"You did not save the mercy-bullet that time, eh?"
"I did not, Effendi. I did not know them then as I do now. They knocked us both senseless, and then began hacking our machine to pieces with their huge balas (yataghans). They thought our plane was some gigantic bird.
"Superstition festers in their very bones! The giant bird, they believed, would ruin their date crops; and, besides, they thirsted for the blood of the Franks. As a matter of fact, my Captain, these people do sometimes drink a little of the blood of a slaughtered enemy."
"Impossible!"
"True, I tell you! They destroyed our plane with fire and sword, reviled us as pigs and brothers of pigs, and named poor Lebon 'kalb ibn kalb,' or 'dog and son of a dog.' Then they separated into two bands. One band departed toward Wady Tawarik, taking Lebon. They informed me that on the morrow they would crucify him on a cross of palm-wood, head downward."
"And they executed Lebon?"
Leclair shrugged his shoulders.
"I suppose so," he answered with great bitterness. "I have never seen or heard of him since. As for me, they reserved me for some festivities at Makam Jibrail. During the next night, a column of Spanish troops from Rio de Oro rushed their camp, killed sixty or seventy of the brown demons, and rescued me. Since then I have lusted revenge on the Beni Harb!"
"No wonder," put in the chief, once more looking at the beach, where now the war-party was plainly visible to the naked eye in some detail. The waving of their arms could be distinguished; and plainly glittered the blood-crimson sunset light on rifle-barrels, swords, and javelins. The Master loosened his revolver in its holster. "About twenty minutes from now, at this rate," he added, "some of the Beni Harb will have reason to remember you."
"Yes, and may Jehannum take them all!" exclaimed the Frenchman, passionately. His eyes glowered with hate as he peered across the narrowing strip of waves and surf. "Jehannum, where every time their skins are burned off, as the Koran says, new ones will grow to be burned off again! Where 'they shall have garments of fire fitted upon them and boiling water poured upon their heads, and they shall be beaten with maces of iron—"