But as that night aboard Nissr, when he had laid a hand on the woman's cabin door, something unknown to him seemed drawing him to her, making her welfare and her life assume a strange import.
"Come, O Frank!" Bara Miyan was saying.

The Olema's words recalled the Master to himself with a start.

"Such food and drink as we men of El Barr have, gladly we share with thee and thine!" The old man entered the dark doorway of the citadel, noiselessly in soft sandals.

Beside him walked the Master; and, well grouped and flanked and followed by the Arabs in their white robes--all silent, grave, watchful--the Legion also entered.
Behind them once more closed the massive doors, silently.
The eighteen Legionaries were pent in solid walls of metal, there in the heart of a vast city of fighting-men whose god was Allah and to whom all unbelievers were as outcasts and as pariah dogs--anathema..