The Flying Legion

The Flying Legion

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flying Legion, by George Allan England This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Flying Legion
Author: George Allan England
Release Date: May 4, 2004 [EBook #12265]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLYING LEGION ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Bill Hershey and PG Distributed Proofreaders

[Illustration: A HAIL OF SLUGS BOMBARDED THE VAST-SPREAD WINGS AND FUSELAGE OF NISSR.]

THE FLYING LEGION
BY GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND
Published July, 1920

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I
A Spirit Caged.
II "To Paradise--or Hell!"
III The Gathering of the Legionaries.
IV The Masked Recruit.
V In the Night.
VI The Silent Attack.
VII The Nest of the Great Bird.
VIII The Eagle of the Sky.
IX Eastward Ho.
X "I Am the Master's!"
XI Captain Alden Stands Revealed.
XII The Woman of Adventure.
XIII The Enmeshing of the Master.
XIV Storm Birds.
XV The Battle of Vibrations.
XVI Leclair, Ace of France.
XVII Miracles, Scourge of Flame.
XVIII "Captain Alden" Makes Good.
XIX Hostile Coasts.
XX The Waiting Menace.
XXI Shipwreck and War.
XXII Beleaguered.
XXIII A Mission of Dread.
XXIV Angels of Death.
XXV The Great Pearl Star.
XXVI The Sand-Devils.
XXVII Toil and Pursuit.
XXVIII Onward Toward the Forbidden City.
XXIX "Labbayk!"
XXX Over Mecca.
XXXI East Against West.
XXXII The Battle of the Haram.
XXXIII The Ordeal of Rrisa.
XXXIV The Inner Secret of Islam.
XXXV Into the Valley of Mystery.
XXXVI Journey's End.
XXXVII The Greeting of Warriors.
XXXVIII Bara Miyan, High Priest.
XXXIX On, to the Golden City!
XL Into the Treasure Citadel.
XLI The Master's Price.
XLII "Sons of the Prophet, Slay!"
XLIII War in the Depths.
XLIV Into the Jewel-Crypt.
XLV The Jewel Hoard.
XLVI Bohannan Becomes a Millionaire.
XLVII A Way Out?
XLVIII The River of Night.
XLIX The Desert.
L "Where There Is None but Allah."
LI Torture.
LII "Th��lassa! Th��lassa!"
LIII The Greater Treasure.
The Flying Legion

CHAPTER I
A SPIRIT CAGED
The room was strange as the man, himself, who dwelt there. It seemed, in a way, the outward expression of his inner personality. He had ordered it built from his own plans, to please a whim of his restless mind, on top of the gigantic skyscraper that formed part of his properties. Windows boldly fronted all four cardinal compass-points--huge, plate-glass windows that gave a view unequaled in its sweep and power.
The room seemed an eagle's nest perched on the summit of a man-made crag. The Arabic name that he had given it--Niss'rosh--meant just that. Singular place indeed, well-harmonized with its master.
Through the westward windows, umbers and pearls of dying day, smudged across a smoky sky, now shadowed trophy-covered walls. This light, subdued and somber though it was, slowly fading, verging toward a night of May, disclosed unusual furnishings. It showed a heavy black table of some rare Oriental wood elaborately carved and inlaid with still rarer woods; a table covered with a prayer-rug, on which lay various books on aeronautics and kindred sciences, jostling works on Eastern travel, on theosophy, mysticism, exploration.
Maps and atlases added their note of research. At one end of the table stood a bronze faun's head with open lips, with hand cupped at listening ear. Surely that head must have come from some buried art-find of the very long ago. The faint greenish patina that covered it could have been painted only by the hand of the greatest artist of them all, Time.
A book-case occupied the northern space, between the windows. It, too, was crammed with scientific reports, oddments of out-of-the-way lore, and travels. But here a profusion of war-books and official documents showed another bent of the owner's mind. Over the book-case hung two German gasmasks. They seemed, in the half-dusk, to glower down through their round, empty eyeholes like sinister devil-fish awaiting prey.
The masks were flanked by rifles, bayonets, knives, maces, all bearing scars of battle. Above them, three fragments of Prussian battle-flags formed a kind of frieze, their color softened by the fading sunset, even as the fading of the dream of imperial glory had dulled and dimmed all that for which they had stood.
The southern wall of that strange room--that quiet room to which only a far, vague murmur of the city's life whispered up, with faint blurs of steamer-whistles from the river--bore Turkish spoils of battle. Here hung more rifles, there a Kurdish yataghan with two hand-grenades from Gallipoli, and a blood-red banner with a crescent and one star worked in gold thread. Aviator's gauntlets draped the staff of the banner.
Along the eastern side of this eyrie a broad divan invited one to rest. Over it were suspended Austrian and Bulgarian captures--a lance with a blood-stiffened pennant, a cuirass, entrenching tools, a steel helmet with an eloquent bullet-hole through the crown. Some few framed portraits of noted "aces" hung here and elsewhere, with two or three photographs of battle-planes. Three of the portraits were framed in symbolic black. Part of a