anded the major, as they all clambered into the nacelle.

The Master smiled, as he laid his hands on top of the basket and
cast his eyes over the equipment there, noting that machine-guns,
pick-axes, crowbars, and all were in position.

"The idea does you credit, Major," said he. "The fact that the other
bomb would of course completely paralyze you and your men, here, is
naturally quite immaterial. Let us have no more discussion, please.
Only fourteen minutes, thirty seconds now remain before the _Hujjaj_
will begin to recover their muscular control. You have your work cut
out for you, the next quarter-hour!"

The Master raised his hand in signal to Grison, at the electric winch
A turn of a lever, and the nacelle rose from the metals of the lower
gallery. It swung over the trap and was steadied there, a moment, by
many hands. The raiding-party leaped in.

"Lower away!" commanded the chief

Smoothly the winch released the fine steel cable, with a purring
sound. Down shot the nacelle, steadily, swiftly, with the major,
Leclair, and the others now engaged in the most perilous, dare-devil
undertaking imaginable.

Down, swiftly down, to raid the _Bayt Ullah_, the sacred Ka'aba, holy
of holies to more than two hundred million Moslem fanatics, each of
whom would with joy have died to keep the hand of the unbelieving
dog from so much as touching that hoar structure or the earth of the
inviolate Haram.

Down, swiftly down with picks and crowbars. Down, into the midst of
all that paralyzed but still conscious hate, to the very place of the
supremely sacred Black Stone, itself.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE BATTLE OF THE HARAM

The raiding-party, beside its two leaders, consisted of Lombardo,
Rennes, Emilio, Wallace, and three others, including Lebon. The
lieutenant's orderly, now having recovered strength, had pleaded so
hard for an opportunity to avenge himself on the hated Moslems that
Leclair had taken him.

As for Lombardo, he had downright insisted on going. His life, he
knew, was already forfeited to the expedition--by reason of his having
let the stowaway escape--and, this being so, he had begged and been
granted the favor of risking it in this perilous undertaking.

Such was the party now swiftly dropping toward the Haram where never
yet in the history of the world two English-speaking men had at one
time gathered; where never yet the speech of the heretic had been
heard; where so many intruders had been beh