ssigned crews to them for
the implacable carrying-out of the plan determined on--surely the most
dare-devil, ruthless, and astonishing plan ever conceived by the brain
of a civilized man.

Hardly had these preparations been made, when the sound of
musketry-fire, below and ahead, drew their attention. From the open
ports of the cabin, peering far down, the three Legionaries witnessed
an extraordinary sight--a thing wholly incongruous in this hoar land
of mystery and romance.

Skirting a line of low savage hills that ruggedly stretched from
north to south, a gleaming line of metal threaded its way. A train,
southbound for Mecca, had halted on the famous Pilgrims' Railway.
From its windows and doors, white-clad figures were violently
gesticulating. Others were leaping from the train, swarming all about
the carriages.

An irregular fusillade, harmless as if from pop-guns, was being
directed against the invading Eagle of the Sky. A faint, far outcry
of passionate voices drifted upward in the heat and shimmer of that
Arabian afternoon. The train seemed a veritable hornets' nest into
which a rock had been heaved.

"Faith, but that's an odd sight," laughed the major. "Where else
in all this world could you get a contrast like that--the desert, a
semibarbarous people, and a railroad?"

"Nowhere else," put in Leclair. "There is no other road like that,
anywhere in existence. The Damascus-Mecca line is unique; a Moslem
line built by Moslems, for Moslems only Modern mechanism blent with
ancient superstition and savage ferocity that implacably hold to the
very roots of ancient things!"

"It is the Orient, Lieutenant," added the Master. "And in the Orient,
who can say that any one thing is stranger than anything else? To your
stations, men!"

They took their leave. The Master entered the pilot-house and assumed
control. As _Nissr_ passed over the extraordinary Hejaz Railway,
indifferent to the mob of frenzied, vituperating pilgrims, the chief
peered far ahead for his first sight of Mecca, the Forbidden.

He had not long to wait. On the horizon, the hills seemed suddenly to
break away. As the air-liner roared onward, a dim plain appeared, with
here or there a green-blue blur of oasis and with a few faint white
spots that the Master knew were pilgrims' camping-places.

Down through this plain extended an irregular depression, a kind of
narrow valley, with a few sharply isolated, steep hills on either
hand.

The Master's