CHAPTER XLV
It was true.
Out in the sacred courtyard where all had been babel and noise, a terrible stillness had come—every head thrown back, every startled black eye strained to the sky. Through the silence—human noise petrified by quaking fear of the unknown—came a faint, but rapidly increasing whirr and throb, no more at first than the gossamer sound of lazy dragon-fly wings, then more and more, till the air reeked with the high-up grating sound.
Like a flight of dragon-flies—gray, far and filmy, the plane-birds came, then like a school of black-bellied fish with backs of gold and rose in the sunset glow, then like some flock of monster well-trained birds, a battalion perhaps of the great rocs the mazed people believed them, nearer and nearer they came, lower and lower they swooped.
Through the royal, blue blanket of the Asian sky England had peeped, and whatever his priests and people thought, the Raja of Rukh—he’d not altered his attitude, except to gaze steadily up, listening intently, he’d not let his face or his eyes change—knew that England swooping puissantly down had cried to him, “Hold! Enough!”
With a sob of relief, repeating again in a low, quivering voice, “The aeroplanes—the aeroplanes!” Lucilla tottered to the door through which Traherne had been pushed. The priests were too amazed to oppose or stay her, as his guard had been to stay or oppose Traherne, and as she moved seeking him, he came back seeking her—and they stood together in the doorway, he leaning against it a little, still feeling the flay of the fingers that had crippled him, looking up to the sky in which their help had come.
The crowd found its voice again. Cries and squeals of consternation and terror came like a sudden gust of storm from the gathered people.
The guard outside on the balcony at the end of the hall tore aside the curtains violently, and pointing upward shouted madly to their prince, and he moved to them slowly, and stood there looking out—and the priests huddled, blubbering and jabbering strickenly, behind him.
“See,” Lucilla whispered, “see! They are circling lower and lower! Is it true, Basil? Are we saved?”
“Yes, Lucilla,” he told her, in a voice that scarcely would sound, “we are saved.” He repeated it, and his voice rang through the place. The Raja heard.