Well--'blessed be certainty,' as the Arabs
say."
"You mean death?"
"Yes, I mean death. We always have that in our grasp, at any
rate--after having taken full toll of these devils. I should not
mind, so much, defeat at the hands of the nobler breed of the Arabian
Peninsula. There, in the _Ruba el Khali_[1] itself, I know a chivalric
race dwells that any soldier might be proud to fight or to rule over.
But these Shiah heretic swine--ah, see now, they are taking cover
already? They will not stand and fight, like men!"
[Footnote 1: _Ruba el Khali_ (The Empty Abodes), a name applied by
the Arabs to the Peninsula, especially the vast inner region never
penetrated by any white man.]
Scornfully he flung a hand at the Beni Harb. The fringes of the
tribe were trickling up the sands, backward, away, toward the line
of purple-hazed dunes that lined the coast. More and more of the
war-party followed. Gradually all passed up the wady, over the dunes
and vanished.
"They are going to ambush us, my Captain," said Leclair. "'In rice,
strength; in the Beni Harb, manhood!'"
Nearer the land, ever sagging down but still afloat--though now at
times some of the heavier surges broke in foam over the rail of the
lower gallery--the Eagle of the Sky drifted on, on.
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