led Leclair, leaning far out the
port window of the pilot-house. "But then, we can't blame the gunners
for being a bit excited, trying to bag a bit of international game
like this Legion."

"And beside," put in Alden coolly, "our shifting position makes us
rather a poor target. Ah! That shell must have gone home!"

_Nissr_ quivered from nose to tail. A violent detonation flung echoes
from sea and shore; and bits of splintered wreckage spun down past the
windows, to plunge into the still swirling, bubbling sea.

The Master made no answer, but rang for the propellers to be clutched
in. _Nissr_ obeyed their quickening whirl. Her altitude was already
four hundred and fifty feet, as marked by the altimeter. Lamely she
moved ahead, sagging to starboard, badly scarred, ill-trimmed and
awry, but still alive.

Her great black shadow, trailing behind her in the water, passed on
to the beach, wrinkled itself up over the dunes and slid across the
sand-drifts where little flutters of cloth, uncovered by the ghoulish
jackals, showed from the burning stretch of tawny desert.

Flocks of vultures rose and soared away. Jackals and hyenas cowered
and slunk to cover. The tumult of the guns and this vast, drifting
monster of the air had overcome even their greed for flesh.

Another shot, puffing white as wool from the bow-chaser of the
destroyer, screeched through the vultures, scattering them all ways,
but made a clean miss of _Nissr_.

The air-liner gathered speed as the west wind got behind her, listed
her, pushed her forward in its mighty hands. Swifter, ever swifter,
her shadow slipped over dune and wady, over hillock and _nullah_, off
away toward the pellucidly clear-golden tints of the horizon beyond
which lay the unknown.

Rrisa, at his gun-station, gnawed his fingers in rage and scorn of
the pursuing Feringi, and cried: "Allah make it hard for you!
_Laan'abuk!_" (Curses on your fathers!)

Old Sheik Abd el Rahman, close-locked in a cabin, quivered, not with
fear, but with unspeakable grief and amazement past all telling. To
be thus carried away through the heavens in the entrails of the
unbelievers' flying dragon was a thing not to be believed. He
prostrated himself, with groans and cries to Allah. The Legionaries,
from galleries and gun-stations waving derisive arms, raised shouts
and hurrahs.

Sweaty, spent, covered with grease and dirt, they cheered with leaping
hearts.

Another shell, bursting in mid-air not fifty