At nine o’clock he ordered Nissr stopped, and had the body of Dr. Lombardo sent down with six men in the nacelle, for burial.  No purpose could be served by keeping the body, and all unnecessary complications had to be dispensed with before the morrow.  Lombardo, who had fully atoned for his fault by having given his life in the service of the now depleted Legion, was buried in his service-uniform, in a fairly deep grave on which the Legionaries heaped a great tumulus of sand.  The only witnesses were the Arabian Desert stars; the only requiem the droning of the helicopters far above, where Nissr hung with her gleaming lights like other, nearer stars in the dense black sky.

By ten o’clock, the air-liner had resumed her course, leaving still another brave man to his last sleep, alone.  The routine of travel settled down again on the ship and its crew of adventurers.

At half-past eleven, the Master issued from his cabin.  All alone, and speaking with no man, he took a quarter-hour constitutional up and down the narrow gallery along the side of the fuselage—­the gallery on which his cabin window opened.  His face, by the vague light of the glows in this gallery, looked pale and worn; but a certain gleam of triumph and proud joy was visible in his dark eyes.

All about him, stretched night unbroken.  Far behind, lay vast confusions involving hundreds of millions of human beings violently wrenched from their accustomed routines of faith and prayer, with potential effects beyond all calculation.  Ahead lay—­what?

“It may be glory and power, wealth past reckoning, incredible splendor,” thought the Master, “and it may be ignominy, torture, death.  ‘Allah knows best and time will show.’  But whatever it may be—­is it completion?  The human heart, alone—­can that ever be complete in this world?”

He bent at the rail, gazing far out into the vague emptiness through which the air-liner was pushing.

“Come what may,” he murmured, “for tonight, at any rate, it is peace.  ‘It is peace, till the rising of the dawn!’”

In a strange mood, still holding no converse with any man, he returned to the main corridor and went toward his cabin.  His way led past the door of “Captain Alden.”  There he paused a moment, all alone in the corridor.  The lights in the ceiling showed a strange look in his eyes.  His face softened, as he laid a hand on the metal panels of the door, silently almost caressingly.

To himself he whispered: 

“I wonder who she really is?  What can her name be—­who can she be, and—­and—­”

He checked himself, impatiently: 

“What thoughts are these?  What nonsense?  Such things are not for me!”

Silently he returned to his cabin, undressed, switched off the light and turned into his berth, under which lay the incalculable treasures of Islam.  For a long time he lay there, thinking, wondering, angry with himself for having seemed to give way for a single moment to softer thoughts than those of conquest and adventure.