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A HAIL OF SLUGS BOMBARDED THE VAST-SPREAD WINGS ANDFUSELAGE OF _NISSR_.]
THE FLYING LEGION
BY GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND
Published July, 1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A Spirit Caged.
II "To Paradise--or Hell!"
III The Gathering of the Legionaries.
IV The Masked Recruit.
V In the Night.
VI The Silent Attack.
VII The Nest of the Great Bird.
VIII The Eagle of the Sky.
IX Eastward Ho.
X "I Am the Master's!"
XI Captain Alden Stands Revealed.
XII The Woman of Adventure.
XIII The Enmeshing of the Master.
XIV Storm Birds.
XV The Battle of Vibrations.
XVI Leclair, Ace of France.
XVII Miracles, Scourge of Flame.
XVIII "Captain Alden" Makes Good.
XIX Hostile Coasts.
XX The Waiting Menace.
XXI Shipwreck and War.
XXII Beleaguered.
XXIII A Mission of Dread.
XXIV Angels of Death.
XXV The Great Pearl Star.
XXVI The Sand-Devils.
XXVII Toil and Pursuit.
XXVIII Onward Toward the Forbidden City.
XXIX "Labbayk!"
XXX Over Mecca.
XXXI East Against West.
XXXII The Battle of the Haram.
XXXIII The Ordeal of Rrisa.
XXXIV The Inner Secret of Islam.
XXXV Into the Valley of Mystery.
XXXVI Journey's End.
XXXVII The Greeting of Warriors.
XXXVIII Bara Miyan, High Priest.
XXXIX On, to the Golden City!
XL Into the Treasure Citadel.
XLI The Master's Price.
XLII "Sons of the Prophet, Slay!"
XLIII War in the Depths.
XLIV Into the Jewel-Crypt.
XLV The Jewel Hoard.
XLVI Bohannan Becomes a Millionaire.
XLVII A Way Out?
XLVIII The River of Night.
XLIX The Desert.
L "Where There Is None but Allah."
LI Torture.
LII "Thalassa! Thalassa!"
LIII The Greater Treasure.
The Flying Legion
CHAPTER I
A SPIRIT CAGED
The room was strange as the man, himself, who dwelt there. It seemed,in a way, the outward expression of his inner personality. He hadordered it built from his own plans, to please a whim of his restlessmind, on top of the gigantic skyscraper that formed part ofhis properties. Windows boldly fronted all four cardinalcompass-points--huge, plate-glass windows that gave a view unequaledin its sweep and power.
The room seemed an eagle's nest perched on the summit of a man-madecrag. The Arabic name that he had given it--_Niss'rosh_--meant justthat. Singular place indeed, well-harmonized with its master.
Through the westward windows, umbers and pearls of dying day, smudgedacross a smoky sky, now shadowed trophy-covered walls. This light,subdued and somber though it was, slowly fading, verging toward anight of May, disclosed unusual furnishings. It showed a heavy blacktable of some rare Oriental wood elaborately carved and inlaid withstill rarer woods; a table covered with a prayer-rug, on which layvarious books on aeronautics and kindred sciences, jostling works onEastern travel, on theosophy, mysticism, exploration.
Maps and atlases added their note of research. At one end of thetable stood a bronze faun's head with open lips, with hand cuppedat listening ear. Surely that head must have come from some buriedart-find of the very long ago. The faint greenish patina that coveredit could have been painted only by the hand of the greatest artist ofthem all, Time.
A book-case occupied the northern space, between the windows. It, too,was crammed with scientific reports, oddments of out-of-the-way lore,and travels. But here a profusion of war-books and official documentsshowed another bent of the owner's mind. Over the book-case hung twoGerman gasmasks. They seemed, in the half-dusk, to glower down throughtheir round, empty eyeholes like sinister devil-fish awaiting prey.
The masks were flanked by rifles, bayonets, knives, maces, all bearingscars of battle. Above them, three fragments of Prussian battle-flagsformed a kind of frieze, their color softened by the fading sunset,even as the fading of the dream of imperial glory had dulled anddimmed all that for which they had stood.
The southern wall of that strange room--that quiet room to which onlya far, vague murmur of the city's life whispered up, with faint blursof steamer-whistles from the river--bore Turkish spoils of battle.Here hung more rifles, there a Kurdish yataghan with two hand-grenadesfrom Gallipoli, and a blood-red banner with a crescent and one starworked in gold thread. Aviator's gauntlets draped the staff of thebanner.
Along the eastern side of this eyrie a broad divan invited one torest. Over it were suspended Austrian and Bulgarian captures--a lancewith a blood-stiffened pennant, a cuirass, entrenching tools, a steelhelmet with an eloquent bullet-hole through the crown. Some few framedportraits of noted "aces" hung here and elsewhere, with two or threephotographs of battle-planes. Three of the portraits were framed insymbolic black. Part of a smashed Taube propeller hung near.
As for the western side of _Niss'rosh_, this space between the twobroad windows that looked out over the light-spangled city, the Hudsonand the Palisades, was occupied by a magnificent Mercator's Projectionof the world. This projection was heavily annotated with scores ofcomments penciled by a firm, virile hand. Lesser spaces were occupiedby maps of the campaigns in Mesopotamia and the Holy Land. One map,larger than any save the Mercator, showed the Arabian Peninsula. Abold question-mark had been impatiently flung into the great,blank stretch of the interior; a question-mark eager, impatient,challenging.
It was at this map that the master of _Niss'rosh_, the eagle's nest,was peering as the curtain rises on our story. He was half recliningin a big, Chinese bamboo chair, with an attitude of utter anddisheartening boredom. His crossed legs were stretched out, one heeldigging into the soft pile of the Tabreez rug. Muscular arms foldedin an idleness that irked them with aching weariness, he sat there,brooding, motionless.
Everything about the man spelled energy at bay, forces rusting,ennui past telling. But force still dominated. Force showed in theclose-cropped, black hair and the small ears set close to the head;in the corded throat and heavy jaws; in the well-muscled shoulders,sinewed hands, powerful legs. This man was forty-one years old,and looked thirty-five. Lines of chest and waist were those of theathlete. Still, suspicions of fat, of unwonted softness, had begun toinvade those lines. Here was a splendid body, here was a dominatingmind in process of going stale.
The face of the man was a mask of weariness of the soul, which killsso vastly more efficiently than weariness of the body. You could seethat weariness in the tired frown of the black brows, the narrowingof the dark eyes, the downward tug of the lips. Wrinkles of stagnationhad began to creep into forehead and cheeks--wrinkles that no amountof gymnasium, of club life, of careful shaving, of strict hygienecould banish.
Through the west windows the slowly changing hues of gray, ofmulberry, and dull rose-pink blurred in the sky, cast softened lightsupon those wrinkles, but could not hide them. They revealed sademptiness of purpose. This man was tired unto death, if ever man weretired.
He yawned, sighed deeply, stretched out his hand and took up a bitof a model mechanism from the table, where it had lain with otherfragments of apparatus. For a
moment he peered at it; then he tossedit back again, and yawned a second time.
"Business!" he growled. "'Swapped my reputation for a song,' eh?Where's my commission, now?"
He got up, clasped his hands behind him, and walked a few times up anddown the heavy rug, his footfalls silent.
"The business could have gone on without me!" he added, bitterly."And, after all, what's any business, compared to _life_?"
He yawned again, stretched up his arms, groaned and laughed withmockery:
"A little more money, maybe, when I don't know what to do with whatI've got already! A few more figures on a checkbook--and the heartdying in me!"
Then he relapsed into silence. Head down, hands thrust deep inpockets, he paced like a captured animal in bars. The bitternessof his spirit was wormwood. What meant, to him, the interests andpleasures of other men? Profit and loss, alcohol, tobacco, women--allalike bore him no message. Clubs, athletics, gambling--he grumbledsomething savage as his thoughts turned to such trivialities. And intohis aquiline face came something the look of an eagle, trapped, therein that eagle's nest of his.
Suddenly the Master of _Niss'rosh_ came to a decision. He returned,clapped his hands thrice, sharply, and waited. Almost at once a dooropened at the southeast corner of the room--where the observatoryconnected with the stairway leading down to the Master's apartment onthe top floor of the building--and a vague figure of a man appeared.
The light was steadily fading, so that this man could by no means beclearly distinguished. But one could see that he wore clothing quiteas conventional as his master's. Still, no more than the Master did heappear one of life's commonplaces. Lean, brown, dry, with a hawk-noseand glinting eyes, surely he had come from far, strange places.
"Rrisa!" the Master spoke sharply, flinging the man's name at him withthe exasperation of overtensed nerves.
"_M'alme?_" (Master?) replied the other.
"Bring the evening food and drink," commanded the Master, in excellentArabic, guttural and elusive with strange hiatuses of breath.
Rrisa withdrew, salaaming. His master turned toward the westernwindows. There the white blankness of the map of Arabia seemed mockinghim. The Master's eyes grew hard; he raised his fist against the map,and smote it hard. Then once more he fell to pacing; and as he walkedthat weary space, up and down, he muttered to himself with words wecannot understand.
After a certain time, Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the softdusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with ahook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-potrose into a tall, minaret-like spike. On the tray stood also a smallcup having no handle; a dish of dates; a few wafers made of theArabian cereal called _temmin_; and a little bowl of _khat_ leaves.
"_M'alme, al khat aja_" (the khat has come), said Rrisa.
He placed the tray on the table at his master's side, and was about towithdraw when the other stayed him with raised hand.
"Tell me, Rrisa," he commanded, still speaking in Arabic, "where wertthou born? Show thou me, on that map."
The Arab hesitated a moment, squinting by the dim light that now hadfaded to purple dusk. Then he advanced a thin forefinger, and laidit on a spot that might have indicated perhaps three hundred milessoutheast of Mecca. No name was written on the map, there.
"How dost thou name that place, Rrisa?" demanded the Master.
"I cannot say, Master," answered the Arab, very gravely. As he stoodthere facing the western afterglow, the profound impassivity of hisexpression--a look that seemed to scorn all this infidel civilizationof an upstart race--grew deeper.
To nothing of it all did he owe allegiance, save to the Masterhimself--the Master who had saved him in the thick of the Gallipoliinferno. Captured by the Turks there, certain death had awaited himand shameful death, as a rebel against the Sublime Porte. The Masterhad rescued him, and taken thereby a scar that would go with him tothe grave; but that, now, does not concern our tale. Only we say againthat Rrisa's life lay always in the hands of this man, to do with ashe would.
None the less, Rrisa answered the question with a mere:
"Master, I cannot say."
"Thou knowest the name of the place where thou wast born?" demandedthe Master, calmly, from where he sat by the table.
"_A_ (yes), _M'alme_, by the beard of M'hamed, I do!"
"Well, what is it?"
Rrisa shrugged his thin shoulders.
"A tent, a hut? A village, a town, a city?"
"A city, Master. A great city, indeed. But its name I may not tellyou."
"The map, here, shows nothing, Rrisa. And of a surety, the makers ofmaps do not lie," the Master commented, and turned a little to pourthe thick coffee. Its perfume rose with grateful fragrance on the air.
The Master sipped the black, thick nectar, and smiled oddly. For amoment he regarded his unwilling orderly with narrowed eyes.
"Thou wilt not say they lie, son of Islam, eh?" demanded he.
"Not of choice, perhaps, _M'alme_," the Mussulman replied. "But if thecamel hath not drunk of the waters of the oasis, how can he know thatthey be sweet? These _Nasara_ (Christian) makers of maps, what canthey know of my people or my land?"
"Dost thou mean to tell me no man can pass beyond the desert rim, andenter the middle parts of Arabia?"
"I said not so, Master," replied the Arab, turning and facing hismaster, every sense alert, on guard against any admissions that mightbetray the secret he, like all his people, was sworn by a Very greatoath to keep.
"Not all men, true," the Master resumed. "The Turks--I know theyenter, though hated. But have no other foreign men ever seen theinterior?"
"_A, M'alme_, many--of the True Faith. Such, though they come fromChina, India, or the farther islands of the Indian Ocean, may enterfreely."
"Of course. But I am speaking now of men of the _Nasara_ faith. How ofthem? Tell me, thou!"
"You are of the _Nasara, M'alme!_ Do not make me answer this! You,having saved my life, own that life. It is yours. _Ana bermil illibedakea!_ (I obey your every command!) But do not ask me this! My headis at your feet. But let us speak of other things, O Master!"
The Master kept a moment's silence. He peered contemplatively at thedark silhouette of the Arab, motionless, impassive in the dusk.Then he frowned a very little, which was as near to anger as he eververged. Thoughtfully he ate a couple of the little _temmin_ wafers anda few dates. Rrisa waited in silent patience.
All at once the Master spoke.
"It is my will that thou speak to me and declare this thing, Rrisa,"said he, decisively. "Say, thou, hath no man of the _Nasara_ faithever penetrated as far as to the place of thy birth?"
"_Lah_ (no), _M'alme_, never. But three did reach an oasis not far towestward of it, fifty years ago, or maybe fifty-one."
"Ah, so?" exclaimed the Master, a touch of eagerness in his grave,impassive voice. "Who were they?"
"Two of the French blood, Master, and one of the Russian."
"And what happened to them, then?"
"They--died, Master."
"Thou dost mean, thy people did slay them?"
"They died, all three," repeated Rrisa, in even tones. "The jackalsdevoured them and the bones remained. Those bones, I think, are stillthere. In our dry country--bones remain, long."
"Hm! Yea, so it is! But, tell me, thou, is it true that in thy countrythe folk slay all _Nasara_ they lay hands on, by cutting with a sharpknife? Cutting the stomach, so?" He made an illustrative gesture.
"Since you do force me to speak, against my will, _M'alme_--you beingof the _Nasara_ blood--I will declare the truth. Yea, that is so."
"A pleasant custom, surely! And why always in the stomach? Why do theynever stab or cut like other races?"
"There are no bones in the stomach, to dull the edges of the knives,_M'alme_."
"Quite practical, that idea!" the Master exclaimed. Then he fellsilent again. He pressed his questions no further, concerning thegreat Central Desert of the land. To have done so, he k
new, would havebeen entirely futile. Beyond a certain point, which he could gaugeaccurately, neither gold nor fire would drive Rrisa. The Arab would atany hour of night or day have laid down his life for the Master; butthough it should mean death he would not break the rites of his faith,nor touch the cursed flesh of a pig, nor drink the forbidden drop ofwine, nor yet betray the secret of his land.
All at once the Arab spoke, in slow, grave tones.
"Your God is not my God, Master," said he, impersonally. "No, the Godof your people is not the God of mine. We have our own; and the landis ours, too. None of the _Nasara_ may come thither, and live. Threecame, that I have heard of, and--they died. I crave my Master'sbidding to depart."
"Presently, yea," the Master answered. "But I have one more questionfor thee. If I were to take thee, and go to thy land, but were not toask thy help there--if I were not to ask thee to guide me nor yet tobetray any secret--wouldst thou play the traitor to me, and deliver meup to thy people?"
"My head is at your feet, _M'alme_. So long as you did not ask meto do such things as would be unlawful in the eyes of Allah and theProphet, and seek to force me to them, this hand of mine would witherbefore it would be raised against the preserver of my life! I prayyou, _M'alme_, let me go!"
"I grant it. _Ru'c'h halla!_" (Go now!) exclaimed the Master, with awave of the hand. Rrisa salaamed again, and, noiseless as a wraith,departed.