CHAPTER XXIII
A MISSION OF DREAD
Panting, with a slither of dry sand under their laboring feet, theLegionaries charged. At any second, a raking volley might burst fromthe dunes. The lethal pellets--so few in this vast space--might nothave taken effect. Not one heart there but was steeling itself againstambush and a shriveling fire.
Up they stormed. The Master's voice cried, once more: "Give 'em Hell!"
He was the first man to top the dune, close to the wady's edge. Therehe checked himself, revolver in mid-air, eyes wide with astonishment.This way and that he peered, squinting with eyes that did notunderstand.
"_Nom de Dieu!_" ejaculated Leclair, at his side.
"_Wallah_!" shouted Rrisa, furiously. "Oh, may Allah smite theirfaces!"
Each man, as he leaped to the rampart top, stood transfixed withastonishment. Most of them cried out in their native tongues.
Their amazement was well-grounded. Not an Arab was to be seen. Of allthose Beni Harb, none remained--not even the one shot by the Master.The sand on the dune was cupped with innumerable prints of feet inrude _babooshes_ (native shoes), and empty cartridges lay all about.But not one of the Ahl Bayt, or People of the Black Tents, wasvisible.
"Sure, now, can you beat that?" shouted Bohannan, exultantly, andwaved his service cap. "Licked at the start! They quit cold!"
Sheffield, at his side, dropped to the sand, his heart drilled by ajagged slug. The explosion of that shot crackled in from another lineof dunes, off to eastward--a brown, burnt ridge, parched by the tropicsun of ages.
Sweating with the heat and the exertion of the charge, amazed athaving found--in place of windrows of sleeping men--an enemy stilldistant and still as formidable as ever, the Legionaries for a momentremained without thought or tactics.
Rrisa, livid with fury and baffled hate, flung up wild arms and beganscreaming the most extravagant insults at the still invisible nomads,whose fire was now beginning again all along their line.
"O rejected ones, and sons of the rejected!" the Arab howled. "O hogsand brothers of hogs!" He fell to gnawing his own hand, as Arabs willin an excess of passion. Once more he screamed: "O Allah, deny nottheir skin and bones to the eternal flame! O owls, oxen, beggars,cut-off ones! Oh, give them the burning oil, Allah! The cold faces!Oh, wither their hands! Make them _kusah_! (beardless). Oh, theseswine with black livers, gray eyes, beards of red. Vilest that everhammered tent-pegs, goats of El Akhfash! O Beni Harb![1]"
[Footnote 1: Beni Harb, or Sons of Battle, by a change in theaspiration of the "H," becomes "Sons of Flight, or Cowardice."]
The Master gripped his furious orderly, and pushed him back, down theslope.
"No more of that, Rrisa!" he commanded, fiercely. "These be oldwoman's ways, these screamings! Silence, _Bismillah_!"
He hailed the others.
"They score, the first round! Their game is to retreat, if they'resuspicious of any ruse or any attack from us. They're not goingto stand and fight. We can't get near enough to them to throw theremaining lethal capsules over. And we can't chase them into thedesert. Their plan is to hold us here, and pick us off one byone--wipe us out, without losing a man!
"Dig in again! That's our only game now. We're facing a situationthat's going to tax us to the utmost, but there's only one thing todo--dig in!"
Life itself lay in digging, death in exposure to the fire ofthose maddeningly elusive, unseen Bedouins. Like so many dogs theLegionaries once more fell to excavating, with their knives and theirbare hands, the sun-baked sand that slithered back again into theirshallow trench almost as fast as they could throw it out.
A ragged fire from the Beni Harb lent speed to their efforts. Dead menand wounded could now have no attention. Life itself was all at stake.
In their rude trench they lay at last, sweating, panting, coveredwith sand and dust, with thirst beginning to take hold on them, andincreasing swarms of flies--tiny, vicious, black things, all sting andpoison--beginning to hum about them. On watch they rested there, whiledull umbers of nightfall glowered through the framework of _Nissr_,tossing in the surf. Without much plan, wrecked, confronted by whatseemed perils unsurmountable, the Flying Legion waited for the comingof dark to respite them from sniping.
The Master, half-way along the line with Leclair, Rrisa, the major and"Captain Alden," mentally took stock of losses thus far sustained. Thewounded were: Alden, Bohannan (burned), Enemark and himself. The dead:Kloof, Sheffield, Beziers, Travers, Gorlitz, Auchincloss, Daimamoto.
Twenty-four living remained, including Leclair. The mortality, inabout eighteen hours, had been twenty percent. At this rate the Masterunderstood the Flying Legion was slated for very speedy destruction.
"It's touch-and-go now," he pondered. "We've got to annihilate theseinfernal Bedouins, repair the liner and get ahead, or--but there's no'or' in this! None, at all!"
As dark settled down over the Sahara, the leprous patches of white,saline earth took on a ghostly pallor. The light of the southern starsbegan to glow with soft radiance. A gigantic emptiness, a rollingvacancy of sea and earth--brine-waves to rear of the Legion,sand-waves ahead--shrank the party to seeming insignificance.
A soft, purple tapestry of night unrolled across the desert; the winddied, and the suffocating breath of overheated sands began to emanatefrom the baked earth. And ever more and more pestiferously theinfernal torment of the flies increased.
Inflamed with chagrin, rage, and grief for the lost comrades, theLegionaries lay in waiting. No conversation ran along the line.Silence held them--and their own thoughts. Wounds had been dressed aswell as they might be. Nothing remained but to await the Master's nextcommand.
"Captain Alden's" suggestion that Kloof, still lying aboard in theliner, should be seen to, met a rebuff from the Master. Living ordead, one man could not now endanger the lives of any others. And thatdanger still lay in any exposure was proved by the intermittent firingfrom the Arab lines.
The Beni Harb were obviously determined to hold back any possibilityof a charge, or any return to the protection of the giant flying-ship.Bullets whimpered overhead, spudded into the sand, or pinged againstmetal on the liner. Parthian fighters though these Beni Harb were,they surely were well stocked with munitions and they meant sternbusiness.
"And stern business is what they shall have, once the dark iscomplete," the Master pondered. "It is annihilation for them or forus. There can be no compromise, nor any terms but slaughter!"
One circumstance was favorable--the falling of the wind. Had it risen,kicking up a harsher surf, _Nissr_ must have begun to break. But asthe cupped hand of night, closing over the earth, had also shut awaythe wind, the air-liner was now resting more easily. Surf stillfoamed about her floats and lower gallery--surf all spangled with thephosphorescence that the Arabs call "jewels of the deep"--but unlesssome sudden squall should fling itself against the coast, everyprobability favored the liner taking no further damage.
In silence, save for the occasional easing of positions along thetrench, the Legionaries waited. Strange dim colors appeared alongthe desert horizons, half visible in the gloom--funeral palls of dimpurple, with pale, ghostly reflections almost to mid-heaven.
Some of the men had tobacco and matches that had escaped being wet;and cigarettes were rolled, passed along, lighted behind protectionsthat would mask the match-gleam from the enemy. The comforting aromaof smoke drifted out on the desert heat. As for the Master, from timeto time he slipped a khat leaf into his mouth, and remained gravelypondering.
At length his voice sounded along the trench.
"Men of the Flying Legion," said he, "this situation is grave. Wecan't escape on foot, north or south. We are without provisions orwater. The nearest white settlement is Rio de Oro, about a hundredmiles to southward; and even if we could reach that, harassed by theBeni Harb, we might all be executed there, as pirates. We must goforward or die right here on this beach.
"In any kind of a straight fight, we are hopelessly out-classed. Thereare about t
hree hundred men against twenty-four of us, some of whomare wounded. Even if we took life for life, the Bedouins would loseless than ten percent, and we'd be wiped out. And we couldn't expectto take life for life, charging a position like theirs in thenight. It can't be a stand-up battle. It's got to be science againstsavagery, or nothing."
A murmur of approval trickled along the sands. Confidence wasreturning. The Legionaries' hearts tautened again with faith in thisstrange, this usually silent and emotionless man whose very name wasunknown to almost all of them.
"Just one other word," the Master continued, his voice calm, unshaken,quite impersonal. "If science fails, do not allow yourselves to becaptured. The tortures of Hell await any white man taken by thesefanatics. Remember, always keep one mercy-bullet--for yourselves!"
Another little silence. Then the chief said:
"I am going to take two men and undertake what seems a preposterousattack. I need only two. I shall not call for volunteers, because youwould all offer yourselves. You must stay here."
"In case my plan succeeds, you are to come at my call--three longhails. If my plan fails, Major Bohannan will command you; and I knowyou will all fight to the last breath and to the final drop of blood!"
"Don't do this thing, sir!" the major protested. "What chance ofsuccess has it? These desert men can see, where a white man is blind.They can scent danger as a hunting-dog scents the spoor of game.You're simply throwing your life away, and we need that life!"
"I will take Lieutenant Leclair, who knows these people," the Mastercontinued, paying no heed, "and Rrisa, who is of their kin. Youothers, all sit tight!"
A chuckling laugh, out there on the vague sands, seemed to mock him.It burst into a raw, barking cachinnation, that somehow stirred theblood with shrinking horror.
"One of the Sahara Sanitary Corps," remarked Leclair, dryly. "A hyena.Well may he laugh! Feasting enough for him and his before this danceis over!"
A gleam of fire, off to the left where the farther dunes approachedthe sea, suddenly began to show. All eyes turned toward it. The littlefire soon grew into a leaping flame, its base hidden by sand-mounds.
No Arabs were visible there, but they had surely lighted it, usingdriftwood from the beach. Up into the purple-velvet night whirledsparks and fire-tongues; red smoke spiraled on the vagrant desertbreeze.
"A signal-fire, Master!" whispered Rrisa. "It will be seen in faroases. If it burn two hours, that will mean an enemy with greatplunder. Others of the Beni Harb will come; there will be gathering ofthe tribes. That fire must not burn, _M'alme!_"
"Nor must the Beni Harb live!" To the major: "Collect a dozen lethalguns and bring them to me!"
When the guns were at hand, the Master apportioned them betweenLeclair, Rrisa, and himself. With the one apiece they already had,each man carried five of the guns, in pockets and in belt. The smallremaining stock of lethal pellets were distributed and the weaponsfully loaded.
"In three minutes, Major," said the Master, "we leave these lines.Ten minutes after that, open a scattering fire, all along the trench.Shoot high, so as to be sure we are not hit."
"Ah, a barrage, sir?" the major exclaimed.
"Not in the least. My purpose is quite different. Never mind, butlisten to my orders. Keep up that fire sparingly, for five minutes.Then cease. And keep silent till we return.
"Remember, I will give three long hails when we start to come back.Those will warn you not to shoot if you see dim figures in the night.Either we shall be back in these lines by nine o'clock, or--"
"Or we will go after you!" came the voice of "Captain Alden," witha little catch of anxiety not at all masculine. Something in thefemininity of her promise stirred the Master's heart a second, but hedismissed it.
"Either we shall return by nine, or never," he said calmly.
"Let me go, then!" whispered Alden. "Go, in place of you! You are moreneeded than I. Without you all these men are lost. Without me--theywould not miss me, sir!"
"I cannot argue that point with you, Captain. We start at once." Heturned to Rrisa, and in Arabic said:
"The road we are about to take may lead thee to Paradise. Asand-adder, a scorpion, or a bullet may be the means. Dost thou standfirm with me?"
The Arab stretched out a thin, brown hand to him in the dark.
"Firm as my faith, Master!" he replied. "Both to help you, and todestroy the _beni kalb_ (dog-sons), I would pass through Al Araf, intoEblis! What will be, must be. No man dieth except by permission ofAllah, according to what is written on the scrolls of the angel, AlSijil.
"I go with you, Master, where you go, were it to Jehannum! I swearthat by the rising of the stars, which is a mighty oath. _Tawakkal alAllah!_" (Place reliance on Allah!)
"By the rising of the stars!" repeated Leclair, also in Arabic. "I tooam with you to the end, _M'alme!_"
The Master assured himself that his night-glasses with the megaphoticreflectors were in their case slung over his shoulder. He looked oncemore to his weapons, both ordinary and lethal, and likewise murmured:
"By the rising of the stars!"
Then said he crisply, while the fire-glow of Leclair's stronglyinhaled cigarette threw a dim light on the tense lines of his woundedface:
"Come! Let us go!"
Leclair buried his cigarette in the warm earth.
Rrisa caught up a handful of sand and flung it toward the unseenenemy, in memory of the decisive pebbles thrown by Mohammed at theBattle of Bedr, so great a victory for him.
Then he followed the Master and Leclair, with a whispered:
"_Bismillah wa Allahu akbar_![1]"
[Footnote 1: In the name of Allah, and Allah is greatest!]
Together, crawling on their bellies like dusty puff-adders of theSahara itself, the three companions in arms--American, French,Arab--slid out of the shallow trench, and in the gloom were lost tosight of the beleaguered Flying Legion.
Their mission of death, death to the Beni Harb or to themselves, hadbegun.
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