A train, southbound for Mecca, had halted on the famous Pilgrims' Railway.
From its windows and doors, white-clad figures were violently gesticulating.

Others were leaping from the train, swarming all about the carriages.
An irregular fusillade, harmless as if from pop-guns, was being directed against the invading Eagle of the Sky.

A faint, far outcry of passionate voices drifted upward in the heat and shimmer of that Arabian afternoon.

The train seemed a veritable hornets' nest into which a rock had been heaved.
"Faith, but that's an odd sight," laughed the major.

"Where else in all this world could you get a contrast like that--the desert, a semibarbarous people, and a railroad ?" "Nowhere else," put in Leclair.