“Or we will go after you!” came the voice of “Captain Alden,” with a little catch of anxiety not at all masculine.  Something in the femininity of her promise stirred the Master’s heart a second, but he dismissed it.

“Either we shall return by nine, or never,” he said calmly.

“Let me go, then!” whispered Alden.  “Go, in place of you!  You are more needed than I. Without you all these men are lost.  Without me—­they would not miss me, sir!”

“I cannot argue that point with you, Captain.  We start at once.”  He turned to Rrisa, and in Arabic said: 

“The road we are about to take may lead thee to Paradise.  A sand-adder, a scorpion, or a bullet may be the means.  Dost thou stand firm with me?”

The Arab stretched out a thin, brown hand to him in the dark.

“Firm as my faith, Master!” he replied.  “Both to help you, and to destroy the beni kalb (dog-sons), I would pass through Al Araf, into Eblis!  What will be, must be.  No man dieth except by permission of Allah, according to what is written on the scrolls of the angel, Al Sijil.

“I go with you, Master, where you go, were it to Jehannum!  I swear that by the rising of the stars, which is a mighty oath. Tawakkal al Allah!” (Place reliance on Allah!)

“By the rising of the stars!” repeated Leclair, also in Arabic.  “I too am with you to the end, M’alme!”

The Master assured himself that his night-glasses with the megaphotic reflectors were in their case slung over his shoulder.  He looked once more to his weapons, both ordinary and lethal, and likewise murmured: 

“By the rising of the stars!”

Then said he crisply, while the fire-glow of Leclair’s strongly inhaled cigarette threw a dim light on the tense lines of his wounded face: 

“Come!  Let us go!”

Leclair buried his cigarette in the warm earth.

Rrisa caught up a handful of sand and flung it toward the unseen enemy, in memory of the decisive pebbles thrown by Mohammed at the Battle of Bedr, so great a victory for him.

Then he followed the Master and Leclair, with a whispered: 

“Bismillah wa Allahu akbar![1]”

[Footnote 1:  In the name of Allah, and Allah is greatest!]

Together, crawling on their bellies like dusty puff-adders of the Sahara itself, the three companions in arms—­American, French, Arab—­slid out of the shallow trench, and in the gloom were lost to sight of the beleaguered Flying Legion.

Their mission of death, death to the Beni Harb or to themselves, had begun.

CHAPTER XXIV

ANGELS OF DEATH

In utter silence, moving only a foot at a time, the trio of man-hunters advanced.  They spaced themselves out, dragged themselves forward one at a time, took advantage of every slightest depression, every wrinkle in the sandy desert-floor, every mummy-like acacia and withered tamarisk-bush, some sparse growth of which began to mingle with the halfa-grass as they passed from the coast-dunes to the desert itself.