We stood them off for
seven hours, before they rushed us. They captured us only because our
last cartridges were gone."
"You did not save the mercy-bullet that time, eh?"
"I did not, _Effendi._ I did not know them then as I do now. They
knocked us both senseless, and then began hacking our machine to
pieces with their huge _balas_ (yataghans). They thought our plane was
some gigantic bird.
"Superstition festers in their very bones! The giant bird, they
believed, would ruin their date crops; and, besides, they thirsted for
the blood of the Franks. As a matter of fact, my Captain, these people
do sometimes drink a little of the blood of a slaughtered enemy."
"Impossible!"
"True, I tell you! They destroyed our plane with fire and sword,
reviled us as pigs and brothers of pigs, and named poor Lebon 'kalb
ibn kalb,' or 'dog and son of a dog.' Then they separated into two
bands. One band departed toward Wady Tawarik, taking Lebon. They
informed me that on the morrow they would crucify him on a cross of
palm-wood, head downward."
"And they executed Lebon?"
Leclair shrugged his shoulders.
"I suppose so," he answered with great bitterness.
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