The swarming Haram enclosure presented one of the most extraordinary spectacles ever witnessed by human eyes.  The strangeness of the scene, witnessed under the declining sun of that desert land, was heightened by the fact that all these furious Moslems were seen from above.  Men cease to appear human, at that angle.  They seem to be only heads, from which legs and arms flail out grotesquely.

The Haram appeared to have become a vast pool of brown faces and agitated white ihrams (pilgrim robes) of weaving brown hands, of gleaming weapons.  This pool, roaring to heaven, showed strange, violent currents in flow and refluent ebb of hate.

To descend into that maelstrom of frenzied murder-lust took courage of the highest order.  But neither Bohannan nor the Frenchman had even paled.  Not one of their men showed any hesitancy whatever.

“Ready, sir,” said the major, crisply.  “Faith, give the signal and down we go; and we’ll either bring back what we’re going after, or we’ll all come back and report ourselves dead!”

“Just a minute, Major,” the Master answered.  He had opened a small door of the box containing the apparatus he had just clamped to the rail, and had taken out a combination telephone earpiece and receiver.  With this at mouth and ear, he leaned over the rail.  His lips moved in a whisper inaudible even to those in the lower gallery with him.

An astonishing change, however, swept over the infuriated mob in the Haram and throughout the radiating streets.  One would have thought a bolt from heaven had struck the Moslems dumb.  The angry tumult died; the vast hush that rose to Nissr was like a blow in the face, so striking was its contrast with the previous uproar.  Most of the furious gesticulation ceased, also.  All those brown-faced fanatics remained staring upward, silent in a kind of thunder-struck amazement.

CHAPTER XXXI

EAST AGAINST WEST

The major, peering down through the trap, swore luridly.  Leclair muttered something to himself, with wrinkled brow.  “Captain Alden’s” eyes blinked strangely, through the holes of the mask.  The others stared in frank astonishment.

“What the devil, sir—?” began the major; but the chief held up his hand for silence.  Again he spoke whisperingly into the strange apparatus.  This time a murmur rose to him; a murmur increasing to a confused tumult, that in an angry wave of malediction beat up about Nissr as she hung there with spinning helicopters, over the city.

The Master smiled as he put up the receiver in the little box and closed the door with a snap.  Regretfully he shook his head.

“These Arabic gentlemen, et al,” he remarked, “don’t seem agreeably disposed to treat with us on a basis of exchanging the Sheik Abd el Rahman for what we want from them.  My few remarks in Arabic, via this etheric megaphone, seem to have met a rebuff.  Every man in the Haram, the minarets, the arcade, and the radiating streets heard every word I said, gentlemen, as plainly as if I had spoken directly into his ear.  Yet no sound at all developed here.”