The Golden Waterspout was plainly visible, gleaming in the sun--a massive trough of pure metal, its value quite incalculable.
Now the Ka'aba was close; now the nacelle slowed, beside it, in the shadow of its grim blackness.

The major got an impression of exceeding richness from the shrouding veil, which he saw to be a huge silken fabric, each side like a vast theater curtain of black, with a two-foot band a little more than half-way up, the whole covered with verses from the Koran worked in gold.
The nacelle sank gently on to a heap of motionless pilgrims, canted to the left, and came to rest.

Not a groan, curse, or even a sigh escaped the desecrated Moslems forever defiled by the touch of the infidels' accursed machine.
The effect was horribly uncanny--of all those brown men, open-eyed and conscious, but perfectly unable to move so much as an eyebrow.

Such as had fallen with their eyes in the direction of the nacelle, could see what was going on; the others could only judge of this incredible desecration by what they could hear.

The sound of foreign voices, speaking an unbelievers' tongue in the very shadow of the Ka'aba, must have been supremely horrible to every Mohammedan there.
"Out, men, and at it!" the major commanded, as he scrambled from the nacelle, slid and stumbled over the Moslems, and reached hands for the tools passed out to him.