The Flying Legion Part 32

What mattered death for one, if two should win to the close range necessary for discharging the lethal capsules? What mattered it even for two, if one should succeed? The survivors, or the sole survivor, would simply take the weapons from the stricken and proceed.

After what seemed more than an hour, though in fact it was but the ten minutes agreed on with Bohannan, off behind them toward the coast a sudden staccato popping of revolvers began to puncture the night. Up and down the Legionaries' trench it pattered, desultory, aimless.

The three men engaged in the perilous task of what the Arabs call _asar_, or enemy-tracking, lay p.r.o.ne, with bullets keening high overhead. As the Master looked back, he could see the little spurts of fire from that fusillade.

The firing came from more to the left than the Master had reckoned, showing him that he had got a little off his bearings. But now he took his course again, as he had intended to do from the Legion's fire; and presently rifle work from the Arabs, too, verified, his direction.

The Master smiled. Leclair fingered the b.u.t.t of his revolver.

Rrisa whispered curses:

"Ah, dog-sons, may you suffer the extreme cold of El Zamharir! Ah, may _Rih al Asfar_, the yellow wind (cholera), carry you all away!"

The racket of aimless firing continued a few minutes, underneath the mild effulgence of the stars. It ceased, from the Legion's trenches at the agreed moment; and soon it died down, also from the Arabs'. Quiet rose again from the desert, broken only by the surf-wash on the sand, the far, tremulous wail of a jackal, the little dry skitter of scorpions.

The three scouts lay quiet for ten minutes after the volleying had ceased. Silence settled over the plain; but, presently, a low moaning sound came indistinctly from the east. It lasted only a moment, then died away; and almost at once, the slight wind that had been blowing from the sea hushed itself to a strange calm.

Rrisa gave anxious ear. His face grew tense, but he held his peace.

Neither of the white men paid any heed to the slight phenomenon. To them it meant nothing. For all their experience with the desert, they had never happened to hear just that thing. The Arab, however, felt a stab of profound anxiety. His lips moved in a silent prayer to Allah.

Once more the Master raised his hand in signal of advance. The three man-stalkers wormed forward again. They now had their direction, also their distance, with extreme precision; a simple process of triangulation, in which the glow of the beach-fire had its share, gave them the necessary data.

Undaunted, they approached the camp of the Beni Harb; though every moment they expected to be challenged, to hear the crack of an alarm-rifle or a cry to Allah, followed by a deadly blast of slugs.

But fortune's scale-pan dipped in their direction, and all held still.

The sun-baked desert kept their secret. Onward they crawled, now over sand, now over cracked mud-flakes of saline deposit where water had dried at the bottom of a _ghadir_. All was calm as if the spirit of rest were hovering over the hot, fevered earth, still quivering from the kiss of its great enemy, the sun.

"Peace, it is peace until the rising of the morn!" a thought came to the Master's mind, a line from the chapter Al Kadr, in the Koran. He smiled to himself. "False peace," he reflected. "The calm before the storm!" Prophetic thought, though not as he intended it!

On and on the trio labored, soundlessly. At last the chief stopped, held up his hand a second, lay still. The others glimpsed him by the starlight, nested down in a shallow depression of the sand. They crept close to him.

"Lieutenant," he whispered, "you bombard the left-hand sector, toward the fire and the sea. Rrisa, take the right-hand one. The middle is for me. Fire at will!"

Out from belts and pockets came the lethal pistols. With well-estimated elevation, the attackers sighted, each covering his own sector. Hissing with hardly audible sighs, the weapons fired their stange pellets, and once again as over the woods on the Englewood Palisades--really less than twenty-four hours ago, though it seemed a month--the little greenish vapor-wisps floated down, down, sinking gently on the Sahara air.

This attack, they knew, must be decisive or all would be hopeless. The last supply of capsules was now being exhausted. Everything had been staked on one supreme effort. Quickly the attackers discharged their weapons; then, having done all that could be done, lay p.r.o.ne and waited.

Once again that hollow moaning sound drifted in across the baked expanse of the Sahara--a strange, empty sound, unreal and ominous.

Then came a stir of sultry breeze, from the east. It strengthened; and a fine, crepitant sliding of sand-particles became audible. Rrisa stirred uneasily.

"Master," he whispered, "we should not delay. If the _jinnee_ of the waste overtake us, we may be lost."

"The _jinnee_ of the waste?" the Master answered, in a low tone. "What nonsense is this?"

"The simoom, Master--the storm of sand. We call it the work of evil spirits!"

The Master made no reply, save to command silence.

For a time nothing happened in the Arabs' camp. Then came a little stir, off there in the gloom. A sound of voices grew audible. The name of Allah drifted out of the all-enveloping night, to them, and that of his Prophet. A cry: "_Ya Abd el Kadir_--" calling on a patron saint, died before the last word, "_Jilani_," could find utterance. Then silence, complete and leaden, fell with uncanny suddenness.

The Master laughed, dryly. He touched Leclair's arm.

"Strong medicine for the Beni Harb, Lieutenant," said he. "Their own _imams_ (priests) have strong medicine, too, but not so strong as that of the cursed sons of Feringistan. Sleep already lies heavy on the eyelids of these sons of Allah. And a deeper sleep shall soon overcome them. Tell me, Lieutenant, can you kill men wholesale?"

"Yes, my Captain."

"Sleeping men, who cannot resist you? Can you kill them scientifically, in ma.s.ses, without anger?"

"How do you know now, my Captain, that it will not be in anger?"

And the Frenchman half eased himself up on hands and knees, peering forward into the night. "After what these Beni Harb--or their close kin--have done to me and to poor Lebon--listen! What was that?"

"What do you mean?"

"That far, roaring noise?"

"It is nothing! A little wind, maybe; but it is nothing, nothing!

Come, I am ready for the work!"

The Master stood up. Rrisa followed suit. No longer crawling, but walking erect, they advanced. They still used caution, careful to make no noise; but confidence had entered into them. Were not the Arabs all asleep?

The white men's faces were pale and drawn, with grim determination for the task that lay ahead--the task of converting the Beni Harb's camp into a shambles. The Arab's face, with white-rimmed eyes and with lips drawn back from teeth, had become that of a wild animal. Rrisa's nostrils were dilated, to scent out the enemy. He was breathing hard, as if he had run a mile.

"They are near, now, _Ya M'alme!_" said he. "They are close at hand, these _nakhawilah_! (pariahs). Allah, the high, the great, hath delivered them into our hands. Verily there is no power or might but Allah. Shall I scout ahead, Master, and spy out the camp?"

"No, Rrisa. I send no man where I will not gladly go myself. All three of us, forward!"

Again they advanced, watchful, revolvers in hands, ready for any sudden ambush. All at once, as they came up over a breastwork of hard clay and gravel that heaved itself into rolling sands, the camp of the Beni Harb became visible. Dim, brown and white figures were lying all about, distorted in strange att.i.tudes, on the sand beyond the ridge.

There lay the despoilers of the Haram, the robber-tribe of Sheik Abd el Rahman, helpless in blank unconsciousness.

The Master laughed bitterly, as he strode forward into the camp, the long lines of which stretched vaguely away toward the coast where the fire was still leaping up against the stars, now paled with a strange haze.

Starlight showed weapons lying all about--long rifles and primitive flint-locks; _kanat_ spears of Indian male-bamboo tipped with steel and decorated with tufts of black ostrich-feathers; and _jambiyehs_, or crooked daggers, with wicked points and edges.

"Save your fire, men," said the Master picking up a spear. "There are plenty of means, here, to give these dogs the last sleep, without wasting good ammunition. Choose the weapon you can handle best, and fall to work!"

With a curse on the heretic Beni Harb, and a murmur of thanks to Allah for this wondrous hour, Rrisa caught up a short javelin, of the kind called _mirzak_. The lieutenant chose a wide-bladed sword.

"Remember only one thing, my brothers in arms!" exclaimed the Master.

"But that is most vital!" He spoke in Arabic.

"And what may it be?" asked the Frenchman, in the same tongue.

"I do not know whether old Sheik Abd el Rahman is with this party or not, but if either of you find him, kill him not! Deliver him to me!"

"Listen, Master!" exclaimed Rrisa, and thrust the point of his javelin deep into the sand.

"Well, what now, Rrisa?"

"Shall we, after all, kill these sleeping swine-brothers?"