A certain change in the desert was becoming noticeable, as the air-liner flung herself at high speed into the south-east.

At times there must be a little rainfall here, or else some hidden source of water, for a scrub, of dwarf acacia, of camel-grass, and tamarisk had begun to show.
But as the black, naked mountains drew near, this gave place to flats white with salt, to jagged upcroppings of dull, yellowish rock--how little they then suspected its true nature!--and to detached cliffs sharp as a wolf's teeth, with strata of greenish schist.
It was at 9:30 a.m.of May 28, that _Nissr_ tilted her planes and soared abruptly over the first crags of the Iron Mountains.

At a height of forty-five hundred feet she sped above them, the heat of their sun-baked blackness radiating up against her wings and body.

No more terrible desolation could be imagined than this rock fortress, split with chasms and unsounded gorges, where here and there more of the yellow outcrops showed.

No life appeared, not even vultures.