So Billy stepped forward with the parchment roll in extended hand. A brief glance at the Arabic communication by the man accepting it had magic effect.
He clapped his hands in signal to someone in the confusedly murmuring crowd, and two Arabs, mere boys, responded, leading a pair of heavily laden donkeys.
A few words of command and the loads on the donkeys’ backs were transferred to the humps of two camels, the last named animals making protest by savage teeth snaps at the nimble servitors doing the work.
Rope attachments made, the war-planes were hauled through the city gate, the first and only time these machines ever worked under donkey power!
Turning out of the traffic of the main road into a narrow, ill-paved street, down-sloping into the interior of the city, the four flyers, walking alongside of the machines to steady them, and their self-declared host marching ahead of the donkey drivers, passed through long double lines of dead walls, for though the houses were substantially built of stone they presented no windows to the streets.
However, the air travelers had a glimpse or two of the modern Jerusalem here and there; new hotels, for instance, that had the appearance of being up-to-date.
“No look-in there for us,” sighed Billy; “we’re just plain broke; but let me say, Buddy, it seems that we are somehow always provided for, no matter what has happened on this side of the ocean.”
“Giving the glad hand seems a specialty with the Damascus man and his twin in Jerusalem; they’re all to the good in that line,” declared Henri.
Canby would have strayed from the line of march when he caught sight in the distance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but the leader kept straight ahead, and the Arab boys were constantly whanging the donkeys to keep up with him.
Pausing finally in front of a flat-roofed stone dwelling, with courtyard enclosure, the war-planes were sheltered within the walls of the latter, while the host guided his guests into and through the house to an extensive garden at the rear, rich with flowering plants.