The nacelle sank gently on to a heap of motionless pilgrims, canted to the left, and came to rest.  Not a groan, curse, or even a sigh escaped the desecrated Moslems forever defiled by the touch of the infidels’ accursed machine.

The effect was horribly uncanny—­of all those brown men, open-eyed and conscious, but perfectly unable to move so much as an eyebrow.  Such as had fallen with their eyes in the direction of the nacelle, could see what was going on; the others could only judge of this incredible desecration by what they could hear.  The sound of foreign voices, speaking an unbelievers’ tongue in the very shadow of the Ka’aba, must have been supremely horrible to every Mohammedan there.

“Out, men, and at it!” the major commanded, as he scrambled from the nacelle, slid and stumbled over the Moslems, and reached hands for the tools passed out to him.  Leclair followed.  Men and tools were swiftly unloaded, leaving only Wallace and Emilio at their guns, as agreed.

“Faith, but this is some proposition!” grunted the major, as the seven men trampled over the prostrate bodies, without any delay whatever to peer at the Haram or the Ka’aba.

“The stone’s there, men, at the south-east corner!  Get busy!”

No exhortation was necessary.  Every man, nerved to the utmost energy by the extreme urgency of the situation, leaped to work.  And a strange scene began, the strangest in all the history of that unknown city of mysteries.  The little troop of white men in uniform stumbled over the bodies and faces of their enemies along the Ka’aba, past the little door about seven feet from the ground, and so, skirting the slanting white base, two feet high, came to the Hajar el Aswad, or Black Stone, itself.

Above, in the burning Arabian sky, the air-liner hovered like a gigantic bird of prey, her gallery-rails lined with motionless watchers.  The Master observed every move through powerful glasses.  Over his ears a telephone headpiece, which he had slipped on, kept him in close touch with the men in the nacelle, via the steel cable.  This cable formed a strand between East and West; if any evil chance should break it, life would end there and then for nine members of the Legion, brave men all.

That their time was short, indeed, was proved by the vague, hollow roar already drifting in from the outskirts of the city, and from the plain whence, crowding, struggling into the city’s narrow ways, a raging mass of pilgrims was already on the move.  A tidal-wave, a sea of hate, the hundred thousand or more Hujjaj as yet untouched by the strong magic of the Feringi, were fighting their way toward the Haram.

The time of respite was measured but by minutes.  Each minute, every second, bore supreme value.

“There she is, men!” the major shouted, pointing.  And on the instant, driving furiously with pick-axe, he struck the first blow.