"Almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, half-way between Cape Bojador to north of us, and Cape Blanco, to south." "Yes, I understand. That brings us to the Tarmanant region of the Sahara. Fate could not have chosen worse for us. But, _c'est la guerre_. All I regret, however, is that in a crippled condition we have to face a war-party of the Beni Harb. Were we intact, and a match for them, how gladly would I welcome battle with that scum of Islam! Ah, the _canaille_!" CHAPTER XXI SHIPWRECK AND WAR "You call them dogs, eh?" asked the chief. "And why?" "What else are such apostate fanatics? People who live by robbery and plunder--people who, if they find no gold in your money-belt, will rip your stomach open to see if you've swallowed it! People who boast of being _harami_ (highwaymen), and who respect the _jallah_ (slave-driver)! "People who practice the barbaric _thar_, or blood-feud! People who torture their victims by cutting off the ends of their fingers before beheading or crucifying them! People who glory in murdering the 'idolators of Feringistan,' as they call us white men! Let me advise you now, my Captain, when dealing with these people or fighting them, never use your last shot on them. Always keep a mercy-bullet in your gun!" "A mercy-bullet?" "For yourself!" The Master pondered a moment or two, as _Nissr_ drifted on toward the now densely massed Arabs on the beach, then he said: "You seem to know these folk well." "Only too well!" The Master's next words were in the language of the desert: "_Hadratak tet kal'm Arabi?_" (You speak Arabic?) "_Na'am et kal'm!_" affirmed the lieutenant, smiling. And in the same tongue he continued, with fluent ease: "Indeed I do, _Effendi_. Yes, yes, I learned it in Algiers and all the way south as far as the headwaters of the Niger. "Five years I spent among the Arabs, doing air-work, surveying the Sahara, locating oases, mapping what until then were absolutely unknown stretches of territory. I did a bit of bombing, too, in the campaign against Sheik Abd el Rahman, in 1913." "Yes, so I have heard. You almost lost your life, that time?" "Only by the thickness of a _semmah_ seed did I preserve it," answered the Frenchman. "My mechanician, Lebon, and I--we fell among them on account of engine trouble, near the oasis of Adrar, not far from here. We had no machine-gun--nothing but revolvers. We stood them off for seven hours, before they rushed us. They captured us only because our last cartridges were gone." "You did not save the mercy-bullet that time, eh?" "I did not, _Effendi._ I did not know them then as I do now. They knocked us both senseless, and then began hacking our machine to pieces with their huge _balas_ (yataghans). They thought our plane was some gigantic bird.