Jackals and hyenas cowered
and slunk to cover. The tumult of the guns and this vast, drifting
monster of the air had overcome even their greed for flesh.
Another shot, puffing white as wool from the bow-chaser of the
destroyer, screeched through the vultures, scattering them all ways,
but made a clean miss of _Nissr_.
The air-liner gathered speed as the west wind got behind her, listed
her, pushed her forward in its mighty hands. Swifter, ever swifter,
her shadow slipped over dune and wady, over hillock and _nullah_, off
away toward the pellucidly clear-golden tints of the horizon beyond
which lay the unknown.
Rrisa, at his gun-station, gnawed his fingers in rage and scorn of
the pursuing Feringi, and cried: "Allah make it hard for you!
_Laan'abuk!_" (Curses on your fathers!)
Old Sheik Abd el Rahman, close-locked in a cabin, quivered, not with
fear, but with unspeakable grief and amazement past all telling. To
be thus carried away through the heavens in the entrails of the
unbelievers' flying dragon was a thing not to be believed. He
prostrated himself, with groans and cries to Allah. The Legionaries,
from galleries and gun-stations waving derisive arms, raised shouts
and hurrahs.
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