"You have about five minutes more," the Master spoke again. "If necessary, we will open on them with machine-guns, from the ship, but I'd like to avoid bloodshed if possible. Do the best you can!"

Bohannan had no breath for answering. Every ounce of energy of all seven men was being flung into that mad labor. Sweat streamed into their eyes, half blinding them; they dashed it off, and struck again and again. The cement crumbled and gave; the heavy gold band commenced to bend; Rennes got his crowbar into an advantageous leverage and gave a mighty heave.

The stone seemed to cry aloud, with a dry, harsh screaming sound of outraged agony, as it yielded. It was only the sundering of the mortar, of course; but a chill ran up the major's spine, and goose-flesh p.r.i.c.kled all over him. Furiously the Legionaries worked the stone back and forth; a shower of mortar fell on the workers' feet and on the upturned, staring faces of the paralyzed Moslems trampled by the horrible contamination of heretical boots--perhaps even pigskin boots!--and then, all at once, the Hajar el Aswad slid from the place where it had lain uncounted centuries.

Cursing with frantic excitement, the Legionaries tugged it from the wall, together with its golden band. Above them the _kiswah_ bellied outward, swaying in the breeze. No Moslem has ever admitted that the Ka'aba veil is ever moved by any other thing than the wings of angels.

Those of the Faithful who now beheld that movement, felt the avenging messengers of Allah were near, indeed; and a thousand unspoken prayers flamed aloft:

"Angels of death, Azrael and his host, smite these outcasts of Feringistan!"

The prayers seemed more likely of fulfilment from the hands of the oncoming hordes already streaming into the converging streets to the Haram. As the stone came clear, into the hands of the invaders, a dank, chill blast of air blew from the aperture against the white men's faces. It seemed to issue as from a cavern; and with it came a low, groaning sound, as of a soul in torment.

A shadow fell across the Haram; the light of the sun was dulled. The sudden crack of a rifle-shot snapped from the arcade, and a puff of rock-dust flew from the corner of the Ka'aba, not two feet from the major's head.

"Come on, men!" cried the major. "Away!"

Some latent mysticism had been stirred in him; some vague, half-sensed superst.i.tion. Nothing more natural than that a cold draught should have soughed from the pent interior of the temple, or that the air-liner, slowly turning as she hung above the Haram, should with her vast planes have for a moment thrown her shadow over the square. But the Celt's imaginative nature quivered as he gripped the stone.

"You, quick, on the other end!" he cried to Emilio. "You, Lombardo, steady her! So! Now--to the nacelle!"

The rifles were opening a lively fire, already, as the men staggered over the prostrate Moslems, reached the nacelle and with a grunt and a heave tumbled the Hajar el Aswad into it. They scrambled after, falling into the shelter of the basket.

Into the arcade, at the north-east corner and half-way along the western side, two furious swarms of white-robed _Hujjaj_ were already debouching, yelling like fiends, firing as they came. The uproar swelled rapidly, in a swift-rising tide. The Haram grew all a confusion of wild-waving arms, streaming robes, running men who stumbled over the paralyzed forms of their coreligionists. Knives, spears, scimitars, rifles glinted in the sun.

The whine and patter of bullets filled the air, punctured the _kiswah_, slogged against the Ka'aba. Lebon and Rennes, turning loose the machine-guns, mowed into the white of the pack; but still they came crowding on and on, frenzied, impervious to fear.

Up rose the nacelle, as the major wildly shouted into the phone. It soared some forty feet in air, up past the black silken curtain, then unaccountably stopped, level with the Ka'aba roof.

"Up! Up!" yelled Bohannan, frantically. The spud of bullets against the steel basket tingled the bodies of the men crouching against the metal-work.

All at once Dr. Lombardo stood up, pick-axe in hand, fully exposed to rifle-fire.

"Down, you blazing idiot!" commanded the major, dragging at him with hands that shook. The doctor thrust him away, and turned toward the Ka'aba, the roof of which was not three feet distant.

"The golden spout--see?" he cried, pointing. "_Dio mio_, what a treasure!" On to the edge of the nacelle he clambered.

"Don't be a d.a.m.n fool, Doctor!" the major shouted; but already Lombardo had leaped. Pick in hand, he jumped, landing on the flat roof of the temple.

Ferocious howls and execrations swelled into a screaming chorus of hate, of rage. Unmindful, the Italian was already frantically attacking the Myzab. Blow after blow he rained upon it with the sharp, cutting edge of the pick, that at every stroke sank deep into the ma.s.sive gold, shearing it in deep gashes.

A perfect hail of rifle-fire riddled the air all about him, but still he labored with sweat streaming down his face all blackened with dirt and cement. From _Nissr_, far above, cries and shouts rang down at him, mingled with the sharp spitting of the machine-guns from the lower gallery. The guns in the nacelle, too, were chattering; the Haram filled itself with a wild turmoil; the scene beggared any attempt at description, there under the blistering ardor of the Arabian sun.

All at once Dr. Lombardo inserted the blade of the pick under the golden spout, pried hard, bent it upward. He stamped it down again with his boot-heel, dropped the pick and grappled it with both straining hands. By main force he wrenched it up almost at right angles. He gave another pull, snapped it short off, dragged it to the parapet of the Ka'aba, and with a frantic effort swung it, hurled it into the nacelle.

Down sank the basket, a little, under this new weight.

The doctor leaped, jumped short, caught the edge of the basket and was just pulling himself up when a slug caught him at the base of the brain.

His hold relaxed; but the major had him by the wrists. Into the nacelle he dragged the dying man.

"For the love o' G.o.d, _haul up!_" he shouted.

The basket leaped aloft, as the winch--that had been jammed by a trivial accident to the control--took hold of the steel cable. Up it soared, still pursued by dwindling screams of rage, by now futile rifle-fire. Before it had reached the trap in the lower gallery, the main propellers had begun to whicker into swift revolution, all gleaming in the afternoon sun. The gigantic shadow of the Eagle of the Sky began to slide athwart the hill-side streets to south-eastward of the Haram; and so, away.

Up came the nacelle through the trap. The davit swung it to one side; the trap was slammed down and bolted. Out of the nacelle tumbled the major, pale as he had formerly been red, his face all drawn with grief and pain.

"The d.a.m.ned Moslem swine!" he panted. "Faith, but they--they've killed him!" He flung a pa.s.sionate hand at the basket, in which, p.r.o.ne across the golden spout, the still body of Lombardo was lying. "They've killed as brave a man--"

"We all saw what he did, Major," the chief said quietly. "Dr. Lombardo owed us all a debt, and he has paid it. This is Kismet! Control yourself, Major. The price of such brave adventure--is often death."

They lifted out the limp form, and carried it away to the cabin Dr.

Lombardo had occupied, there to wait some opportune time for burial in the desert. Mecca, in the meanwhile, was already fading away to north-westward. The heat-shimmer of that baked land of bare-ribbed rock and naked, igneous hills had already begun to blur its outlines.

The white minarets round the Haram still with delicate tracery as of carved ivory stood up against the sky; but of the out-raged people, the colonnades, the despoiled and violated Ka'aba, nothing could any more be seen.

Southward by eastward sped _Nissr_; and with her now was departing the soul of Islam. In her keeping lay three things more sacred than all else to Mohammedan hearts--Kaukab el Durri, the Great Pearl Star; Ha jar el As wad, the Black Stone; and Myzab, the Golden Waterspout.

Awed, silenced, the Legionaries stood there in the lower gallery, peering into the blood-stained nacelle. Hard-bitten men, all, and used to the ways and usages of war; yet factors were present in this latest exploit that sobered and steadied them as never before.

The Master, still unmoved, merely smiled a peculiar smile as he commanded:

"Major, have the stone and the golden spout carried to my cabin. And, if you please, no remarks!"

Bohannan picked a few men to fulfil the order. Then he asked and received permission to retire to the smoke-room, for a pipe and a quiet half-hour, after having washed the dust and grime of battle from his hands and face. The major's Celtic nerves needed tobacco and reflection as they had rarely needed them.

The Master, climbing up the ladder to the main gallery, left Leclair and a few off-duty men in the lower one. Two or three approached the French ace, to hold speech with him about the exploit at the Ka'aba, but he withdrew from them to the extreme rear end of the gallery and remained for a long time in silent contemplation of the fading city, the Plain of Mina, and Mount Arafat, beyond.

As the vague purple haze of late afternoon deepened to veils that began to hide even the outlines of the mountain, he leaned both elbows on the rail and in his own language whispered:

"_Nom de Dieu!_ The Pearl Star--the Golden Waterspout--the sacred Black Stone!" His face was white with pride and a fire of eagerness that burned within. "Why, now we're masters of all Islam--masters of the treasure-houses of the Orient!

"_Mais--nom de Dieu!_"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE ORDEAL OF RRISA

Alone in his cabin with the waterspout of ma.s.sive gold and with the sacred Black Stone, the Master sat down in front of the table where they had been laid, took a few leaves of khat, and with profound attention began to study the treasures his _bold coup_ had so successfully delivered into his hands.

The waterspout, he saw at once, would as a mere object of precious metal be worth a tremendous sum. It was of raw gold, apparently unalloyed--as befitted its office of carrying the water from the roof of the Ka'aba and throwing it upon Ishmael's grave, where pilgrims have for centuries stood fighting to catch it. Its color verged on reddish; all its lateral surfaces were carved with elaborate arabesques and texts from the Koran. The bottom bore an inscription in Tumar characters, easily decipherable by the Master, stating that it had been sent from Constantinople in the year of the Hegira 981, by Shafey Hanbaly, the Magnificent.

"A great treasure," pondered the Master. "An almost incalculable treasure, in itself; but less so, intrinsically, than as an object of Moslem veneration. In either case, however, enormously valuable."

He examined it a moment or two longer, noting with care the gashes and deep cuts made by the frantic strokes of Dr. Lombardo's pick-axe. What his thoughts might have been regarding the doctor's tragic death, none could have told. For with a face quite unmoved, he turned now to the examination of the world-famous Black Stone.