"That We Make a Profit from this Venture!"
Late that afternoon, before they loaded up the camels, there was another conference between Grim, Jael Higg, Narayan Singh, our prisoner Yussuf, and myself. The ancient hills of Edom were not far away, and we were near enough to Petra to feel nervous. Jael made a pretty good pretense of meeting Grim half-way, and I think she had made up her mind to let him dig his own pit and tumble into it.
Yussuf was aware by that time, if not of Grim's identity, at any rate of the fact that he was an officer in the British pay, and was rather obviously considering which would likely pay him best—to side secretly with Ali Higg or openly with Grim, or both.
Having fought over all that country under Lawrence, and knowing consequently every yard of it, I suppose Grim felt neither thrilled nor mystified; but in case any scientist reads this and wants to know how I felt, "fed up and far from home" about describes it. But there was worse to come!
Grim turned to me at last and smiled in that darned genial way he has when he means to call on your uttermost patience or endurance.
"You see, the difficulty is," he said, "to get to Ali Higg without his getting us first. He has probably got between forty and fifty men in Petra with him, so we daren't invade the place. Yet we've got to hurry, because old Ibrahim ben Ah with that army may get suspicious and send back a messenger on his own account. Now, do you feel willing to beard the Lion in his den?"
"Alone?" I asked.
I never felt less willing to do anything, and dare say my face betrayed it.
"No. Narayan Singh will go too, and, of course, Ayisha."
Ayisha seemed about as safe an ambassador to send as an electric spark to a barrel of powder. I glanced at Narayan Singh and felt ashamed, for his eyes glowed unmistakably. He was enthusiastic.
Well, it seems I draw a color-line after all. I can't fight like a Sikh, or be as good a man in lots of ways; but I'm not going to be outdone by one in daring, while the Sikh is looking.
"All right," I said, "I'll do anything you say."
But I did not have the perfect voice-control I would have liked, and Jael Higg grinned. That naturally settled it.
"Narayan Singh needn't come if he'd rather stay with you," I added, and the Sikh raised his eyebrows.
"Do you dare to make love to Ayisha, sahib?" he grinned.
I began to see the general drift of the plan of campaign, and wondered. Having seen more than a little of the Near East, and knowing how the peace of the whole world depends on preserving that unmelted hotpot of nations from anarchy, I was not impressed by the stability of things in general!
Grim had come out on his hair-raising venture because no army was available to deal with Ali Higg, and he would not have ventured unless powers-that-pretend-to-be were sure that Ali Higg was deadly dangerous. Did the peace of the world, then, depend on the success or otherwise of a Sikh's mock love-making. It did look like it.
Narayan Singh got to his feet with a laugh and a yawn, and went to dance attendance on Ayisha, while Grim reinstructed Yussuf regarding the ease with which the British could impound his Jaffa property; but though I listened to all that, and heard Yussuf's vows of fidelity—heard him promise to reverse his former report and spread rumors in Ali's camp of a British army getting ready to advance—the prospect to me looked gloomier and gloomier.
"You can only die once," Grim laughed after a quick glance at my face, "and we may save a hundred thousand people from the sword."
But I suppose I wasn't cut out to be a willing martyr. It was a case of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and though I did go forward on that mad escapade it was fear that drove me—fear of the Sikh's and Grim's contempt, and of my own self-loathing afterward.
Grim and Narayan Singh are made of the real hero stuff. I wonder how many others there are like me, who face the music simply because one or two others have got guts enough to lead us up to it.
We didn't move far that night, for there was no need, and Grim was careful not to go where Ali Baba could not find him. We passed through acres of oleander-scrub into a valley twelve miles wide at its mouth, that narrowed gradually until the high red sandstone cliffs shut out the moonlight. It was like the mouth of hell, and suffocating, for the cliff-sides were giving off the heat they had sucked up through the day.
The surest sign that Ali Higg was either over-confident or seriously engaged elsewhere was that there was no guard in the ravine. Ten men properly placed could have destroyed us. Even the great Alexander of Macedon could not force that gorge, and suffered one of his worst defeats there. The Turks made the same mistake and tried to oust Lawrence in the Great War; but he simply overwhelmed them with a scratch brigade of partly armed Bedouins and women.
Grim called a halt at last where a dozen caves a hundred feet above the bottom of the gorge could be reached by a goat-track leading to a ledge. There was a rift in the side-wall there, making a pitch-dark corner where the camels could lie unseen and grumble to one another—safe enough until daylight, unless they should see ghosts and try to stampede for the open. Grim sent the women and Ayisha's four men up to the caves with only Narayan Singh to watch them, for there was no way of escape, except by that twelve-inch goat-track.
Then, because Ali Baba's sons and grandsons were nervous about the "old man their father," and because the one thing that more than all other circumstances combined could ruin our slim chance would be panic, Grim squatted on the sand in the gorge with the men all around him and began to tell stories.
Right there in the very jaws of death, within a mile of the lair of Ali Higg, in possession of two of the tyrant's wives, with an army at our rear that might at that minute be following old Ali Baba into the gorge to cut off our one possible retreat, he told them the old tales that Arabs love, and soothed them as if they were children.
That was the finest glimpse of Grim's real manhood I had experienced yet, although I could not see him for the darkness. You couldn't see any one. It was a voice in the night—strong, reassuring—telling to born thieves stories of the warm humanity of other thieves, whose accomplishments in the way of cool cheek and lawless altruism were hardly more outrageous than the task in front of us.
And he told them so well that even when a chill draft crept along the bottom of the gorge two hours before dawn, taking the place of the hot air that had ascended, and you could feel the shiver that shook the circle of listeners, they only drew closer and leaned forward more intently—almost as if he were a fire at which they warmed themselves.
But heavens! It seemed madness, nevertheless. We had no more pickets out than the enemy had. We were relying utterly on Grim's information that he had extracted from the women and the prisoners, and on his judgment based on that.
No doubt he knew a lot that he had not told us, for that is his infernal way of doing business; but neither that probability, nor his tales that so suited the Arab mind, nor the recollection of earlier predicaments in which his flair for solutions had been infallibly right, soothed my nerves much; and I nearly jumped out of my skin when a series of grunts and stumbling footfalls broke the stillness of the gorge behind us.
It sounded like ten weary camels being cursed by ten angry men, and I supposed at once that Ibrahim ben Ah had sent a detachment to investigate and that this was their advance-guard. Who else would dare to lift his voice in that way in the gorge? You could hear the words presently:
"Ill-bred Somali beast! Born among vermin in a black man's kraal! Allah give thee to the crows! Weary? What of it? What of my back, thou awkward earthquake! Thou plow-beast! A devil sit on thee! A devil drive thee! A devil eat thee!"
Whack! Whack!
"Oh my bones! My old bones!"
Mujrim was the first to recognize the voice. He got up quietly and stood in the gorge; and in another minute a blot of denser blackness that was a camel loomed above him, and he raised his hand to seize the head-rope. But the camel saw him first, and, realizing that the journey was over at last, flung itself to the ground with the abandon of a foundered dog, and lay with its neck stretched out straight and legs all straddled anyhow. Mujrim was just in time to catch his father, who was nearly as tired as the camel. It was pretty obvious at once that Jael's authority had failed badly when it came to exchanging camels.
The sons all surrounded the old man and made a fuss over him, laying him down on a sheepskin coat and chafing his stiff muscles, calling him brave names, rubbing his feet, patting his hands, praising him, while he swore at them each time they touched a sore spot.
They would not even give him a chance to hand over his letter to Grim, until at last he swore so savagely that Mujrim paid attention and took the letter out of the old man's waistcloth. It was in the same envelop in which the other had gone, unsealed, but with the thumb-mark of Ibrahim ben Ah imprinted on its face.
"To think that I, of all people, should fetch and carry for such dogs!" swore Ali Baba. "I asked for a good beast in exchange for mine, and they gave me this crow's meat, and laughed! May Allah change their faces! May the water of that oasis turn their bowels into stone!
"Aye, Jimgrim, they will stay there! They are glad enough to stay there. They are dogs that fear their master's whip. They are so afraid of him that I think if Ali Higg should bid them roast themselves alive the dogs would do it. May they roast a second time in hell for giving me that camel.
"Bah! What kind of sons have I? Are these the sons of my loins that let me parch? Is there no water-bag?"
Grim struck a match in the dark corner where the camels were; but all the envelop contained was a piece of jagged paper torn from the original letter, with Ibrahim ben Ah's thumb-mark done in ink made from gunpowder by way of acknowledgment. It meant, presumably, that instructions would be obeyed, and so far, good; we were not now in danger of trouble from that source.
But Ali Baba found his tongue again, and freed himself from his sons after he had drank about a quart of water.
"That Ibrahim ben Ah was puzzled," he said. "Allah! But the fool asked questions; and by the Prophet's beard I lied in answer to him! Ho! What a string of lies! Who was I but a sheikh from El-Kalil bringing word to Ali Higg of the movements of a British force! In what way did I become the friend of Ali Higg? Was I not always his friend! Was it not I who fed him when he first escaped from Egypt! Ho-ho-ho! Have I not been working for a year to gather men for him in El-Kalil! Have I not made purchases in El-Kalil and El-Kudz for his wife Ayisha!Il hamdulillah!My tongue was ready! May the lies rot the belly of the fool who ate them!
"But that was not all. He wanted to know other things—as, for instance, whether the other force of forty men is still at large, and if so who shall protect the women in Petra.
"'For,' quoth he, `by Allah, there are men in the neighborhood who have felt our Ali's heel, and who would not scruple to wreak vengeance if his back were altogether turned. Convey him my respectful homage, and bid him look to his rear,' said Ibrahim ben Ah."
At that Grim called to Narayan Singh, who came down the goat-track like a landslide. You mustn't whistle your man in those parts, or the Arabs will say the devil has defiled your mouth.
"Ask Jael Higg to come here."
"A word first, Jimgrim sahib! While I watched, those women talked. Jael, the older one, offered Ayisha forgiveness if she would obey henceforth; but Ayisha gave her only hard words, saying that in a day or so it will be seen whose cock crows loudest. So Jael called to two of the men who have been with Ayisha all this time, and they squatted in the mouth of her cave. As it was very dark I crept quite close and listened. She bade them watch their chance and run to Ali Higg.
"'If he is ill and angry, never mind,' she said. `If he beats you, never mind. He will reward you afterward. Bid him, as he values life,' she said, `call in those forty men whom he would send to punish the Beni Aroun people. Tell him I am a prisoner, but those forty are enough to turn the tables until Ibrahim ben Ah can come. A camel must leave in a hurry for Ibrahim ben Ah at the oasis, and bring him and all the men back to straighten this affair.'
"She promised them money and promotion for success, and sure death for failure!"
"Good!" said Grim, turning to me. "You see? It always pays to stage a close-up in a game like this. We've caught our friend Ali Higg between soup and fish."
"Get in quick, then, and kidnap him," I urged.
"Man alive," he answered, "we've no kind of right to do that. Bring her down," he told Narayan Singh, "and then have Mujrim tie those four men of Ayisha's so they've no chance to escape."
Jael Higg came down in a livid passion—altogether too near home to enjoy taking secondhand orders from an Indian in the dark. She was still less amused when she discovered that Grim knew her little scheme.
"Well, Jael," he said, "you weren't quite frank with me after all, were you? Which will you do now—stay in that hole up there with a double guard, or come into Petra with us and behave yourself?"
For, I should say, a whole minute, she did not answer. You could not tell in the dark, but I think she was fighting back tears, and too proud to betray it.
"I'm your prisoner," she hissed at last. "Do what you like, and take the consequences."
"I'll put you to no indignity, Jael, if you'll play fair."
"My God! What? Are you mad, or am I? What are you going to do with Ali Higg?"
"Make friends with him."
"You swear that?"
"Sure."
She was silent for another minute.
"Very well," she said at last. "I'll do my best."
"Accepted," answered Grim. "Now—bring down Ayisha—fetch out the camels—mount—and forward all!"
We went forward just as dawn was breaking, and I believe every man Jack of us except Grim had his heart in his teeth. Grim was likely too busy conning over the plan in his head to feel afraid, that being, as far as I could ever tell, the one lone advantage of being leader, just as the capacity to drive out fear by steady thinking is as good a reason as exists for placing a man in command.
Nobody knows how old Petra is, but it was a thriving city when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, and for a full five thousand years it has had but that one entrance, through a gorge that narrows finally until only one loaded camel at a time can pass. Army after army down the centuries have tried to storm the place, and failed, so that even the invincible Alexander and the Romans had to fall back on the arts of friendship to obtain the key. We, the last invaders, came as friends, if only Grim could persuade the tyrant to believe it.
The sun rose over the city just as we reached the narrowest part of the gut, Grim leading, and its first rays showed that we were using the bed of a watercourse for a road. Exactly in front of us, glimpsed through a twelve-foot gap between cliffs six hundred feet high, was a sight worth going twice that distance, running twice that risk, to see—a rose-red temple front, carved out of the solid valley wall and glistening in the opalescent hues of morning.
Not even Burkhardt, who was the first civilized man to see the place in a thousand years, described that temple properly; because you can't. It is huge—majestic—silent—empty—aglow with all the prism colors in the morning sun. And it seems to think.
It takes you so by surprise when you first see it that in face of that embodied mystery of ancient days your brain won't work, and you want to sit spellbound. But Grim had done our thinking for us, so that we were not the only ones surprised. Such was the confidence of safety that those huge walls and the narrow entrance to the place inspire that Ali Higg had set only four men to keep the gate; and they slept with their weapons beside them, never believing that strangers would dare essay that ghost-haunted ravine by night.
They were pounced on and tied almost before their eyes were open; and, catching sight of Jael Higg first, and getting only a glimpse of Grim, they rather naturally thought their chief had caught them napping; so they neither cried out nor made any attempt to defend themselves; and presently, when they discovered their mistake, the fear of being crucified for having slept on duty kept them dumb.
Grim led the way straight to that amazing temple, and we invaded it, camels and all, off-loading the camels inside in a hurry and then driving them out again to lie down in the wide porch between the columns and the temple wall. The porch was so vast that even all our string of camels did not crowd it.
The main part of the interior was a perfect cube of forty feet, all hand-hewn from the cliff, and there were numerous rooms leading out of it that had once been occupied by the priests of Isis, but "the lion and the lizard" had lived in them since their day. We put the prisoners, including Ayisha's four men, in one room under guard.
That much was hardly accomplished when the spirit of our seventeen thieves reacted to their surroundings, and all the advantage of our secret arrival was suddenly undone. Half of them had gone outside to tie the camels, under Ali Baba's watchful eye; and it was he, as a matter of fact, who started it. From inside we heard a regular din of battle commencing—loud shouts and irregular rifle-fire—and I followed Grim out in a hurry.
There was no enemy in sight. Old Ali Baba was busy reloading his rifle fifty paces away in front of the temple door, facing us with his sons, in a semicircle around him, and they were shooting at something over our heads. Grim laughed rather bitterly.
"My mistake," he said. "I ought to have thought of that."
So I went out to see.
Surmounting the temple front, at least a hundred feet above the pavement and perfectly inaccessible, was a beautifully carved stone urn surmounting a battered image of some god or goddess. It was in shadow, because the cliff wall, from which the temple had been carved, overhung it; so it was peculiarly difficult to hit, even at that range; but they were all firing away at it as if Ali Higg and all his men were hidden behind the thing. There was no particular need to stop them, for they had made noise enough already to awake the very slumbering bones of Petra. Ali Baba advised me to shoot too, and I asked him why.
"To burst the thing."
"But why?"
"That we make a profit from this venture."
"How?"
He paused to reload once more. He had already fired away about fifteen cartridges.
"Allah! The very dogs of El-Kalil have heard of Pharaoh's treasure."
"I am neither a dog," said I, "nor an inhabitant of El-Kalil, for which Allah for his thoughtfulness be praised! Tell me what you and the dogs know."
"This place was the treasury of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, a bad king and an unbeliever, whom may Allah curse! In that urn are his gold and rubies. If we can crack it they will come tumbling down and we shall all be rich."
"Mashallah!You believe that? Why haven't Ali Higg and his men cracked it, then?"
"Shu halalk?* I have told you Pharaoh was an evil king. He was in league with devils and bewitched the place. The devils guard it. May Allah twist their tails! Look—see! We shoot, but the bullets miss the mark each time!"
———— * What chatter is this? ————
"Perhaps you haven't prayed enough to exorcize the devils?" I suggested, and he dropped the butt of his rifle on the ground to consider the proposition.
"Out of the mouth of an unbeliever has come wisdom before now," he said. "There may be truth in that."
And he called all his sons and grandsons there and then to spread their mats and pray toward Mecca, performing the prescribed ablutions first with water from one of the goatskin bags.
Well, there wasn't any further use in trying to keep our movements secret. Grim beckoned me to where he stood beside Narayan Singh, with Ayisha looking mischievous in the gloom behind them, and issued final instructions.
"Present my compliments and these gifts to Ali Higg—I'm busy at prayer, remember—and say how greatly honored we feel to have escorted his wife across the desert. If he asks where her four men are, tell him I'll bring them later. Be sure and make me out a great sheikh, and say I heard he is sick, so sent myhakimin advance to give him relief; then do your best for him, if he'll let you—after Ayisha has done her worst," he added in a whisper. "Don't forget you're adarwaish.The more you jaw religion the better the old rascal will like you. See you soon. So long!"
So Narayan Singh and I, followed by Ayisha and two of Ali Baba's sons, left that ancient temple bearing the medicine-chest as well as presents, and I hope the others did not feel as scared as I did.
"Yet I Forgot to Speak of the Twenty Aeroplanes!"
You can expect anything, of course, of Arabs. People who will pitch black cotton tents in the scorching sun, and live in them in preference to gorgeous cool stone temples because of the devils and ghosts that they believe to haunt those habitable splendors, will believe anything at all except the truth, and act in any way except reasonably. So I tried to believe it was all right to be unreasonable too.
You would think, wouldn't you, that a man who had set himself up to be the holy terror of a country-side and put his heel on the necks of all the tribes for miles around, would have made use at least of the caves and tombs to strengthen his position. There were thousands of them all among those opal-colored cliffs, to say nothing of ruined buildings; yet not one was occupied. Ayisha had told most of the truth when she said in El-Kalil that her people lived in tents.
We walked down the paved street of a city between oleander bushes that had forced themselves up between the cracks, toward an enormous open amphitheater hewn by the Romans out of a hillside, with countless tiers of ruined stone seats rising one above the other like giant steps.
In the center of that the tents were pitched, and the only building in use was a great half-open cave on another hillside, in which Ayisha told us Ali Higg himself lived, overlooking the entire camp and directing its destinies.
On the top of the mountain in front of us was the tomb of Aaron, Moses' brother. On another mountain farther off stood a great crusader castle all in ruins; and to left and right were endless remains of civilization that throve when the British were living in mud-and-wattle huts. The dry climate had preserved it all; but there was water enough; it only needed the labor of a thousand men to remake a city of it.
We avoided the amphitheater with its hundreds of tents pitched inside and all about it, because Ayisha said the women would come running out to greet her, and she did not desire that any more than we did. So we turned to the right, and started up a flight of steps nearly a mile long that led to an ancient place of sacrifice; two hundred yards up that the track turned off that led to Ali Higg's cavern.
It was there, where the broken steps and sidetrack met, that the first men came hurrying to meet us and blocked our way—four of them, active as goats, and looking fierce enough to scare away twice their number. But they recognized Ayisha, and stood aside at once to let us pass, showing her considerable gruff respect and asking a string of questions, which she countered with platitudes. They did not follow us, but stayed on guard at the corner, as if the meeting between Ali Higg and his wife were something to keep from prying eyes.
So the far-famed Ali Higg was alone in his great cave when we reached it, sitting near the entrance propped on skins and cushions with a perfect armory of weapons on the floor beside him. The interior was hung with fine Bokhara embroideries, and every inch of the floor was covered with rugs.
There was another cave opening into that in which he sat; and it, too, was richly decorated; but the sound of women's voices that we heard came from a third cave around the corner of the cliff wall, not connected. Ali Higg was apparently in no mood for female company—or any other kind.
In the shadow of the overhanging rock he looked so like Grim it was laughable. He was a caricature of our man, with all the refinement and humor subtly changed into irritable anger. He looked as if he would scream if you touched him, and no wonder; for the back of the poor fellow's neck, half hidden by the folds of his head-cloth, was a perfect mess of boils that made every movement of his head an agony.
His eyes were darker than Grim's, and blazed as surely no white man's ever did; and his likeness to Grim was lessened by the fact that he had not been shaved for a day or two, and the sparse black hair coarsened the outline of his chin and jaw. In spite of his illness he had not laid aside the bandolier that crossed his breast, nor the two daggers tucked into his waist-cloth. And he laid his hand on a modern British Army rifle the minute he caught sight of us.
Narayan Singh and I both bowed and, after greeting him with the proper sonorous blessing, stood aside to let Ayisha approach. We should have demeaned ourselves in his eyes, and hers as well, if we had walked behind her. He nodded to us curtly, and almost smiled at her; but that one wry twist of his lips was his nearest approach to pleasantry that morning.
She knelt and kissed his hands and feet, waiting to speak until she was spoken to; and he did not speak to her at all, but signed to her with a tap on the head and a gesture to take her place on the rug behind him. Then at a motion from me Ali Baba's two sons brought forward the presents and the medicine-chest, setting them down before him in the cave-mouth.
The presents were pretty good, I thought. I would not have minded owning them myself; but he eyed them dully. There was a set of Solingen razors, marked in Arabic with the days of the week; a cloak of blue-and-white-striped cloth, fit for any prince of Bedouins; and an ormolu clock with a gong inside it that would have graced the chimneypiece of a Brooklyn boarding-house.
"Mar'haba!"* he said at last, by way of acknowledging our existence, after he had stared at the presents for about two minutes sourly; and I took that for permission to say my little piece. [* Greeting]
So I delivered Grim's message, saying that he was a most God-fearing and hard-fighting sheikh from Palestine, who had had the honor to escort his mightiness' wife to Petra, and now, learning of the illness of the famous Lion of Petra, who might Allah bless for ever, rather than postpone his devotions had sent me, hishakim,schooled in medicine at Lahore University, and adarwaishto boot, to offer such relief as my modest skill might compass.
That was a long speech to get off in Arabic for a comparative beginner. I rather expected him to smile or say something pleasant in return, but he didn't.
"By Allah, you have come to poison me!" he growled. "Allhakimsare alike. There was an Egyptian tried it a month ago. Look yonder on the ledge, where his skull hangs. May devils burn his soul!"
It was easy enough to look shocked at that suggestion. He had the drop on me for one thing; and, for another, Ayisha was whispering to him, and I couldn't guess whether she was betraying me or not. It turned out that that young woman was much too bent on swapping owners to do anything but smooth our path; but I wasn't so sure of that then as Narayan Singh seemed to be, and as, for that matter, Grim was too.
But he seemed to grow a little less irascible, until she leaned too close to him and touched his neck. Then he went off like a pent-up volcano, and cursed her until she shuddered; and her fright gave him no satisfaction, because he could not turn his head to look at her.
"Where is this cursed person?" he demanded, meaning Grim, of course.
"He rests at the treasury of Pharaoh," said I, hoping that as Narayan Singh and I both stood exactly in front of him he might not catch sight of Grim's movements in the valley below.
"How did he enter Petra without my leave?" he demanded.
I took a long pause, for that was an awkward question. I could not very well admit that Grim had seized and imprisoned his watchmen. But Narayan Singh strode into the breach.
"The Lion's jackals slept," he announced in a voice of righteous indignation. "There was none to give our great Sheikh Jimgrim as much as Allah's blessing. Nevertheless, he sends these presents."
Without answering that Ali Higg clapped his hands twice, and a woman came around the corner from a near-by cave. By her bearing she was either a junior wife or a concubine, and she greeted Ayisha like a sister with a great pow-wow of blessing and reply. But Ali Higg cut all that short. He was no sentimentalist.
"Find Shammas Abdul," he ordered her. "Order him to take camel and meet the men returning from the Ben Aroun raid. Let him bid them hurry. Go!"
She obeyed on the run. There was discipline in that man's camp, as long as he was looking. But Ayisha followed the woman out, and whether she herself found Shammas Abdul, or whether she contrived to pervert the junior wife, Grim presently became aware of that move to summon forth men, and governed himself accordingly.
For about a minute Ali Higg fixed baleful eyes on me.
"You are a Shia!" he snapped suddenly. "A Persian! A cursed heretic!"
A look of pained surprise was the best retort I could accomplish; but Narayan Singh came to the rescue again. He thumped a fist on his chest as if it were a drum, and glared indignantly.
"Would I, a Pathan of the Orakzai, demean myself by being servant to a Persian?" he demanded. "Lo! We bring gifts. What manner of desert man are you that reward us with insults!"
"Peace!" I said. "Peace!" remembering the Sikh's counsel about the middle course I should pursue. "The Lion is sick. May Allah take pity on him!"
Narayan Singh growled in his beard by way of submitting to the mild rebuke, and Ali Higg—a little bit impressed perhaps—proceeded to question me on doctrine and theology, showing a zeal for splitting hairs that would have done credit to a Cairom'allim.But I had had lots of instruction on those points, and in fact surprised him with a trite fanaticism equal to his own, ending with a statement that whoever did not believe every article and precept of the Sunni faith not only was damned forever beyond hope, but should be despatched in a hurry to face the dreadful consequences.
His eyes softened considerably at that; and for the moment I think he almost approved of me, in spite of the foreign accent that must have grated on his ears, and his national dislike of any one who hailed from India. He actually told both of us to be seated, and clapped his hands again. Another woman came, looking dreadfully afraid of him.
"Coffee!" he ordered.
We sat down on the ledge of rock in front of him, for although it was hardly wise to seem too deferent, it would have been most unwise to move away and give him an unobstructed view of the valley, where Grim might be in sight or might not be. Our job was to gain time.
He did not say a word until the coffee came, beyond swearing scandalously when he moved his head and the boils hurt.
"O Allah, may Your neck hurt You as mine does me!"
I thought that pretty good for such a hard-and-fast doctrinaire, but it was almost mild compared to some of his other remarks.
The woman brought the coffee on a tray in little silver cups—as good and as well served as if our host were a Cairene pasha; but our irascible host took none, for Ayisha called out and warned him not to, saying it would heat his boils.
She came like the wife of Heber the Kenite, who slew Sisera, "bringing forth butter in a lordly dish." She held in both hands a marvelous Persian rose-bowl half filled with clabber, saying she had prepared it for her lord herself, and offered it to him on bended knees.
I could not see her face, for her back was toward me and she had her shawl over her head; but I thought of that little vial of croton oil Narayan Singh had given her instead of poison, and the Sikh caught my eye meaningly.
Ali Higg was pleased to condescend. He took the bowl in both hands, muttered a blessing, and drank deep, swallowing about half the stuff before he noticed its strange flavor. Then he flung the priceless bowl away from him, smashing it to atoms, and picked up his rifle to take an aim at Ayisha.
"By Allah, the bint* has poisoned me!"
————- * Literally girl; about as respectful as the word "skirt" would be if used of one's wife. ————-
She screamed and ran. He fired, but she was already past the corner, and the bullet grazed the rock. Moreover, croton oil is a drastic cathartic, and waits on no man's convenience. He dropped the rifle, groaned—and I would rather not set down quite all the rest.
Sufficient that it gave Narayan Singh and me our opportunity. It made him too weak to resist, and we took care of him. I let him go on believing he was poisoned, and gave him harmless doses that he presently believed had saved his life; so that even the tyrannical fanatic felt a kind of gratitude.
Held like a baby in the Sikh's enormous arms with no less than half a dozen terrified women looking on—for they had all run one way while Ayisha ran the other—he slowly recovered control of his emotions, while the women loudly praised my medicinal skill.
And since I knew almost nothing at all of medicine, and therefore could say anything I chose without feeling guilty—like the fellow on a soapbox who harangues a crowd on politics—I told him he must have the boils lanced there and then, or otherwise the poison might get to them and inflame them beyond all hope.
I suppose the men who had met us at the corner of the great flight of steps did not come and interrupt because they had had enough of his temper for one morning and did not choose to sample it again uninvited. The rifle-shot did not bring them, because it was nothing new for him to vent displeasure by shooting at folk; and if there were a corpse, and it had not fallen over the cliff or been kicked over, they would come and remove it when ordered, but certainly not sooner.
Ali Higg has strength enough left to assure me that if I killed him he would wait for me in the next world and settle the account there. I told him what was perfectly true, that I would rather lose my hand than kill him, so he added that if I hurt him more than was reasonable four camels should be told off afterward to hurt me.
Seeing he was to be sole judge of what was reasonable pain, and having no means of guessing whether Grim was still alive and able to protect me, I decided to give him a hypodermic, and put a shot into his arm that would have quieted amustelephant. Maybe I rather overdid that, but as I have no medical diploma nobody can call me to account.
And the operation was successful, if unpleasant. I used one of the presentation razors.
Then Grim came striding up the mountain-ledge, with Ali Baba and all the rest of the gang at his tail, but no sign anywhere of Jael Higg. He stood and boomed out a sonorous Arab blessing; and if ever a man felt and looked like a trapped wild beast it was that Lord of the Limits of the Desert and Lion of Petra, Ali Higg.
However, Narayan Singh and I had played our part and got him weak enough; he could not even jump to grab his rifle. The rest was clearly up to Grim, who looked in no hurry at all.
He stood in the cave entrance with the light behind him, turning slightly sidewise to let Ali Higg see him in profile. The Lion's jaw dropped. Grim's very head-dress was striped like Ali Higg's. His cloak was the same color. He had been dressed rather differently when I last saw him, so he must have been doing some pretty careful spy-work.
Of course, a close examination showed a dozen differences between the two men, but in his weak state following that drastic physic and the operation Ali Higg believed for a moment that he saw his own ghost! One or two of the women checked a scream, which helped matters, and the others shrank into a corner, staring with wild eyes. One woman laughed, but not from amusement.
"Salamun alaik,O Ali Higg!" said Grim after a full minute's silence.
"Wa alaik issalam!Who are you, in the name of Allah?"
Instead of answering Grim strode in, and Ali Baba lined up his sons across the cave-mouth. Unless Grim had left undone some precaution in the camp below it looked as if we had the Lion caged to rights, and you could tell by the look in Ali Baba's usually mild old eyes that there would have been short shrift for somebody if his advice were taken. For a moment I caught sight of Ayisha peering timidly between the end man and the wall—to see, I suppose, whether the Lion was dead yet—but the minute I caught her eye she disappeared.
Grim stooped down over Ali Higg, who was sprawling on his stomach on a Persian rug.
"Has myhakimrelieved Your Honor's pain?" he asked.
The Lion managed to sit upright. Three of the women piled cushions behind him and ran back again to their corner.
"Who are you in my likeness?"
"A friend,inshallah,"answered Grim.
He squatted down cross-legged on the mat in front of him; for though the Lion's neck was pretty nicely bandaged and the hypodermic had not lost its power, yet it hurt him quite a little to look up.
"I had three brothers, but thou art none of them. I had one son, but neither art thou he. In the name of the All-Knowing, name thyself!"
"I am he," said Grim, "who brought Your Honor's wife from El-Kalil."
"Oh! And a million curses on the bint! She tried within the hour to poison me. But for this Indian of thine I were a dead man now. Stay! Send for her!"
He clapped his hands.
"Let her be flung over the cliff. Go bring her!" But nobody moved to do his bidding, and it dawned on him a second time that he was cornered. He wasn't a man who took such a discovery mildly.
"Ayisha shall be dealt with at the proper time!" he snarled. "Ihave not accepted those gifts. Take them up! You who have enteredPetra without my leave shall account to my men presently.Thereafter we will talk of gifts."
"Which men?" Grim asked him blandly. "Surely not the forty and four who went to raid the Beni Aroun? Nay, I took the liberty of sending them a message signed with Your Honor's seal. They will not come for a day or two, so we can make friends undisturbed."
"Shu halalk?With my seal?"
"With Your Honor's seal. Observe; I have it."
"Then—then—Where is she into whose hands I gave it?"
That was the first sign that Ali Higg had given of the slightest affection for any one. His face looked ghastly at the thought of losing that strange, half-western wife of his.
He had called Ayisha by her name in front of strangers, out of disrespect. Jael he would not name, even when confronted by the proof that she had broken trust and lost his precious seal.
"I took another liberty," said Grim. "I sent word by messenger, who bore a letter sealed with that same seal, to Ibrahim ben Ah. He will neither raid El-Maan nor return to Petra."
"He is defeated?" asked the Lion, dumbfounded. "And she—is she a prisoner?"
Grim did not answer either question.
"And I met a man named Yussuf. You know him?"
"Naam."(Yes).
"He has been lying to Your Honor. He has said that the British are helpless. He brought Your Honor a report from Palestine that was a skein of falsehood hung up on little pegs of truth. He told you the British are not able to defend themselves, he knowing better; for he is one of those men who say always what the hearer would like to hear."
"What has that to do with thee?" demanded Ali Higg.
He was looking about him furtively, and Narayan Singh picked up his rifle off the rug and stood it against the wall. Grim turned toward Ali Baba.
"Bring Yussuf!" he ordered.
The ranks opened, and Yussuf was thrust forward into the cave, where he stood looking like a felon awaiting sentence.
"Did you speak the truth, or did you lie to the Lion of Petra?"Grim demanded.
"Who am I that should know the truth of such matters?" the man whined, his voice squeaking like a cart-wheel. "I obeyed. I looked. I asked. Perhaps I did not understand all I saw and what was told me."
"Is the Lion of Petra with ten-score fighting men able to stand against the British with twenty thousand?" Grim asked him.
"Inshallah.The Lion is brave. Who knows? Yet I forgot to speak of the twenty aeroplanes at Ludd, each having ten bombs of a hundred pounds weight that could make short work in an hour or two of ten score men."
"Why don't they come?" snarled Ali Higg.
"They take no delight in slaying the women and children," answered Grim. "Those black tents below there would be an easy mark to aim at; but who would gain? It is better that peace were kept."
"Throw that Yussuf over the cliff!" commanded Ali Higg.
But once more nobody moved to obey him, and Yussuf had the indecency to smirk, for which Grim cursed him with whiplash sarcasm.
Then Ali Higg put both hands before his face and prayed aloud:
"O Allah, Lord of mercies and of wisdom and rebuke, if I am in the hands of enemies and she who was the mother of good plans is taken away from me, have I not, nevertheless, smitten the heretic in thy name and raised thy banner over Petra? Give me, then, wisdom, that I deal with these men and confound thy enemies.La Allah illa Allah!"
He dropped his hands and looked up with a hard, fanatical frenzy in his eyes. But they changed almost instantly. The ranks of Ali Baba's men opened once more; and Jael Higg stepped through, dressed like a fighting Bedouin, bandolier and all. Grim had even let her have a rifle and cartridges. As he promised, he had put her to no indignity.