Without much plan, wrecked, confronted by what
seemed perils unsurmountable, the Flying Legion waited for the coming
of dark to respite them from sniping.
The Master, half-way along the line with Leclair, Rrisa, the major and
"Captain Alden," mentally took stock of losses thus far sustained. The
wounded were: Alden, Bohannan (burned), Enemark and himself. The dead:
Kloof, Sheffield, Beziers, Travers, Gorlitz, Auchincloss, Daimamoto.
Twenty-four living remained, including Leclair. The mortality, in
about eighteen hours, had been twenty percent. At this rate the Master
understood the Flying Legion was slated for very speedy destruction.
"It's touch-and-go now," he pondered. "We've got to annihilate these
infernal Bedouins, repair the liner and get ahead, or--but there's no
'or' in this! None, at all!"
As dark settled down over the Sahara, the leprous patches of white,
saline earth took on a ghostly pallor. The light of the southern stars
began to glow with soft radiance. A gigantic emptiness, a rolling
vacancy of sea and earth--brine-waves to rear of the Legion,
sand-waves ahead--shrank the party to seeming insignificance.
A soft, purple tapestry of night unrolled across the desert; the wind
died, and the suffocating breath of overheated sands began to emanate
from the baked earth.
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