inarets all open to the heretics' gaze from portholes,
from the forward observation pit and from the lower gallery. As
_Nissr_ eased herself down to about one thousand feet, the plan of
the city became visible as on a map. The radiating streets all started
from the Haram. White mobs were working themselves into frenzy,
trampling the pilgrims' shrouds that had been dipped in the waters of
the well, Zem Zem, and laid out to dry.

Not even the Master's aplomb could suppress a strange gleam in
his eye, could keep his face from paling a little or his lips from
tightening, as he now beheld the inmost shrine of two hundred and
thirty million human beings. Nor did any of the Legionaries, bold as
they were, look upon it without a strange contraction of the heart. As
for the Apostate Sheik, that old jackal of the desert was crouched
in his place of confinement, with terror clutching at his soul; with
visions of being torn to pieces by furious Sunnite mobs oppressing
him.

And Rrisa, what of him? Shut into his cabin, with the door locked
against intrusion, he was lying face downward on the metal floor,
praying. For the first time in the world's history, a Moslem's
_kiblah_, or direction of prayer, was directly downward!

"Reverse!" ordered the Master. Nissr hovered exactly above the Haram
enclosure. "Lower to five hundred feet, then hold her!"

The air-liner sank slowly, with a hissing of air-intakes into the
vacuum-floats, and hung there, trembling, quivering with the slow
back-revolution of her screws, the swift energy of her helicopters.
The Master put her in charge of Janina, the Serbian ace, and descended
to the lower gallery.

Here he found the crew assembled by Bohannan and Leclair ready for the
perilous descent they were about to make.

He leaned over the rail, unmindful of the ragged patter of bullets
from below, and with a judicial eye observed the prospect. His calm
contrasted forcibly with the frenzied surging of the pilgrim mobs
below, a screaming, raging torrent of human passion.

Clearly he could discern every detail of the city whereof Mohammed
wrote in the second chapter of the Koran: "So we have made you the
center of the nations that you should bear witness to men." He could
see the houses of dark stone, clustering together on the slopes like
swallows' nests, the unpaved streets, the _Mesjid el Haram_, or
sacred square, enclosed by a great wall and a colonnade surmounted by
small white domes.

At the