The yells of rage and hate from below were all this time increasing in volume and savagery. Quite a pattering of rifle-bullets had developed against the metal body of the lower gallery and—harmlessly glancing—against the fuselage.
Smiling, the Master once more peered over. He seemed, as indeed he was, entirely oblivious to any fear. Too deeply had the Oriental belief of Kismet, of death coming at the appointed hour and no sooner, penetrated his soul, to leave any place there for the perils of chance.
The swarming Haram enclosure presented one of the most extraordinary spectacles ever witnessed by human eyes. The strangeness of the scene, witnessed under the declining sun of that desert land, was heightened by the fact that all these furious Moslems were seen from above. Men cease to appear human, at that angle. They seem to be only heads, from which legs and arms flail out grotesquely.
The Haram appeared to have become a vast pool of brown faces and agitated white ihrams (pilgrim robes) of weaving brown hands, of gleaming weapons. This pool, roaring to heaven, showed strange, violent currents in flow and refluent ebb of hate.
To descend into that maelstrom of frenzied murder-lust took courage of the highest order. But neither Bohannan nor the Frenchman had even paled. Not one of their men showed any hesitancy whatever.
"Ready, sir," said the major, crisply. "Faith, give the signal and down we go; and we'll either bring back what we're going after, or we'll all come back and report ourselves dead!"
"Just a minute, Major," the Master answered. He had opened a small door of the box containing the apparatus he had just clamped to the rail, and had taken out a combination telephone earpiece and receiver. With this at mouth and ear, he leaned over the rail. His lips moved in a whisper inaudible even to those in the lower gallery with him.
An astonishing change, however, swept over the infuriated mob in the Haram and throughout the radiating streets. One would have thought a bolt from heaven had struck the Moslems dumb. The angry tumult died; the vast hush that rose to Nissr was like a blow in the face, so striking was its contrast with the previous uproar. Most of the furious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanatics remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.