Flying Legion

by George Allan England

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE GREAT PEARL STAB

  The Master began to feel a peculiar anxiety. Into the east he peered,where now indeed a low, steady hum was growing audible, as of amillion angry spirits swarming nearer. The stars along that horizonhad been blotted out, and something like a dark blanket seemed to bedrawing itself across the sky.

  "My Captain," said the lieutenant, "there may be trouble brewing,close at hand. A sand-storm, unprotected as we are--"

  "Men with stern work to do cannot have time to fear the future!"

  Leclair grew silent. Rrisa alone was speaking, now. With a call of"_Ya Latif!_" (O Merciful One!) he had begun the performance of hisceremony, with rigid exactness. He ended with another prostration andthe usual drawing down of the hands over the face. Then he arose, tookup his javelin again, and with a clear conscience--since now his riteshad all been fulfilled--cried aloud:

  "Now, Master, I am ready for the work of helping Azrael, thedeath-angel, separate the souls and bodies of these Shiah heretics!"

  A sudden howling of a jackal startled Rrisa. He quivered andstood peering into the night, where now the unmistakable hum ofan approaching sand-storm was drawing near. His superstitious soultrembled with the old belief of his people that creatures of thedog breed can see Azrael, invisible to human eyes. At thought ofthe death-angel standing nigh, his heart quaked; but rage and hateinspired him, and he muttered:

  "Fire to your bellies, broiling in white flame! Fuel of Jehannum, mayEblis be your bed, an unhappy couch! Spawn of Shaytan (Satan), boilingwater to cool your throats! At Al Hakkat (judgment day) may the_jinnee_ fly away with you!"

  "To work, men!" cried the Master. "There is great work to do!"

  As if in answer to his command, a blustering, hot buffet of windroared down with amazing suddenness, filling the dark air with astinging drive of sand. The fire by the beach flailed into longtongues of flame, throwing black shadows along the side of the wady.No stars were now visible. From empty spaces, a soughing tumult leapedforth; and on the instant a furious gust of fine, cutting particleswhirled all about, thicker than driven snow in a northern blizzard.

  "Iron, O thou ill-omened one!" cried Rrisa, with the ancientinvocation against the sand-storm. He stretched out his forefinger,making the sign of protection. Neither the meaning of his cry norof the gesture could he have explained; but both came to himinvoluntarily, from the remote lore of his people.

  He turned from the oncoming storm, leaning against the wind, clutchingfor his cap that the wind-devil had just whirled away. After it hestumbled; and, falling to his knees, groped for it in the gloom.

  "Thousand devils!" ejaculated the Frenchman. "No time, now, forkilling! Lucky if we get back ourselves, alive, to the beach! MyCaptain!"

  "What now?" the Master flung at him, shielding mouth and eyes withcupped hands.

  "To the wady, all of us! That may give protection till this blast ofHell passes!"

  A startled cry from Rrisa forestalled any answer. The Arab's voicerose in a wild hail from the sand-filled dark:

  "O _M'alme_, _M'alme!_"

  "What, Rrisa?"

  "Behold! I--_I have found him!_"

  "Found--?" shouted the Master, plunging forward.

  Leclair followed close, staggering in the sudden gale. "_Abd elRahman?_"

  "The old hyena, surely! _M'alme, M'alme! See!_"

  The white men stumbled with broken ejaculations to where Rrisa wascrouched over a gaunt figure in the drifting sand.

  "Is that he, Rrisa?" cried the Master. "Art thou sure?"

  "As that my mother bore me! See the old jackal, the son of Hareth!(the devil). Ah, see, see!"

  "_Dieu_!" exclaimed the Frenchman, in his own tongue. "It is noneother!" With a hand of great rejoicing, he stirred the unconsciousSheik--over whom the sand was already sifting as the now raveningsimoom lashed it along.

  Forgotten now were all his fears of death in the sand-storm. Thisdelivery of the hated one into his hands had filled him with a savagejoy, as it had the two others.

  "Ah, _mon vieux!_" he cried. "It is only the mountains that nevermeet, in time!"

  The Master laughed, one of those rare flashes of merriment thatat infrequent intervals pierced his austerity. Away on the growingsand-storm the wind whipped that laugh. Simoom and sand now appearedforgotten by the trio. Keen excitement had gripped them; it held themas they crouched above the Sheik.

  "Allah is being good to us!" exulted the Master, peering by thegale-driven fire-glare. "This capture is worth more to the Legion thana hundred machine-guns. What will not the orthodox tribes give forthis arch-Shiah, this despoiler of the sacred Haram at Mecca?"

  He began feeling in the bosom of the old man, opening the cloaklikeburnous and exploring the neck and chest with eager fingers.

  "If we could only lay hands on the fabled loot of the Haram!" hewhispered, his voice tense with excitement.

  Rrisa, wide-eyed, with curling lips of scorn, peered down at theSheik. The orderly, bare-headed, was shielding eyes and face from thesand-blast, with hands that trembled. His teeth were bared with hateas he peered at the prostrate heretic.

  A tall, powerful figure of a man the Sheik was, lying there on hisright side with his robe crumpled under him--the robe now flapping,whipping its loose ends in the high and rising wind. His _tarboosh_had been blown away, disclosing white hair.

  That hair, too, writhed and flailed in the gusts that drove it fullof sand, that drifted his whole body with the fine and stingingparticles. His beard, full and white, did not entirely conceal thethree parallel scars on each cheek, the _mashali_, which marked him asoriginally a dweller at Mecca.

  One sinewy brown arm was outflung, now almost wholly buried in thegrowing sand-drift. The hand still gripped a long, gleaming rifle,its stock and barrel elaborately arabesqued in silver picked out withgold.

  "Ah!" exclaimed the Master again, pulling at a thin crimson cord hisquesting fingers had discovered about the old man's neck. With handsthat trembled a little, he drew out this cord. Then he uttered anexclamation of intense disappointment.

  There was nothing at the end of the crimson loop, save a _lamail_, orpocket Koran. Leclair muttered a curse, and moved away, peeringtoward the fire, spying out the wady through the now almost chokingsand-drive--the wady where they certainly must soon take refuge or beoverwhelmed by the buffeting lash of sand whirled on the breath of theshouting tempest.

  Even in the Master's anger, he did not throw the Koran away. Tooastute, he, for any such act in presence of Rrisa. Instead, he boundthe Arab to fresh devotion by touching lips and forehead, and byhanding him the little volume. The Master's arm had to push its wayagainst the wind as against a solid thing; and the billion rushingspicules of sand that swooped in upon him from the desert emptiness,stung his flesh like tiny scourges.

  "This Koran, Rrisa, is now thine!" he cried in a loud voice, to makethe Arab hear him. "And a great gift to thee, a Sunnite, is the Koran,of this desecrating son of the rejected!"

  Bowed before the flail of the sand--while Rrisa uttered broken wordsof thanks--the Master called to Leclair:

  "By _Corsi_ (Allah's throne), now things assume a different aspect!This old dog of dogs is a prize, indeed! And--what now--"

  Leclair did not answer. The Frenchman was not even near him. TheMaster saw him in the wady, dimly visible through the ghostly whitesand-shrouds spinning in the blue-whipped fire-glare. There on handsand knees the lieutenant was huddled. With eager hands he was tearingthe hood of a _za'abut_--a rough, woolen slave cloak, patched andragged--from the face of a prostrate figure more than half snowedunder a sand-drift.

  "_Nom de Dieu!_" the Master heard him cry. "_Mais, nom de_--"

  "What have you found, Lieutenant?" shouted the Master, letting thesimoom drive him toward the wady. In their excitement none of the menwould yet take cover, lie down and hide their faces under their coatsas every dictate of prudence would have bidden. "Who is it, now?What--"

  "Ah, my Captain! Ah! the pity of it
! Behold!"

  The Frenchman's voice, wind-gusted, trembled with grief and passionateanger; yet through that rage and sorrow rang a note of joy.

  "Tell me, Leclair! Who, now?" demanded the Master, as he came closeand peered down by the fire-gleam roaring on the beach, sendingsheaves of sparks in comet-tails of vanishing radiance down-wind withrushing sand.

  "It is impossible, my Captain," the lieutenant answered in French. Hisvoice could now make itself heard more clearly; for here in the wadya certain shelter existed from the roaring sand-cyclone. "Impossible,but--_Dieu_!--it is true!"

  "What is true?"

  "Incredible, yet--_voila_!"

  "In Allah's name, Lieutenant!" the Master ejaculated, "composeyourself! Explain! Who is this Arab, here?"

  "No Arab, sir! No, no!"

  "Not an Arab? Well, what is he, then?"

  "Ah, these scars, my Captain! Behold--see the slave dress, the wealsof the branding-iron on cheek and brow! Ah, for pity! See the starvedbody, the stripes of the lash, the feet mangled by the bastinado! Whathorrible things they have done to him--ah, God have pity on us!"

  Tears gleamed on the stern fighter's cheeks, there in the ghostly bluefirelight--tears that washed little courses through the dust and sandnow griming his face. The French airman, hard in battle and with heartof steel and flame, was crying like a child.

  "What now? Who is it?" shouted the Master. "A European?"

  "Yes, my Captain! A Frenchman!"

  "A Frenchman. You don't mean to say it--is--"

  "Yes, yes! My orderly! Lebon!"

  "God!" exclaimed the Master. "But--"

  A cry from Rrisa interrupted him, a cry that flared down-wind withstrange, wild exultation. The Arab had just risen from the sand, nearthe unconscious, in-drifting form of the Sheik, Abd el Rahman.

  In his hands he was holding something--holding a leather sack with abroken cord attached to it. This cord in some way had been severed bythe Sheik's rifle when the old man had fallen. The leather sack hadrolled a few feet away. Now, with hands that shook so that the Arabcould hardly control them, Rrisa was holding out this sack as hestaggered through the blinding sand-storm towards his chief.

  "_Al Hamdu Lillah!_" (Praise to the Lord of the Three Worlds!) chokedRrisa in a strange voice, fighting for his very breath. "See--see whatI--have found!"

  Staring, blinking, trying to shelter his eyes against the demons ofthe storm, the Master turned toward him.

  "What, Rrisa?"

  Down into the wady stumbled the Arab, gray-powdered with clingingsand.

  "Oh," he choked, "it has been taken from these _yezid_, these abusersof the salt! Now we rescue it from these cut-off ones! From the swineand brothers of the swine it has been taken by Allah, and put backinto the hands of Rrisa, Allah's slave! See, _M'alme_, see!"

  The shaking hands extended the leather sack. At it the Master stared,his face going dead white.

  "Thou--dost not mean--?" he stammered.

  "Truly, I do!"

  "Not Kaukab el Durri?"

  "Aye--it was lying near that heretic dog!"

  "The Great Pearl Star, the sacred loot from the Haram?"

  "Kaukab el Durri, _M'alme_. The Great Pearl Star itself!"