Islamicoutcasts now persistently pot-shotting away at the strange flyingmen from unknown lands "that faced not Mecca nor kept Ramadan"--menalready hidden in swiftly scooped depressions, from which the sandstill kept flying up.
"Steady, men!" the Master called. "Get your wind! Ready with thelethal guns! Each gun, one capsule. Then we'll charge them! And--noquarter!"
Again, silence from the Legion. The fire from the dunes slackened.These tactics seemed to have disconcerted the Beni Harb. They hadexpected a wild, only half-organized rush up the sands, easily to bewiped out by a volley or two from the terribly accurate, long-barreledrifles. But this restraint, this business-like entrenching remindedthem only too forcibly of encounters with other men of theFranks--the white-clad Spanish infantry from Rio de Oro, the dreaded_piou-pious_, zouaves, and _Legion Etrangere_ of the French.
Firing ceased, from the Beni Harb. Silence settled on both sides. Fromthe sea, the noise of waves breaking along the lower works of _Nissr_mingled with the hiss and refluent slither of the tumbling surf on thegleaming beach. For a while peace seemed to have descended.
A purple shade settled over the desert. The sun was nearly gone,now, and dusk would not be long in closing its chalice down over thelight-wearied world. Leclair, entrenched beside the Master, whispered:
"They do not understand, these dog-brothers--may Allah make theirfaces cold!" He grinned, frankly, with sparkling eyes and white teeth."Already we have their beards in our hands!"
The Master's only answer was to draw from his pocket an extra lethalgun, hand it over and, in a whisper, hastily instruct the Frenchmanhow to use it. Then he cried, loudly:
"Ready, men! Fire!"
All along the line, the faint, sighing hiss of the strange weaponssounded. Over the top of the dune little, almost inaudible explosionsbegan taking place as--_plop! plop! plop!_--the capsules burst. Notnow could their pale virescence be seen; but the Master smiled again,at realization that already the lethal gas was settling down upon thehorde of Shiah outcasts.
To Leclair he whispered in Arabic an ancient saying of the desertfolk: "'Allah hath given skill to three things, the hands of theChinese, the brains of the Franks, the tongues of the Arabs!'" Headded: "When the gas strikes them, they would think the Frankish brainmore wonderful than ever--if they could think at all!"
He slid his hand into the breast of his jacket, pulled a little cordand drew out a silver whistle, the very same that he had used atGallipoli. As he slid it to his lips, they tautened. A flood ofmemories surged over him. His fighting-blood was up, like that ofall the other Legionaries in that hasty trench-line along the whitesand-drifts.
A moment's silence followed. Outwardly, all was peace. No sound butthe waves broke the African stillness. A little sand-grouse, known as_kata_ by the Arabs, came whirring by. Far aloft, a falcon wheeled,keen-eyed for prey. Once more the deadly scorpion peeped from theskull, an ugly, sullen, envenomed thing.
The Master held up the silver whistle, glinting in the last sun-glow.They saw it, and understood. All hearts thrilled, tightening withthe familiar sense of discipline. Fists gripped revolver-butts; feetshuffled into the sand, getting a hold for the quick, forward leap.
Keenly trilled the whistle. A shout broke from some twenty-fivethroats. The men leaped up, forward, slipping, staggering in the finesand, among the bunches of dried grass. But forward they drove, andbroke into a ragged, sliding charge up the breast of the dunes.
"Hold your fire, men! Hold it--then give 'em Hell!" the Mastershouted. He was in the first wave of the assault. Close by cameRrisa, his brown face contracted with fanatic hate of the Beni Harb,despoilers of the Haram sanctuary.
There, too, was "Captain Alden," grim with masked face. There wasBohannan, Leclair--and pistol-barrels flickered in the evening glow,and half the men gripped knives in their left hands, as well. For thiswas to be a killing without quarter, to the very end.
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