g a situation
that's going to tax us to the utmost, but there's only one thing to
do--dig in!"

Life itself lay in digging, death in exposure to the fire of
those maddeningly elusive, unseen Bedouins. Like so many dogs the
Legionaries once more fell to excavating, with their knives and their
bare hands, the sun-baked sand that slithered back again into their
shallow trench almost as fast as they could throw it out.

A ragged fire from the Beni Harb lent speed to their efforts. Dead men
and wounded could now have no attention. Life itself was all at stake.

In their rude trench they lay at last, sweating, panting, covered
with sand and dust, with thirst beginning to take hold on them, and
increasing swarms of flies--tiny, vicious, black things, all sting and
poison--beginning to hum about them. On watch they rested there, while
dull umbers of nightfall glowered through the framework of _Nissr_,
tossing in the surf. Without much plan, wrecked, confronted by what
seemed perils unsurmountable, the Flying Legion waited for the coming
of dark to respite them from sniping.

The Master, half-way along the line with Leclair, Rrisa, the major and
"Captain Alden," mentally took stock of losses thus far sustained. The
wounded were: Alden, Bohannan (burned), Enemark and himself. The dead:
Kloof, Sheffield, Beziers, Travers, Gorlitz, Auchincloss, Daimamoto.

Twenty-four living remained, including Leclair. The mortality, in
about eighteen hours, had been twenty percent. At this rate the Master
understood the Flying Legion was slated for very speedy destruction.

"It's touch-and-go now," he pondered. "We've got to annihilate these
infernal Bedouins, repair the liner and get ahead, or--but there's no
'or' in this! None, at all!"

As dark settled down over the Sahara, the leprous patches of white,
saline earth took on a ghostly pallor. The light of the southern stars
began to glow with soft radiance. A gigantic emptiness, a rolling
vacancy of sea and earth--brine-waves to rear of the Legion,
sand-waves ahead--shrank the party to seeming insignificance.

A soft, purple tapestry of night unrolled across the desert; the wind
died, and the suffocating breath of overheated sands began to emanate
from the baked earth. And ever more and more pestiferously the
infernal torment of the flies increased.

Inflamed with chagrin, rage, and grief for the lost comrades, the
Legionaries lay in waiting. No conversation ran along the line.
Silen