[Footnote 1: So called because of their habit of cooing and bowing.
Moslems fancy they are praying to Allah and making salaam to him.]
"Slow her!" commanded the Master into the engine-room phone, and began
compensating with the helicopters, as _Nissr_ lagged over the crowded
city. "Shut off--let her drift! Stand by to reverse!"
Mecca the Unattainable now lay directly beneath, its dun roofs, packed
streets, ivory minarets all open to the heretics' gaze from portholes,
from the forward observation pit and from the lower gallery. As
_Nissr_ eased herself down to about one thousand feet, the plan of
the city became visible as on a map. The radiating streets all started
from the Haram. White mobs were working themselves into frenzy,
trampling the pilgrims' shrouds that had been dipped in the waters of
the well, Zem Zem, and laid out to dry.
Not even the Master's aplomb could suppress a strange gleam in
his eye, could keep his face from paling a little or his lips from
tightening, as he now beheld the inmost shrine of two hundred and
thirty million human beings. Nor did any of the Legionaries, bold as
they were, look upon it without a strange contraction of the heart.
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