Birds were here—­pelicans, cranes, and water-fowl along the brooks and gleaming pools; swift little yellow birds with crownlike crests; doves, falcons, and hawks of unknown species.  Here was life abundant, after the death of the Empty Abodes.  Here was rich color; here arose a softly perfumed air, balmy, incensed as with strange aromatics.  Here was peace—­eternal kayf—­blessed rest—­here indeed lay a scene that gave full explanation of the ancient name “Arabia Felix.”

And at the left, dominating all this beauty, shone and glimmered in the ardent sun the wondrous Golden City of Jannati Shahr.

Nissr had already begun to slant to lower levels.  Now at no more than twenty-five hundred feet, with greatly reduced speed, she was drifting down the valley toward the city, the details of which were every moment becoming more apparent.  Its size, the wondering Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained three or four hundred thousand inhabitants.  Its frontage along the black mountains could not have been less than two and a half miles; and, as it seemed to lose itself up a defile in those crags, no way at present existed of judging its depth.

The general appearance was that of stern simplicity.  A long wall of gleaming yellow bounded it, from north to south; this wall being pierced by seven gates, each flanked by minarets.  Behind the wall, terraces arose, with mesjid (temple) domes, innumerable houses, and some larger buildings of unknown purpose.

The powerful glasses on Nissr showed fretwork carving everywhere; but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression of almost primitive severity.  No touch of modernity affected it.  Everything appeared immensely archaic.

“The Jerusalem of Solomon’s day,” thought the Master, “must have looked like that—­barring only that this is solid gold.”

Out from the city, a little less than two-thirds of the way down, issued a rather considerable stream.  It seemed to come from under the wall fronting the plain.  Its course, straight rather than sinuous, lay toward the south-west, and was marked by long lines of giant date-palms and pale-stemmed eucalyptus trees, till it lost itself in brown distances.

“Faith, but that looks like lotus-eating, all right,” said the major, notching up his cartridge-belt another hole.  “That looks like ’A book of verses underneath the bough,’ with Fatima or Lalla Rookh, or the like, eh?” He drew at a cigarette, and smiled with sweet visionings of Celtic exuberance.  “A golden city!  Lord!”

“You’ll do no dallying ‘with Amaryllis in the shade,’ in this valley!” the Master flung at him.  “Nor any lotus-eating, either.  To your stations, men!  Wake up!  Forget all about this gold, now—­remember my orders!  That’s all you’ve got to do.  The gold will take care of itself, later.  For now, there’s stern work ahead!”