CHAPTER XXX
OVER MECCA
The descent of the giant air-liner and her crew of masterfuladventurers on the Forbidden City had much the quality of a hawk'sraid on a vast pigeon-cote. As _Nissr_, now with slowed engines loomeddown the Valley of Sacrifice, a perfectly indescribable hurricane ofpanic, rage, and hate surged through all the massed thousands who hadcome from the farthest ends of Islam to do homage to the holy placesof the Prophet.
The outraged Moslems, in one fierce burst of passion against theinvading Feringi, began to swarm like ants when the stone coveringtheir ant-hill is kicked over. From end to end of the valley, ahowling tumult arose.
On the Darb el Ma'ala, or Medina Road, a caravan bearing the annual_mahmal_ gift of money, jewels, fine fabrics, and embroideredcoverings for the Ka'aba temple, cut loose with rifles and oldblunderbusses. Dogs began to bark, donkeys to bray, camels to spit andsnarl. The whole procession fell into an anarchy of hate and fear.
The vast camp of conical white tents in the Valley of Mina spewed outuncounted thousands of _Hujjaj_ (pilgrims), each instantly transformedinto a blood-lusting fiend. From the Hill of Arafat; from Jannat elMa'ale Cemetery; from the dun, bronzed, sun-baked city of a hundredthousand fanatic souls; from the Haram sanctuary itself where mobs ofpilgrims were crowded round the Ka'aba and the holy Black Stone;from latticed balcony and courtyard, flat roof, mosque, and minaret,screams of rage shrilled up into the baked air, quivering under theintense sapphire of the desert sky.
Every crowded street of the bowl-shaped city, all converging towardthe Sacred Enclosure of the Haram, every caravanserai and square,became a mass of howling _ghuzzat_, or fighters for the faith. Meccaand its environs, outraged as never before in the thousands of yearsof its history, instantly armed itself and made ready for a _Jihad_,or holy war of extermination.
Where the Ahl Bayt, or People of the Black Tents, had tamely enoughsubmitted to the invaders, these Ahl Hayt, or People of the Walls,leaped to arms, eager for death if that could be had in the battleagainst the infidel dog--for death, so, meant instant bearing up toParadise, to cool fountains and sweet fruits, and to the caresses ofthe seventy entrancing houris that each good Moslem has had promisedhim by "The Strong Book," Al Koran.
Every man and boy in all that tremendous multitude spread over manysquare miles of rocky, sun-blistered aridity, seized whatever camefirst to hand, for the impending war, as the black shadow of _Nissr_lagged down toward the city and the Haram. Some snatched rifles, somepistols; others brandished spears and well-greased _nebut_ clubs, sixfeet long and deadly in stout hands. Even camel-sticks and tent-poleswere furiously flung aloft. Pitiful, impotent defiance, no moreeffective than the waving of ants' antennae against the foot thatkicks their nest to bits!
Screams, curses, execrations in a score of tongues mounted in onefrenzied chorus. Swarms of white-robed pilgrims came running in massesafter the drifting shadow, knocking each other down, fallingaver tent-pegs, stampeding pack-animals. The confusion amazed theLegionaries as they watched all this excitement through their powerfulglasses.
"It looks," thought the Master, with a smile, "as if our littlesurprise-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 whitepuffs, drifting down-wind, showed the profusion of firing. Now camethe boom of a cannon from the Citadel--an unshotted gun, used only forcalling the Faithful to prayer. Its booming echo across the plain andup against the naked, reddish-yellow hills, still further whipped theblood-frenzy of the mad mobs.
Even the innumerable pigeons, "Allah's announcers,"[1] swirled inclouds from the arcades, mosques, and minarets surrounding the Haram,and from the Ka'aba itself, and began winging erratic courses allabout the Forbidden City. Men, birds, and animals alike, all sharedthe terror of this unheard-of outrage when--according to ancientprophesy--the Great Devils of Feringistan should desecrate the holyplaces.
[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 begancompensating with the helicopters, as _Nissr_ lagged over the crowdedcity. "Shut off--let her drift! Stand by to reverse!"
Mecca the Unattainable now lay directly beneath, its dun roofs, packedstreets, 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 ofthe city became visible as on a map. The radiating streets all startedfrom the Haram. White mobs were working themselves into frenzy,trampling the pilgrims' shrouds that had been dipped in the waters ofthe well, Zem Zem, and laid out to dry.
Not even the Master's aplomb could suppress a strange gleam inhis eye, could keep his face from paling a little or his lips fromtightening, as he now beheld the inmost shrine of two hundred andthirty million human beings. Nor did any of the Legionaries, bold asthey were, look upon it without a strange contraction of the heart. Asfor the Apostate Sheik, that old jackal of the desert was crouchedin his place of confinement, with terror clutching at his soul; withvisions of being torn to pieces by furious Sunnite mobs oppressinghim.
And Rrisa, what of him? Shut into his cabin, with the door lockedagainst 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 Haramenclosure. "Lower to five hundred feet, then hold her!"
The air-liner sank slowly, with a hissing of air-intakes into thevacuum-floats, and hung there, trembling, quivering with the slowback-revolution of her screws, the swift energy of her helicopters.The Master put her in charge of Janina, the Serbian ace, and descendedto the lower gallery.
Here he found the crew assembled by Bohannan and Leclair ready for theperilous descent they were about to make.
He leaned over the rail, unmindful of the ragged patter of bulletsfrom below, and with a judicial eye observed the prospect. His calmcontrasted forcibly with the frenzied surging of the pilgrim mobsbelow, a screaming, raging torrent of human passion.
Clearly he could discern every detail of the city whereof Mohammedwrote in the second chapter of the Koran: "So we have made you thecenter of the nations that you should bear witness to men." He couldsee the houses of dark stone, clustering together on the slopes likeswallows' nests, the unpaved streets, the _Mesjid el Haram_, orsacred square, enclosed by a great wall and a colonnade surmounted bysmall white domes.
At the corners of this colonnade, four tall white minarets toweredtoward the sky--minarets from which now a pretty lively rifle-firewas developing. A number of small buildings were scattered about thesquare; but all were dominated by the black impressive cube of theKa'aba itself, the _Bayt Ullah_, or Allah's house.
The Master gave an order. Ferrara obeying it, brought from his cabina piece of apparatus the Master had but perfected in the last two daysof flight over the Sahara. This the Master took and clamped to therail.
"Captain Alden," said he, "stand by, at the engine-room phone fromthis gallery, here, to order any necessary adjustments as weightsare dropped or raised. Keep the ship at constant altitude as well asposition. Major Bohannan and Lieutenant Leclair, are your crews readyfor the descent?"
"Yes, sir," the major answered. "_Oui, mon capitaine_," replied theFrenchman.
"Tools all ready? Machine-guns installed? Yes? Very well. Open thetrap, 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 involume and savagery. Quite a pattering of rifle-bullets haddeveloped against the metal body of the lower gallery and--harmlesslyglancing--against the fuselage.
Smiling, the Master once more peered over. He seemed, as indeed hewas, entirely oblivious to any fear. Too deeply had the Orientalbelief
of Kismet, of death coming at the appointed hour and no sooner,penetrated his soul, to leave any place there for the perils ofchance.
The swarming Haram enclosure presented one of the most extraordinaryspectacles ever witnessed by human eyes. The strangeness of the scene,witnessed under the declining sun of that desert land, was heightenedby the fact that all these furious Moslems were seen from above. Mencease to appear human, at that angle. They seem to be only heads, fromwhich legs and arms flail out grotesquely.
The Haram appeared to have become a vast pool of brown faces andagitated 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-lust took courageof the highest order. But neither Bohannan nor the Frenchman had evenpaled. Not one of their men showed any hesitancy whatever.
"Ready, sir," said the major, crisply. "Faith, give the signal anddown we go; and we'll either bring back what we're going after, orwe'll all come back and report ourselves dead!"
"Just a minute, Major," the Master answered. He had opened a smalldoor of the box containing the apparatus he had just clamped to therail, and had taken out a combination telephone earpiece and receiver.With this at mouth and ear, he leaned over the rail. His lips moved ina whisper inaudible even to those in the lower gallery with him.
An astonishing change, however, swept over the infuriated mob in theHaram and throughout the radiating streets. One would have thought abolt 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 thefurious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanaticsremained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.
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