Nearer the land, ever sagging down but still afloat—though now at times some of the heavier surges broke in foam over the rail of the lower gallery—the Eagle of the Sky drifted on, on. Hardly a half-mile now lay between air-liner and shore. Suddenly the Master began to speak:
"Listen, Lieutenant! Events are at a crisis, now. I will speak very plainly. You know the Arabs, good and bad. You know Islam, and all that the Mohammedan world is. You know there are more than 230,000,000 people of this faith, scattered from Canton to Sierra Leone, and from Cape Town to Tobolsk, all over Turkey, Africa, and Arabia—an enormous, fanatic, fighting race! Probably, if trained, the finest fighting-men in the world, for they fear neither pain nor' death. They welcome both, if their hearts are enlisted!"
"Yes, yes, I know! Their Hell yawns for cowards; their Paradise opens to receive the brave! Death is as a bride to the Moslem!"
"Fanatics all, Lieutenant! Only a few white men have ever reached Mecca and returned. Bartema, Wild, and Joseph Pitt succeeded, and so did Hurgronje, Courtelmont, Burton, and Burckhardt—though, the Arabs admit only the two last.
"But how many hundreds have been beheaded or crucified? No pilgrimage ever takes place without a few such victims. A race of this type is a potential world-power of incalculable magnitude. Men who will die for Islam and for their master without a quiver—"
"My Captain! What do you mean?"
The lieutenant's eyes had begun to fill with flame. His hand tightened to a fist.
"Mon Dieu, what do you mean? Can it be possible you dream of ruling the races of Islam?"
Something whined overhead, from the beach now only about a quarter-mile distant. Then a shot from behind the dunes cracked out across the crumbling, hissing surf.
"Ah," laughed Leclair, "the ball has opened, eh? Well this is now no time for talk, for empty words. I think I understand you, my Captain; and to the death I stand at your right hand!"