“I see, I see,” the major answered, mechanically.  It was plain, however, that his mind had received a shock from which it had not yet fully recovered.  He remained staring and blinking, first chewing at his mustache and then tugging it with blunt, trembling fingers.  Now and then he shook his head, like a man just waking from a dream and trying to make himself realize that he is indeed awake.

The others, some to a greater degree, some to a less, shared the major’s perturbation.  A daze, a numb stupefaction had fallen on them.  The Master, however, soon recalled them to activity.  Not much time now remained before Nissr must make her landing on the plain near the Golden City.  None was to be wasted.

Vigorous orders set the Legionaries to work.  The machine-guns were loaded and fully manned; several pieces of apparatus that the Master had been perfecting in his cabin were brought into the lower gallery; everyone was commanded to smarten his personal appearance.  The psychology of the Oriental was such, well the Master knew, that the impression the Legion should make upon the people of this wonder-city could not fail to be of the very highest importance.

The plain over which Nissr was now sweeping, with the black mountains left far behind, seemed a fairyland of beauty compared with the desolation of the Central Arabian Desert.

“This is surely a fitting spot for the exact geometrical center of Islam,” the Master said to Leclair, as they stood looking down.  “My measurements show this secret valley to be that center.  Mecca, of course, has only been a blind, to keep the world from knowing anything about this, the true heart of the Faith.  The Meccans have been usurping the Black Stone, all these centuries, and these Jannati Shahr people have submitted because any conflict would have betrayed their existence to the world.  That is my theory.  Good, eh?”

“Excellent!” the lieutenant replied.  “There must be millions of Mohammedans, themselves, who have hardly learned of this valley.  Certainly, very few from the outside world ever have been able to cross the Empty Abodes, and reach it.

“These people here evidently represent a far higher culture than any other Moslems ever known.  Who ever saw a finer city—­even not considering its material—­or more wonderful cultivation of land?”

His eyes wandered out over the plain, which lost itself to sight in the remote south.  Roads in various directions, with here and there a few white dromedaries bearing bright-colored shugdufs (litters), showed there was travel to some other inhabited spots inside the forbidding mountain girdle.

Here, there, herds of antelope and flocks of sheep were grazing on broad meadows, through which trickled sparkling threads of water, half glimpsed among feathery-tufted date-palms.  Plantations of fig and pomegranate, lime, apricot, and orange trees, with other fruits not recognized, slid beneath the giant liner as she slowed her pace.  And broad fields of wheat, barley, tobacco, and sugar-cane showed that the people of the city had no fear of any lack.