“That way does the carnage rage.”
He gave more minutely, however, details of distance, territory to be traversed and other facts of value to the travelers.
“We will start in the morning, sir,” advised Billy.
“And so it is written,” solemnly returned the patriarch. “Farewell and fare thee well.” To the boy he handed a scroll, with Arabic characters thereon. “To any Jew,” he said.
Gathering his robe about him, the speaker turned into the shady walk of the orchard, followed by his dusky retainers.
More of his bounty came during the day, but never another sign of his presence in the hours that completed the stay of the flyers on the border of the city that its people call “a pearl set in emeralds.”
Following the southerly course, as directed, the aviators began to note a change in the fleeting landscape below, nature in less luxuriant form, foliage sparse and more and more of the stony gray of arid country with wide wastes of desert sand.
Macauley’s loud cry—“the sea, the sea!” found an echo in the other war-plane, Canby also shouting his discovery of the great expanse of water to the west.
Henri, remembering the advices of the patriarch at Damascus, proclaimed it the Mediterranean. The war-planes were sailing over the deep valley of the Jordan, and in Palestine, or the Holy Land.
With so much mountainous country about them, the pilots concluded to descend to the valley for rest and council.