edge of the
plain. This line of crags faded, in remote distance, into the brown
vapors that ringed the mystic horizon.

"The city?" asked Bohannan. "That--can't be the city, can it, now?
Faith, if it _is_, we're too late. Damn me, sir, but the whole
infernal place is on fire! Just our rotten luck, eh?"

The Master made no reply. As if he would devour the place with his
eyes, he was leaning over the rail, boring through those powerful
glasses at the dazzle and bright sheen of the wonder-city now every
moment becoming more clearly visible.

That it was in truth a city could no longer be doubted. Long walls
came to view, pierced by gates with fantastic arches. Domes rose to
heaven. Delicate minarets, carved into a fretwork of amazing fineness,
pointed their fingers at the yellow shimmering sky. The contrast of
that brilliance, with the soft green gardens and feathery palm-groves
before, the grim black cliffs behind, filled the Legionaries with a
kind of silent awe.

But most wonderful of all was the metallic shimmer of those walls,
domes, minarets, under the high sun of this lost Arabian paradise. So
amazing was the prospect that, as _Nissr_ hurled herself in over
the last ranges of the mountains and shot out across the open plain
itself, only one man found words.

This man was Leclair. Close beside the Master, he said in Arabic:

"I too have heard, my Captain. I too know the story of the Bara
Jannati Shahr--but I have always thought it fable. Now, now--."

"Faith!" interrupted the major, with sudden excitement. He smote the
rail a blow with an agitated fist. "If that doesn't look like gold,
I'm a--."

"Gold?" burst out the Master, unable longer to control himself. "Of
course it's gold! And we--are the first white men in all the world to
look on it--the Golden City of Jannati Shahr!"

Stupefaction overcame the Flying Legion. The sight of this perfectly
incredible city, which even yet--despite its obvious character--they
could not believe as reality, for a little while deprived all the
observers of coherent thought.

Like men in a daze, they stood watching the far-distant mass of walls,
buildings, towers, battlements all agleam with the unmistakable sheen
of pure metal. The human mind, confronted by such a phenomenon, fails
to react, and for a while lies inert, stunned, prostrate.

"Gold?" stammered the major, and fell to gnawing his mustache, as
he stared at the incredible sight. "By God--gold? Sure, it can't