lls 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.

Breathing only through open mouths, for greater stillness, taking care
to crackle no twig nor even slide loose sand, they labored on, under
the pale-hazed starlight. Their goal was vague. Just where they
should come upon the Beni Harb, in that confused jumble of dunes and
_nullahs_ (ravines) they could not tell; nor yet did they know the
exact distance separating the Legion's trenches from the enemy. All
was vague mystery--a mystery ready at any second, at any slightest
alarm, to blaze out death upon them.

None the less, stout-hearted and firm of purpose, they serpen