As the fight continued, and they heard the rat-tat-tat of the machine-gun, sometimes their doubts and fears overcame them, and many were the cries that went up to Allah the Compassionate, the Faithful, etc. But when they saw that at last the great white sheik had won and the disabled liner was slowly coming lower and lower, their pent-up feelings gave place to wild excitement, and shouts of,
"Allah be praised! The bird of destiny has won! The great white chief has triumphed!" while others, more practical, and also more piratical, exclaimed: "Allah is sending down the treasures of heavens into the lap of the faithful. Praise be to Allah and to Mohammed his Prophet!"
It was with some difficulty that Max restrained these wild men from dashing out in their frenzy to capture and loot the huge, lowering mass that now loomed but a little way above them. He began to fear that they would not wait for the pre-arranged signal, and he urged the Arab sheik to restrain them, and to repeat the orders that the occupants of the airship must not be touched.
Nearer and nearer came the huge mass, steering badly and veering round in attempting to gain the lee-side of the trees, lest she should be totally wrecked in the mooring. Two hundred feet of cable suddenly dropped from her bow, and, when it touched the ground, Max gave the signal, and with a wild shout these fierce Bedouin horsemen suddenly broke from cover, and galloped into the open.
"Ye saints!" gasped the Indian judge, when he beheld this wild tournament of galloping horsemen, brandishing their rifles and long spears. "Are we to be eaten alive?" Less than an hour ago he had expressed a pious wish to visit this peaceful garden in the desert; now, it was too near to be pleasant.
"All hands to the cable!" shouted Max in Arabic, and very quickly both horses and men were struggling with the stout hawser.
"This way," shouted the Gotha pilot. "Take it round and round these three trees; they should stand the strain unless the wind gets stronger," and selecting a small group of trees on the leeward side of the grove, he very quickly had the cable made fast in such a way that the leviathan of seven hundred feet in length swung easily head to wind, like a ship riding at anchor and swinging with the tide.
Then the tribesmen, kept well in hand, surrounded the prize, keeping some thirty paces distant, for they had not yet quite overcome their fears. Never before had such a thing been seen resting on the yellow sands of the Hamadian Desert.
As the gondolas of the Empress of India came to rest quietly on the ground, the Scorpion descended in a rapid spiral, touched the sands lightly and taxied up to the fringe of trees.
Then, to the utter amazement of the occupants of the dirigible, some of whom were already descending from the gondolas, a couple of men, wearing the loose flowing robe of the desert, including that distinctive mark of the Mohammedan world, the fez, leapt from the machine and approached the airship.