The dead, left behind, could not now depress the Legionaries' spirits. To be on solid earth again, in this wonderland with the Golden City fronting them, quickened every man's pulse.
What though they were but a handful, ringed round by grim, jagged mountains, beyond which lay hundreds of leagues of burning sand? What though an unknown people of great numbers already had begun to stir in that vast hive of gold? What though all of Islam, which had already learned of the sacrilege the accursed Feringí had wrought, was lusting their blood? Nothing of this mattered. It was enough for the Legionaries that adventure still beckoned onward, ever on!
The Master, standing there before them, called the roll. We should listen, by way of knowing just how the Legion was now composed. It consisted of the following: Adams, "Captain Alden," Bohannan, Bristol, Brodeur, Cracowicz, Emilio, Enemark, Frazíer, Grison, Janina, Lebon, Leclair, L'Heureux, Manderson, Menendez, Prisrend, Rennes, Seres, Simonds, Wallace. All the wounded had recovered sufficiently to be of some service. The dead were: Travers, who had died on the passage of the Atlantic; Auchincloss and Gorlitz, burned to death; Kloof, Daimamoto, Beziers and Sheffield, killed by the Beni Harb; Lombardo, killed by the Meccans; Rrisa, suicide.
In addition to these, we must not forget the Sheik Abd el Rahman, still locked a prisoner in the cabin that for some days had been his swift-flying prison-cell of torment.
The Master had just finished checking his roster, when quite without any preliminary disturbance a crackle of rifle-fire began spattering from the city. And all at once, out of the gate opposite Nissr, appeared a white-whirling swarm of figures, at the same time that a green banner, bearing a star and crescent, broke out from the highest minaret.
The figures issuing in a dense mass from the gate were horsemen, all; and they were riding full drive, ventre à terre. Out into the plain they debouched, with robes flying, with a green banner, steel flashing, and over all, a great and continual volleying of rifle-fire.
This horde of rushing cavaliers must have numbered between five and six hundred; and a fine sight they made as the Master got his binoculars on them. Here, there, a bit of lively color stood out vividly against the prevailing snowy white of the mass; but for the most part, horses and men alike came rushing down like a drive of furious snow across that wondrous green slope between the palm-groves and the city wall.
As they drew near, the snapping of burnouses and cherchias in the wind, the puffs of powder-smoke, the glint of brandished arms grew clearer; and now, too, the muffled sound of kettle-drums rolled down-breeze, in booming counterpoint to the sharp staccato of the rifles.
Furious as an army of jinnee with wild cries, screams, howls, as they stood in their stirrups and discharged their weapons toward the sky, the horsemen of Jannati Shahr drove down upon the little group of Legionaries.
The major loosened his revolver in its holster. Others did the same. At the machine-guns, the gunners settled themselves, waiting the Master's word of command to mow into the white foam of that insurging wave—a wave of frantic riders and of lathering Nedj horses, the thunder of whose hoofs moment by moment welled up into a heart-breaking chorus of power.