"Fire!" cried the Master.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
BARA MIYAN, HIGH PRIEST
The crash of six machine-guns clattered into a chattering tumult, muzzles pointed high over the heads of the Jannati Shahr men. Up into the still, hot air jetted vicious spurts of flame.
The Legion's answer lasted but a minute. As the trays of blanks became empty, the tumult ceased.
Silence fell, strangely heavy after all that uproar. This silence lengthened impressively, with the massed horsemen on one side, the Legionaries on the other. Between them stretched a clear green space of turf. Behind loomed the vast bulk of Nissr, scarred, battle-worn, but powerful. Away in the distance, the glinting golden walls shimmered across the plain; and over all the Arabian sun glowed down as if a-wonder at this scene surpassing strange.
Forward stepped the Master, with a word to Leclair to follow him but to stand a little in the rear. The old Sheik dismounted; and followed by another graybeard, likewise advanced. When the distance was but about eight feet between them, both halted. Silence continued, broken only by the dull drone of one engine still running on board the ship, by the creaking of saddle-leather, the whinny of a barb.
Lithe, powerful, alert, with his cap held over his heart, the Master stood there peering from under his thick, dark brows at the aged Sheik. A lean-faced old man the Sheik was, heavily bearded with white, his brows snowy, his eyes a hawk's, and the fine aquilinity of his nose the hallmark of pure Arab blood.
Hard as iron he looked, gravely observing, unabashed in face of these white strangers and of this mysterious flying house. The very spirit of the Arabian sun seemed to have been caught in his gleaming eyes, to glitter there, to reflect its pride, its ardor. He reminded one of a falcon, untamed, untamable. And his dress, its colors distinguishing him from the mass of his followers, still further proclaimed the rank he occupied.
His cherchia of jade-green silk was bound with a ukal, or fillet of camel's-hair; his burnous, also silk, showed tenderest shades of lavender and rose. Under its open folds could be seen a violet jacket with buttons of filigree ivory. He had handed his gun to the man behind him, and now was unarmed save for a gadaymi, or semicircular knife, thrust into his silk sash of crimson, with frayed edges.