“Yes, sir!” And Alden, saluting, approached the door.

“One moment!  Send Leclair back to me.  Inform Ferrara that he is to command the second gun-crew.”

“Yes, sir!” And the woman was gone.

Leclair appeared, some moments later.  He suspected nothing of the subterfuge whereby the Master had obtained a few minutes’ conversation alone with “Captain Alden.”

“You sent for me, sir?” asked the Frenchman.

“I did.  I have some questions to ask you.  Others can handle the guns, but you have special knowledge of great importance to me.  And first, as an expert ace, what are our chances of making that shore, sir, now probably five miles off?  In a crisis, I always want to ask an expert’s opinion.”

Leclair peered from under knit brows at the altimeter needle and the inclinometer.  He leaned from the pilot-house window and looked down at the waves, now hardly a hundred feet below, their foaming hiss quite audible.  From those waves, red light reflected as the sun sank, illuminated the Frenchman’s lean, brown features and flung up wavering patches of illumination against the pilot-house ceiling of burnished metal, through the tilted windows that sheerly overhung the water.

“Eh bien—­” murmured Leclair, noncommittally.

“Well, can we make it, sir?”

The ace inspected the vacuum-gauges, the helicopter tachometers, and shrugged his shoulders.

“‘Fais tout, toi-meme, et Dieu t’aidera,’” he quoted the cynical old French proverb.  “If nothing gives way, there is a chance.”

“If we settle into the sea, do you think that with our damaged floats we can drive ashore without breaking up?”

“I do not, my Captain.  There is a heavy sea running, and the surf is bad on the beach.  This Rio de Oro coast is cruel.  Have you our exact position?”

“Almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, half-way between Cape Bojador to north of us, and Cape Blanco, to south.”

“Yes, I understand.  That brings us to the Tarmanant region of the Sahara.  Fate could not have chosen worse for us.  But, c’est la guerre.  All I regret, however, is that in a crippled condition we have to face a war-party of the Beni Harb.  Were we intact, and a match for them, how gladly would I welcome battle with that scum of Islam!  Ah, the canaille!”

CHAPTER XXI

SHIPWRECK AND WAR

“You call them dogs, eh?” asked the chief.  “And why?”

“What else are such apostate fanatics?  People who live by robbery and plunder—­people who, if they find no gold in your money-belt, will rip your stomach open to see if you’ve swallowed it!  People who boast of being harami (highwaymen), and who respect the jallah (slave-driver)!

“People who practice the barbaric thar, or blood-feud!  People who torture their victims by cutting off the ends of their fingers before beheading or crucifying them!  People who glory in murdering the ‘idolators of Feringistan,’ as they call us white men!  Let me advise you now, my Captain, when dealing with these people or fighting them, never use your last shot on them.  Always keep a mercy-bullet in your gun!”