Again the machine-gun chattered. Another joined it, but no dust-spurts leaped from the dune, where now a continual play of fire was leaping out. The Beni Harb, keenly intelligent, sensed either that they were being fired at with blanks, or that the marksmanship aboard the air-liner was execrable. A confused chorus of cries and jeers drifted down from the sand-hills; and all at once a tall, gaunt figure in a brown and white striped burnous, with the hood drawn up over the head, leaped to sight. This figure brandished a tremendously long rifle in his left hand. His right was thrust up, with four fingers extended--the sign of wishing blindness to enemies. A splendid mark this Arab made. The Master drew a fine bead on him and fired. Both he and Leclair laughed, as the Arab pitched forward in the sand. Unseen hands dragged the warrior back, away, out of sight. A slug crashed through the upper pane of the port window, flattened itself against the main corridor door and dropped to the sofa-locker. The Master reached for the phone and switched in the connection with the upper starboard gallery. "Major Bohannan!" he ordered. "No more blanks! The real thing, now--but hold your fire till we drift over the dune!" "Drift over!" echoed Leclair. "But, _monsieur_, we'll never even make the beach!" "So?" asked the chief. He switched to the engine-room. "Frazier! Lift her a little, now! Rack everything--strain everything--break everything, if you must, but lift her!" "Yes, sir!" came the engineer's voice. "I'll scrap the engines, sir, but I'll do that!" Almost as if a mocking echo of the command and the promise, a dull concussion shuddered through _Nissr_. The drone of the helicopters sank to a sullen murmur; and down below, waves began combing angrily over the gallery. "Ah, _nom de Dieu_!" cried Leclair, in sudden rage at seeing his chance all gone to pot, of coming to grips with the hated Beni Harb. From the penetralia of the air-liner, confused shouts burst forth. The upper galleries grew vocal with execrations. Not one was of fear; all voiced disappointment, the passion of baffled fury. Angrily a boiler-shop clatter of machine-guns vomited useless frenzy. Wearily, like a stricken bird that has been forced too long to wing its broken way, the Eagle of the Sky--still two hundred yards from shore--lagged down into the high-running surf. Down, in a murderous hail of fire she sank, into the waves that beat on the stark, sun-baked Sahara shore. And from hundreds of barbarous throats arose the killing-cry to Allah--the battle-cry of Beni Harb, the murder-lusting Sons of War. CHAPTER XXII BELEAGUERED "La Illaha illa Allah! M'hámed rasul Allah!" Raw, ragged, exultant, a scream of passion, joy, and hate, it rose like the voice of the desert itself, vibrant with wild fanaticism, pitiless and wild.