The Flying Legion

by George Allan England

"SONS OF THE PROPHET, SLAY!"

The Olema shook an emphatic head of negation. "Yafta Allah!" he exclaimed, using the absolute, decisive formula of refusal in Arab bargaining. "This gold of ours is sacred. The angel Jibrail himself struck the Iron Mountains with his wing, at the same hour when the Black Stone fell from Paradise, and caused the gold to gush out. It is not earthly gold, but the gold of angels.

"Not one grain can be taken from El Barr. The curses of Jehannun, of Eblis, rest on Arab or Ajam who dare attempt it. Surely, such a one shall be put to the sword, and his soul in the bottom pits of Hell shall be taken by the feet and forelock and cast into the hottest flames! That soul shall eat of the fruit of the tree Al Zakkum, and be branded forever with the treasure he did attempt to ravish from us!"

"Remember, great Olema, we did bring thee the Myzab and Kaukab el
Durri, and the holy Black Stone!"

"I remember, White Sheik, and will reward thee, but not with gold!" The old man's face was stern, deep-lined, hard; his eyes had assumed a dangerous glitter. "Thou hast a good tongue, but though it speak from now till the angel Al Sijil roll up all the scrolls of life, it shall not avail.

"Ask some other thing; and remember, if thou dost try by any magic to remove even a sand-grain of this gold, the salt will be no longer between thee and me. This must be added to the two things I have already told thee of, that would take away the salt!"

Narrowly the Master eyed him, then nodded. Huge though this rebuff had been, and great as the loss must be, the Master realized the utter impossibility of coming to any terms with Bara Miyan on a gold basis. All the fanaticism of these people would resist this, to the death. Even to insist further might precipitate a massacre. Therefore, like the philosopher he was, he turned to other possibilities, considering what was best to be done.

The Olema spoke again, pausing now and then as he puffed reflectively at his water-pipe. Said he:

"I will tell thee a great secret, O Frank. In this city lie the lost books of the Arwam (Greek) wise men and poets. When the Alexandrian library was burned by Amrou, at Omar's order, the four thousand baths of the city were heated for six months by ancient scrolls. I have heard that ye Feringi have greatly mourned the loss of the Arwam learning and poetry. Not all this treasure was lost, White Sheik!"

The Master started, peered at Bara Miyan and forgot to chew his soothing khat leaves.

"And then—?" asked he.

"Some twenty thousand of the most precious parchments were privately carried by our Sufis to Medina, and thence, after many years, to Jannati Shahr. Here they still lie, in perfect form, clearly to be read. This is a treasure that would set the world of the Feringi ablaze and make thee as a god among thy people. Ask this gift, O Frank, and it shall be granted thee! For the mere asking, this treasure shall be thine!"

The Master shook his head. Deeply as he understood the incalculable value of the lost books of antiquity, he well knew that to offer his Legion such a booty would be all in vain. Men who have suffered and bled, risked all, seen their comrades die, and even now stand in the shadow of death—hoping some vast, tangible loot—are not proper material for discussion of literary values.

"Yafta Allah!" the Master exclaimed, with emphasis equal to the Olema's. "No, Bara Miyan, this cannot be."

"Our dancing and singing maidens are like a flame of Paradise. Their enchantments make the heart of man glad with perpetual springtime. Choose, O Frank, two handmaids for thyself and for each of thy men, and let them be yours to go with you to your own country and to be your chattels and your sweet delights!"

The eyes of "Captain Alden" narrowed with sudden, painful emotion as she peered at the Master. With some smattering of Arabic, she may have caught something of the sense of this offer. But the Master, unmoved by this second offer of Olema's, merely shook his head again, saying:

"No, Bara Miyan. Though thy women be fair as the dawn over the Sea of
Oman, and soft-eyed as the gazelles in the oasis of the Wady el
Ward (Vale of Flowers), not for us are they. We seek other rewards.
Therefore will I ask thee still another question."

"Thy question shall be answered, O Frank!"

"Is it true that the Caliph el Walid, in Hegira 88, sent forty camel-loads of cut jewels to Mecca?"

"That is true."

"And that, later, all those jewels were brought hither?"

"Even so! It is also true that two Franks in Hegira 550, digged a tunnel into the Meccan treasury from a house they had hired in the guise of Egyptian Hujjaj. They were both beheaded, White Sheik, and their bodies were burned to ashes."

"No doubt," the Master answered, nonchalantly. "But they had brought no rich gifts to the Meccans. Therefore, now speaking of these forty camel-loads of cut jewels, O Bara Miyan—"

"It is in thy mind to ask for those, White Sheik?"

"Allah giveth thee two hearts, Bara Miyan, as well as the riches of Karun. Surely, 'the generous man is Allah's friend,' and thy hand is not tied up."[1]

[Footnote 1: "To have two hearts" (dhu'kulbein) signifies to be prudent, wise. Karun is the Arabic Croesus. "Thy hand is tied up" is equivalent to calling a man niggardly.]

The Olema, a quick decision gleaming in his eyes—though what that decision might be, who could tell?—put down the amber mouthpiece and with an eloquent, lean hand gestured toward a silk-curtained doorway at the right of the vast hall.

"Come with me, then, White Sheik!" said he, arising and beckoning his white-robed sub-chiefs. He raised a finger in signal to the Maghrabis, though what the signal might mean, the Legionaries could not know. "Come, with all thy men. And, by Allah! I will show thee the things whereof thou dost speak to me. I will show thee all these things—and others!

"Come!"

In silence the Legionaries followed old Bara Miyan through the curtained doorway; and after them came the sub-chiefs. The Maghrabi stranglers, noiseless and bare-footed, fell in behind; a long ominous line of black human brutes, seeming hardly above the intellectual level of so many gorillas.

Stout-hearted as the Legionaries were, a kind of numbing oppression was closing in upon them. City battlements and double walls of inner citadel, then massive gates and now again more doors that closed behind them, intervened between them and even the perilous liberty of the plain of El Barr. And, in addition to all this, some hundreds of thousands of Arabs, waiting without, effectually surrounded them, and the Maghrabi men cast their black shadow, threatening and ominous, over the already somber enough canvas.

A web, they all felt, was closing about them that only chance and boldness could unravel. Everything now hung on the word of an aged fanatic, who for any fancied breach of the Oath of Salt might deliver them to slavery, torture, death.

"Remember, men," the Master warned his men as they penetrated the dim, golden-walled passage also lighted with sandal-oil mash'als—"remember the mercy-bullets. If it comes to war, none of us must be taken prisoner!"

To the Olema he exclaimed, in suave tones:

"Dakhilak, Ya Shayk! (Under thy protection, O Sheik!) Let not the laws of hospitality or the Oath of Salt be forgotten!"

The Olema only smiled oddly, in the dim and perfumed obscurity of the passageway, along which the slither of the many sandaled feet on the gold pavement made a soft, creeping sound. Nothing more was said—except for some grumbled mouthings of Bohannan—during the next few minutes.

The passage seemed enormously long to the Master as, flanked by Leclair, "Captain Alden," and the major, he peered curiously at its smooth, dull-yellow walls all chased with geometrical patterns picked out in silver and copper, between the dull-hued tapestries, and banded with long extracts from the Koran inlaid in Tumar characters of mother-of-pearl.

Several turnings, and three flights of steps descending through the solid gold "dyke" that ran down into the bowels of the earth no one could even guess how far, served still more to confuse the Legionaries' sense of direction and to increase their conviction that, in case of any outbreak of hostilities, they would find themselves trapped more helplessly than rats in a cage.

It is no aspersion on their bravery to say that more than one among them had already begun inwardly to curse this wild-goose chase into Jannati Shahr. It all had now begun to assume absolutely the appearance of a well-formulated plan of treachery. Even the Master gave recognition to this appearance, by saying again: "Be ready for a quick draw. But whatever you do, don't be the aggressor. Watch your step!"

The passage suddenly reached its end. Another heavy door of the yellow metal swung back, and all issued into a hall even more vast than the one they had quitted.

No windows here admitted light. The air, though pure enough as from some hidden source of ventilation, hung dead and heavy. Not even the censers, depending from the dim roof, far above, could freshen it; nor could the cressets' light make more than a kind of ghostly aura through the gloom.

By this dim half-illumination the Master beheld, there before him in the middle of the tremendous golden pavement, a strange, pyramidal object rising four-square in the shape of an equilateral triangle—just such a triangle as was formed by the locations of Mecca, Bab el Mandeb, and El Barr.

This pyramid, polished and elaborately engraved, towered some ninety feet above the floor. It was pierced by numbers of openings, like the entrances to galleries; and up the smooth face nearest the entrance to the hall, a stairway about ten feet wide mounted toward the apex.

Completely finished all save the upper part, which still remained truncated, the golden pyramid gleamed dully in the vague light, a thing of awe and wonder, grimly beautiful, fearsome to gaze up at. For some unknown reason, as the Legionaries grouped themselves about their Master, an uncanny influence seemed to emanate from this singular object. All remained silent, as the Olema, an enigmatic smile on his thin, bearded lips, raised a hand toward the pyramid.

"This thing, O Frank, thou shouldst see," he remarked dryly. "Above all, the inner chambers. Wilt thou go with me?"

"I will go," the Master answered. "Lead the way!"

The Olema beckoned one of the Maghrabis, who delivered a torch of some clear-burning, resinous, and perfumed material into his hand.

"Come," bade the old man, and gestured toward the steps of gold.

Together, in silence, they mounted toward the dim, high-arched roof. From near the top, the Master, glancing down, could see the white-robed mass of the Arabs, the small, compact group of his own men; and, behind them all, the dim, black lines of the stranglers. But already the Olema was gesturing for him to enter the highest of the galleries.

Into this, carved in the virgin metal, both made their way. The torchlight flung strange, wavering gleams on smooth walls niched with dark embrasures. At the further end of the passage, the Olema stopped.

"Here is a new trophy, just added to all that Allah hath placed in our hands," said he, gravely. "There are some three-and-twenty places yet left, to fill. Wilt thou see the new trophy?"

The Master nodded silently. Raising the torch, the Olema thrust it into one of the embrasures. There the Master beheld a human skull.

The empty eye-sockets, peering out at him, seemed to hold a malevolent malice. That the skull had been but freshly cleaned, was obvious.

"Abd el Rahman?" asked the Master.

"Yea, the Apostate," answered Bara Miyan. "At last, Allah hath delivered him to us of El Barr."

"Thou hast used a heavy hand on the Apostate, O Sheik."

"We of Jannati Shahr do not anoint rats' heads with jasmine oil. Tell me, Frank, how many men hast thou?"

"Three-and-twenty, is it not so?"

"Yea, it is so. Tell me, Bara Miyan, this whole pyramid—"

"Skulls, yea."

"This is the Pyramid of Ayeshah that I have heard strange tales of?" the Master demanded, feeling even his hard nerves quiver.

"The Pyramid of Ayeshah."

"No myth, then, but reality," the Master commented, fascinated in spite of himself. "Even as the famous Tower of Skulls at Jerba, in Tunis!"

"Thou hast said it, O Frank. Here be more than ten-score thousand skulls of the enemies of Islam, of blasphemers against the Prophet, of those who have penetrated the Empty Abodes, of those who have sought to carry gold from El Barr. It is nearly done, this pyramid. But there still remain three-and-twenty vacant places to be filled."

For a long minute, the eyes of the Master and of Bara Miyan met, in silence, with the torch-flare glinting strange lights from them. Then the Olema spoke.

"Hast thou seen enough?" demanded he.

"Mine eyes are filled."

"And dost thou still ask rewards of gold?"

"Nay, it is as I have already told thee; let the cut jewels of the
Caliph el Walid suffice!"

"It is well spoken. Let us descend."

In silence, again, they left the gruesome gallery and went down the stairway with the Olema's torch leaving vague, fantastic wreaths of odorous smoke curling up along the polished, dull-yellow slant of the pyramid. Back on the floor again, the Master said to his men:

"This pyramid is filled with skulls of men who have tried to carry gold from El Barr. For the present, we must dismiss gold from our minds. Common prudence dictates that we abandon all idea of gold, take whatever reward we can get, and leave this city at once.

"The gold is of no importance, whatever. On the way back over the outer foothills of the Iron Mountains, many outcrops of gold exist. Nissr can poise above some of these; and a few hours' labor will load her with all the gold we can carry. There can be no sense in trying to get any here. It would simply add to our peril.

"Everything is therefore quite satisfactory. But watch every move. If nothing breaks, in two hours from now we should be on our way. Again I caution you all, keep silent and make no move without my orders. The prize is at our very finger-tips. So long as we shed no blood and as nothing happens to the Myzab and the Black Stone, we are safe. But remember—be careful!"

The Olema touched him on the elbow.

"Now," the old man asked, "now, O Frank, wouldst thou see the cut jewels of the Caliph el Walid?"

"Even so!"

"Come, then!" And Bara Miyan gestured toward another door that led, at the left, out of the Chamber of the Pyramid.

Again the strange procession formed itself, as before, with the gorilla-like Maghrabi stranglers a rear guard. A few minutes through still another passage in the gold brought them to a door of ebony, banded with silver. No door of gold, it seemed, sufficed for this chamber they were about to enter. Stronger materials were needed here.

This door, like the others, swung silently on its massive hinges.

"Come, O Master of the fighting-men of Feringistan!" exclaimed the Olema. "In Allah's name, take of the gifts that I have already offered thee, and then in peace depart!"

Before the Master could reply, a shuddering concussion shivered through the solid gold all about them. The tremor of this shock, like that of an earthquake, trembled the cressets on the walls and made the huge ebony door, ajar into a dim-lighted hall, groan on its hinges.

Stupefied, Legionaries and Arabs alike, stared silently under the vague gleam of the torches.

Then, far and faint, as though coming along tortuous passages from distances above, a muffled concussion smote their ears. The shock of the air-wave was distinctly felt, eloquent of the catastrophe that in a second of time had shattered every plan and hope.

As if an echo of that thunderous, far explosion, a faint wailing of voices—echoing from very far above—drifted eerily along the passage; voices in blended rage and fear, in hate, agony, despair.

"God above—!" the major gulped. "Captain Alden" whipped her pistol from its holster, not a fraction of a second before the Master's leaped into his hand. The torchlight flickered on Leclair's service-revolver, and was reflected on the guns of every Legionary.

"If that's the explosive," Bohannan cried, "faith, we're in for it! Is it the explosive that's blown Hell out o' the Black Stone?"

A wild cry echoed down the passage. The Olema, his face suddenly distorted with a passion of hate, snatched a pistol from beneath his burnous.

"The dogs of Feringistan have spat on all Islam!" he screamed, in a shrill, horrible voice. "The Black Stone is no more! Vengeance on the unbelieving dogs! Allah il Allah! Kill, kill, and let no dog escape!

"Sons of the Prophet! Slay me these dogs! Kill!"