t the forbidding, mysterious
range. "Am I responsible for a Moslem's superstitions, or his fanatic
irrationality?"

The Master's own narrow escape from death disturbed him not at all.
He hardly even thought of it. All he strove for, now, was to exculpate
himself for Rrisa's death. But this he could not do.

A sense of blood-guiltiness clung about him like a garment--the first
that he had felt on this expedition. His soul, unemotional, practical,
hard, was at last touched and wounded by the realization that Rrisa,
pushed beyond all limits of endurance, had chosen death rather than
inflict it on his sheik. And the thought that the faithful orderly's
body was now lying on the flaming sands, hundreds of miles away--that
it was already a prey to jackals, kites, and buzzards--sickened his
shuddering heart and filled him with remorse.

"Allah send a storm of sand--_jinnee_ to bury the poor chap, that's
all I can wish now!" he pondered, as he studied the strange yellowish
and orange tints in utmost horizon distances. The air, over the
shimmering peaks, seemed of a different quality from that elsewhere.
To north, to west, the desert rim of the world veiled itself in magic
blue, mysteriously dim. But there, it glowed in golden hues. What,
thought the Master, might be the meaning of all this?

The Master had no time for speculation. The urgent problem of locating
the Bara Jannati Shahr, beyond that inhospitable sierra, banished
thoughts of all else. He inspected his charts, together with the
air-liner's record of course and position. He slightly corrected the
direction of flight. "Captain Alden" was already in the pilot-house,
with Leclair. The Master summoned Bohannan tersely, and briefly
instructed him:

"You understand, of course, that we may now be facing perils beyond
any yet encountered. We have already upset all Islam, and changed the
_kiblah_--the direction of prayer--for more than two hundred million
human beings. The 'fronting-place' is now aboard _Nissr_."[1]

[Footnote 1: So long as the Black Stone was at the Ka'aba, this
building was the only spot in the world where the _kiblah_ was
circular, that is, where Moslems could pray all around it. The
Legion's theft of the stone had completely dislocated all the most
important beliefs and customs of Islam.]

"The most intense animosity of religious fanaticism will pursue us.
If the news of our exploit has, in any unaccountable way such as
the Arabs know how to emplo