“You say zat! Lemme see, lemme see, lemme see!”
He roofed his eyes with his hands, and peered into the distance.
“Ach! zey veep!” he said, rubbing away the tears that had gathered. “It is for vant of food, nozink else.”
He looked again.
“Boy, you are right!” he exclaimed, “truly it is ze airship. Zey come for me! Ach! you dirty Moors, now you may go choke! I vizdraw vat I said about give myself opp. I vas not myself; I vas—I vas—anozer man. Ach, boy, so am I indeed hungry!”
The two watched the airship drawing nearer. For a moment Abdul wondered whether it would come into any danger from the rifles of the Moors either below or on the hilltop above. But remembering how clearly everything on the ground could be seen from the car of the airship, he was reassured, guessing that Tom would descry the besiegers in plenty of time to avoid their shots.
To gain the hilltop the airship had approached at a considerable altitude, but was now dropping. About half a mile from the cave it suddenly made an upward sweep, and Abdul knew that the enemy had been seen. Before it sailed out of sight over the hill, Abdul plucked off his djellab, and waved it in the mouth of the cave. The signal provoked two or three shots from those of the Moors below whose attention was not engrossed by the machine, which some of them had seen before and of which all had heard most marvellous accounts. Abdul was unhurt, and his signal was answered by a shot from the car of the airship, which then passed out of sight.
“Famos! Zey know ve are still alive! Mein Gott! truly mein hunger is colossal.”
Tom had in point of fact discovered the enemy at the moment when Abdul noticed the change in the direction of the airship. The discovery was by no means a welcome one.
“I didn’t reckon on their hiding-place being found out,” he said to Oliphant. “It makes things rather awkward.”