"The Jerusalem of Solomon's day," thought the Master, "must have looked like that--barring only that this is solid gold." Out from the city, a little less than two-thirds of the way down, issued a rather considerable stream. It seemed to come from under the wall fronting the plain. Its course, straight rather than sinuous, lay toward the south-west, and was marked by long lines of giant date-palms and pale-stemmed eucalyptus trees, till it lost itself in brown distances. "Faith, but that looks like lotus-eating, all right," said the major, notching up his cartridge-belt another hole. "That looks like 'A book of verses underneath the bough,' with Fatima or Lalla Rookh, or the like, eh?" He drew at a cigarette, and smiled with sweet visionings of Celtic exuberance. "A golden city! Lord!" "You'll do no dallying 'with Amaryllis in the shade,' in _this_ valley!" the Master flung at him. "Nor any lotus-eating, either. To your stations, men! Wake up! Forget all about this gold, now--remember my orders! That's all you've got to do. The gold will take care of itself, later. For now, there's stern work ahead!" The Legionaries assumed their posts, ready for whatever attack might come. They still moved like men in a trance. Whether they could quite even realize the true character of Jannati Shahr seemed doubtful. The Inca's room of gold stunned Pizarro and his men. How much more, then, must a whole city of gold numb any concrete thought? Down, still down sank _Nissr_, now beginning to circle in broad, descending spirals, seeking where she might land. The roar of the propellers lessened; and at the same time, the increasing hum of the helicopters made itself heard, counterbalancing the loss of lifting power of the planes, yet gradually letting the air-liner sink. Came, too, a sighing hiss of the air-intakes as the vacuum-floats filled. High noon was now at hand. The sun burned, a copper ball, in the very forehead of a turquoise sky. A light breeze, lazying over the plain, stirred the fronded tufts of the date-palms' thick plantations. Beyond a massy grove, stretching for nearly two miles out from the northernmost gate of the city, a grassy level quite like a parade-ground invited the liner to rest. As she sank still lower, the Master's glass again picked up the city wall and ran along it. Here, there, white dots were visible; human figures, surely--the figures of men in snowy burnouses, on the ramparts of heavy metal. The Master smiled, and nodded. "My men think they are surprised," he mused. "What will these Jannati Shahr men think, when I have opened my little box of tricks and shown them what's inside?" He pressed a button on the rail. A bell trilled in the pilot-house; another in the engine-room. The Norcross-Brails died to inactivity.