No, not fear, in the sense of timidity, but rather a realization of the immense perils of this situation, and an up-springing of the heart to meet those perils, to face and overcome them, and from out their very maw to snatch rewards beyond all calculation.
Even the Master himself, tempered in the fires of war's Hell, sensed this tremendous potentiality of death as the tiny handful of white men galloped on and on behind Bara Miyan.

Here the Legion was, hemmed and pent by countless hordes of fanatics whom any chance word or look, construed as a religious insult, might lash to fury.

Five men remained outside.

The rest were now as drops of water in a hostile ocean.

In the Master's breast-pocket still lay Kaukab el Durri--and might not that possession, itself, be enough to start a jihad of extermination?
Was not the fact of unbelieving dogs now for the first time being in the Sacred City--was not this, alone, cause for a massacre?
What, in sober reason, stood between the Legion and death?
Only two factors: first, the potential destruction of the Myzab and the Black Stone in case of treachery; and second, two tiny pinches of salt exchanged between the Master and old Bara Miyan! The situation, calmly reviewed, was one probably never paralleled in the history of adventure--more like the dream of a hashish-smoking addict than cold reality.
Very contending emotions possessed the hearts of the Legionaries, in different reactions to their diverse temperaments.