The _naib_ prostrated himself, with joyful cries, and touched lips and forehead with quivering fingers. All others who heard the news, did likewise. Fruits, pomegranate, syrup, honey, and _jild el faras_[1] were brought as offerings of gratitude. The crew ascended to the air-liner amid wild shouts of praise and jubilation. [Footnote 1: Literally "mare's skin." Apricot paste in dried sheets, cut into convenient sizes. A great dainty among the Arabs.] "You see, Leclair?" the Master inquired, as _Nissr_ drew away once more to eastward, leaving the village in the palms behind. "We hold power already with the sons of Islam! What will it be when--?" "When you attempt to take from them their all, instead of returning to them what they so eagerly desire to have!" the Frenchman put in. "Let us hope all for the best, my Captain, but let us keep our powder very dry!" Two days and one night of steady flying over the ocean of sand, with but an occasional oasis or caravan to break the appalling wastes of emptiness, brought _Nissr_ to the Valley of the Nile. The river of hoar antiquity came to view in a quivering heat-haze, far to eastward. In anticipation of possible attack, _Nissr_ was forced to her best altitude, of now forty-seven hundred feet, all gun-stations were manned and the engines were driven to their limit. The hour was anxious; but the Legion passed the river in safety, just a little south of the twentieth degree, near the Third Cataract. Bohannan's gloomy forebodings proved groundless. The Red Sea and Arabia were now close at hand. Tension increased. Rrisa thrilled with a malicious joy. He went to the door of the captive Sheik, and in flowery Arabic informed him the hour of reckoning was at last drawing very near. "Thou carrion!" he exclaimed. "Soon shalt thou be in the hands of the Faithful. Soon shall Allah make thy countenance cold, O offspring of a one-eyed man!" Three hours after, the air-liner sighted a dim blue line that marked the Red Sea. The Master pointed at this, with a strange smile. "Once we pass that sea," he commented, "our goal is close. The hour of great things is almost at hand!" "Provided we get some petrol," put in Bohannan. "Faith, an open gate, that should have been closed, defeated Napoleon. A few hundred gallons of gasoline--" "The gasoline is already in sight, Major," smiled the chief, his glasses on the coastline. "That caravan--see there?--comes very apropos." The Legion bore down with a rush on the caravan--a small one, not above fifty camels, but well laden. The cameleers left off crying "_Ooosh! Ooosh!_" and beating their spitting beasts with their _mas'hab_-sticks, and incontinently took to their heels. Rrisa viewed them with scorn, as he went down in the nacelle with a dozen of the crew.