THE SHEIK ABRAHAM O'MARA, WHO BEAT IT FOR DEAR LIFE ACROSS THE SAHARA AT SIGHT OF VERBEENA.
THE SHEIK ABRAHAM O'MARA, WHO BEAT IT FOR DEAR LIFE ACROSS THE SAHARA AT SIGHT OF VERBEENA.
“Tee-hee-hee!” chuckled the lordly Amut.
“What are you laughing at?” demanded his thoroughly acknowledged wife—(in writing, you remember).
“Just look over on the horizon, my dear.”
“At whom?”
“Those now to be seen scooting out of sight across it. The distance is great but I recognize the leading figure clearly as the Sheik Abraham O’Mara. See how fat! And how fast he travels! And yet it has always been said of him there was danger ever when that fiend was abroad. But, it seems he saw us first.”
“Aha, afeard of you, my Amut?”
“Of me,” he chuckled again and again.
For the first time in months the Sheik permitted himself a little bold laughter.
“Of me!”
Once home in the tent the Sheik Amut Ben Butler dared to put his arms out to her. He was no ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of a woman. You had to hit him first.
But having experienced the metallic obstinacy of Verbeena Mayonnaise, the inflexibility of her character and seeing, as he ecstatically had, the flight of his powerful and avowed enemy, Abraham O’Mara, he was fraught with the realization that love had become a force in his life which might drive him to anything whereVerbeena was concerned, predominantly and irresistibly.
He’d be trimming her curls for her next.
Amut’s arms ached for her and always ached worse after he had tried to hold her.
He permitted his mind to careen woefully regarding the secret Verbeena was withholding. Something had made her very happy and as he felt nothing to boast of in this regard he wondered incontinently. But in his growing emotion concerning one who could not only chase him but his greatest enemy at the very sight of her, the Sheik allowed himself a sharp, sobbing intake of breath.
At the same time no other sign escaped him of the hell he was enduring. She might not like it.
But he couldn’t keep his mind off Verbeena for the distant howlings of jackals came closer and closer.
Still, as between the two, he certainly liked her best.
And what was this secret that had sent her gamboling high among the palm trees?
He had asked her and she wouldn’t tell. Hissoul, his mind and heart hammered, stirred, tintinnabulated and undulated to find out.
Little he knew then that vouchsafement as to this might have been regarded generally as pretty closely to hand.
Itwas a Monday morning about two months later and the Sheik was helping Hulda hang out the wash in the back of the Big Tent, his soul pondering in trepidation, even worry as one might say, regarding what Verbeena was contemplating, what she was ruminating with such open evidences of liking it, in her masterful, little, red-capped noodle.
Fear suddenly clutched him clamorously by the heart.
It rang in his brain—ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling-a-ling!
They were now stopping at the Sahara Golf club oasis which is really a mere suburb of Orange, very popular because the golf club oasis was the wettest on the desert. So near Orange! She could, she would——
“Allah save my skin,” whispered the Sheik as best he could on account of the clothes-pins in his mouth as he was spearing Verbeena’sB.V.D.’s to the line hanging low between the stately palms.
From time to time as the reversal of the rôle he played in her life came to his quivering lips in cries of “Allah, O, Allah, let up on me!” he had managed to steal a horse-whip or two and bury it in the sand until nearly all of them had disappeared. It was not consideration for the horses which had led to those depredations. And now the thought had come to him that they were so near Orange she might ride in herself or send forth a blindly obedient equerry thence to fetch a new supply of first quality, sturdy horsehide lashes.
“O,” cried Sheik Amut fervently, “Allah, have a heart!”
But just about then other things happened to make his heart tick harder—like a grandfather’s clock.
He and Hulda dropped the wash to rush to the front of the tent where had arrived a messenger. Sure, on horseback.
“From Orange!” said the carrier dismounting.
“A communication for me?” asked the Sheik in his soft, mild tones.
“For you?” laughed the messenger, scornfully unloading two big bags. “You! By Allah, stand aside and don’t make the sandworms laugh! Where’s Queen Verbeena?”
“By the same Allah,” returned the Sheik with a show of spirit, “unless your business is of prime importance I would not disturb her now. She is at her daily exercise within and cares never then to be interrupted.”
“Why doesn’t she exercise with a horse?”
“Idiot, forbear lest she overhear. Besides, it’s not that sort of exercise at all. For three hours each morning she now spends her time making faces in the looking glass. For what purpose when I ask her of it, she orders me back into the open as being none of my Oriental damned business. What’s in the bags?”
“Letters—letters—thousands—all for her.”
“Yet, by Allah, it is not Valentine’s day.”
“True.”
“No, but by Allah, it’s near the first month. I wonder what bills she’s been running up!” faltered the Sheik.
Now the letters—there is no use keeping a person’s readers waiting—were in reality, inresponse to an advertisement she had secretly placed in several theatrical newspapers. It had read:
“Famous Lost Lady on Sahara Open for Moving Picture Engagement. No triflers. Address P. Oasis Box No. 17 via Orange.”
“Famous Lost Lady on Sahara Open for Moving Picture Engagement. No triflers. Address P. Oasis Box No. 17 via Orange.”
The messenger was now bearing to Mrs. The Sheik Amut Ben Butler thirty thousand and forty-six communications from all the choicest open-air murder colonies in the country.
But true enterprise, real enterprise, enterprise in the magnificent, was incarnated in the person of the celebrated Mr. Cyril Gristmille for on that very instant he descended grandly in person in an aeroplane. Slightly on his ear but soon readjusted himself. He had faced this small accident without turning a hair. He hadn’t any.
“See here,” cried the Sheik Amut, “what the hellah do you mean by swooping down this way on these grounds? Don’t you see what you’ve done? You’ve scared the horses and camels and scattered them all over the desert! And, may Allah’s curses crack your skull, you’ve knocked down the week’s wash and if you knew my wife——”
Mr. Gristmille gracefully drew a slender cigarette case from a lower waistcoat pocket—yep, he had the habit too—and said:
“Well, then, don’t stand there like a fathead looking at them run away, my man. You and your other ragbags get busy and catch ’em again. I may need ’em shortly.”
“Need ’em? What do you want?”
“My business is not with you. But unless I am improperly informed this tent harbors the famous lost English desert girl, Miss Verbeena Mayonnaise?”
“That was,” said Sheik Amut sticking up his nose at this haughty stranger. “She’s my wife now.”
CYRIL GRISTMILLE, THE GREAT WOMAN TAMER.
CYRIL GRISTMILLE, THE GREAT WOMAN TAMER.
“Go in the tent then and tell her to come out to me—Mr. Cyril Gristmille—immediately. I would do business with her.”
“You would?”
“Hasten. Go right in and tell her to come out promptly.”
“Go in and tell her yourself,” said Amut. “I’m tired trying to tell her to do anything.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Gristmille and stalked toward the main tent.
Sheik Amut and Spaghetti who was being given another trial by Verbeena after his complete surrender of his garlic supply, and the Sheik’s other two pals, Yusef and Hamandaigs, looked one another keenly in the eyes and began openly holding their ribs.
But to their surprise no pistol reports or manly howls for help arose from within the tent.
Instead the elegant, pallid-faced Mr. Gristmille who had changed from his aeroplane cap into a high hat before entering the tent—instead then of Mr. Gristmille emerging with a scimitar wrapped around his neck or his hat jammed down over his eyes—instead of this, O, Allah, his haughty intrusion into the tent of the doughty little Sheik tamer passed off in most perfect quiet and presently—hands up to Allah again!—he emerged with Verbeena—with Verbeena!—why they hardly recognized her! the way she was acting!
Her sturdy, cocky boyish nonchalance was gone, no longer did she swagger and scowl, the little roughneck. Instead she had become as feminine as a powder puff!
A mincing, smiling, trusting-eyed little red-headed dear!
She was looking up into the cameo profile of the illustrious and bill-postered countenance of Cyril Gristmille as one might gaze into the eye of a golden idol or a $10,000,000 check.
Every little trick of ingenuous girlhood was in everything that little Verbeena did and the wondering Amut, Spaghetti and Hulda and Yusef and Hamandaigs ran around telling the tribe about it. And they all agreed they just simply couldn’t believe it was Verbeena.
They all said it was if it were some female member of her family.
But had these innocents ever seen Mary Pickford they would have known where Verbeena was getting her stuff. Little did they know she’d been practicing up on it this many a day.
And the while in accents as honeyed as her glances she was saying:
“O, Mister—Mister Gristmille, it has been so good of you to come! With all that money!
“And do you really think you can make an actress of me? Really?”
“I?—Why I,” said Mr. Cyril Gristmille, “could make an actress of a doughboy to say nothing of so perfect a little gentleman as you.”
“How adorable! What do I do first?”
“The first thing you do,” he said, and suddenly took her by the shoulder and shook her thoroughly, “is to understand that you do every little damn thing I tell you without making any fuss or faces about it. Do you get me?”
He shook her again till her curls rattled.
Verbeena listened breathlessly and breathless isn’t much of a word for it. Her heart wobbled.
“You are always to rememberI—Iam boss.
“And don’t you try to carry out any notions of your own while you are acting around me.
“You are to look, walk, talk, eat, weep, whimper, smile, sob, stalk, twirl, mince, mope, wriggle, squirm, turn, stand, run, race, limp, love, lallygag, or any old other darn thing I mentionand demand just as you hear me give the orders to do it or I’ll take you and your movie aspirations and bury them for once and all ten thousand feet deep right in here in the sands of the Sahara!
“Once again,” he fixed her with his piercing eye, “I ask—do you get me?”
What Verbeena got was very hot under her boyish Eton collar and meant to answer him scornfully but she felt her heart beating as if it meant to beat it altogether.
However, the Movie Maharajah was not paying the slightest attention to how she took it at all. He was giving his attention to a flock of camera men, actors and such like arriving in 2,000 aeroplanes that left for the Sahara that morning from Los Angeles.
She could not fight down the thrill that came at the study she then began somewhat surreptitiously to make of the commanding figure of the Movie Monarch among his men. The way he talked to them was a shame. The way they took it, cringing, cowering, fawning yet with adoration in their eyes, was a wonder.
He seemed suddenly to remember her.
“What are you standing there goofing for and staring that way at me? Don’t you know that you are to be a girl in the first reel?”
“I—I,” hot shame mantled Verbeena’s cheek. Why was it she did not step straight forward and punch him in the nose? But somehow, he made her so acutely conscious of her sex, or, rather, of what sex he wanted of her.
“You are to be a girl in this first reel I tell you. Get back into your tent and take that football suit off and put on something close, clinging, and when you get it on work up a good, hippy walk—hippy and a bit slouchy. Go on instantly, and gethimoff and putheron.”
The man was simply terrible. With dragging feet she retreated to her tent and for the boy’s clothes that somehow made her feel good and tough and ready to take chances with both hands, she submergedly substituted a frock that she was fiercely angry with herself to find herself, indubitably she herself, hoping would please him.
And it didn’t—no chance.
Not with that movie mahout.
“In the name of all that’s horrible!” he cried at her. “Is that the best thing you’ve got tooffer in clothes? It doesn’t fit you—it flops! Here—that skirt wants shortening and it wants tightening too, and you can only see the half of the small of your back. Away with that flock of rags! Got any others—in heaven’s name, answer!”
“Yes—yes, sir.”
“Go in and put another one on then and for the love of Pete, try to pick something that looks like something above a dollar ninety-eight on a bargain counter. Take that off—quick! Must I be your dressmaker as well as your director?”
“O, sir,” sobbed Verbeena Mayonnaise.
“And hurry up about it,” came his slow but icy tones as she hurried tentwards to hurry up just as fast as she hasten well could.
“Let’s see,” he conceded on his second sight of her, “that’s awful as the other but—O well—come here then—here is him whom is to be your leading man in this heart-stirring and world-thrilling romance of my forthcoming creation. He is to be your leading man, but I will attend in all respects as to where he will lead you.”
Verbeena saw as she was introduced to thisyoung man that he was exquisitely handsome, his face only saved from effeminacy by a firm chin. He was tall, lithe, slender as a wand. Although she had never been introduced to him before she recognized him instantly for it was Fatty Arbuckle!
TheMighty Gristmille gave her no time to recover but plunged right ahead with his ethological processes concerning herself.
“The story of this picture which I am about to make in order that it may ring down the ages is soul-grasping and spirit stirring,” said the director to Verbeena in a greatly animated manner, “and that’s all you need to know about it in order to know about what you are doing. In fact, there’s no particular reason that you should know what you are doing. But,” he grasped her chin sharply and threw her head back with an artistic touch that jarred her teeth, “it is important that you do what I say. And don’t you try to do anything else unless you are ambitious to end your life as a canned chicken.”
“But——” stammered Verbeena who was beginning to suspect deep down after all she perhaps was really a girl.
“But nothing—and throw away that cigarette butt too. I’m not against cigarettes. All heroes and vamps smoke yards of ’em on orders. But in this scene you’re a sweet thing—just a sweet thing—though God knows if I’ll be able to prove it to the camera eye or anybody else.
“Here—take this rose—smell it.”
“It doesn’t smell at all,” said Verbeena.
“They don’t when made of paper,” said the great Gristmille. And for some reason she saw that he suddenly gently smiled. He regarded Verbeena with a new light in his eye—one nearly of approval. “Just about the right intelligence,” he was murmuring to himself, “out of which to mold a great star. I’ll show Dave Belasco where he stands yet.”
But his terrifying eyes blazed anew at Verbeena Mayonnaise.
“Now—here don’t hold that flower like it was a flagpole in a Suffragette parade! Turn your wrist a bit, give a flaunting yet a timorous grace to it and now you step over—lots of hip work-hip-hip-hippy—O, for God’s sake, hippy! The boyish beauty’s off the map in the scene—hip work now—hip work—rotten—rotten—rotten—hip work, hip, hip, hippy—and you give the flower to our hero.”
“Why am I giving him the flower?”
“None of your damned business! Give it to him—that’s all you have to do. I’m doing all the knowing why for this outfit.
“Heaven save the day, I didn’t tell you to hit him with it! Give it to him—timidly—timidly—you are afraid of him.”
There was just a flash of the old dear, boyish Verbeena.
“I don’t care who he is, I’m not afraid of him,” she declared stoutly.
“Is that so?” said the director severely. “But remember you are afraid ofme! And don’t try to tell me you are not!”
“I——”
“Don’t ever open your mouth like that when speaking! You are a heroine—not a walrus! Now then—the tender scene—giving the flower to Rinaldo—shush, I didn’t mean to let that much out as to the story but—well, you might as well know right now that the hero is Rinaldo Ringrose—that’s Mr. Arbuckle’s name in the picture.
“Now then, advance—hip, hip, hip—that’s better—a little better—except that you still look like a boy in skirts, one of those damn pretty ones and a damn silly one at that.”
Verbeena gasped. Through her thick lashes she regarded this man of the gyratory wealth of gestures whose dominating spirit it was manifest was to be seen. She feared—began to fear—almost started to be afraid that the Verbeena of old was dead or nearly corpsical. Her old doughty self, she grovelingly began to consider, was starting to decline. Her fighting stamina she felt would soon be selling for date seeds on the Sahara Exchange.
And yet how noble he was!
His manner of using a cigarette case was so much more graceful than her own.
And he seemed to know everything. Certainly he thought he did.
And all his men gave him such blind obedience. He had a trick of flashing the sun in their eyes from his cigarette case that probably caused them to do this, she deducted.
Two days passed before he finally decided she had given the hero the rose properly. That,doubtless, was why they used artificial roses. A real one couldn’t last out a rehearsal.
But somehow, in the depths of her harrowed, deeply embittered, astonished young soul, she was humbly glad that at last she had given the hero the rose properly.
“That’s that,” said the High Mandarin of the Movies, “and although worse than bad eggs, in other things you may stand a chance of realizing my genius for me in the soul-stirring, magnificent, marvelous, magnitudinous work of art I am on the brink of creating. Come—come—a little loud and prolonged applause—everybody please. I thank you.
“The next scene will call for you saying a tender farewell—keep remembering your sex, madame—with your lover under a tree. An apple tree in full bloom.”
“There aren’t apple trees on the desert,” Verbeena with simply idiotic indiscretion observed.
The director flung his hat on the sand, kicked it in the air, ran around the desert on all fours for a mile, then arose majestically.
“How dare you! Can’t you see that underone of those tall palm trees the shadows wouldn’t fall right on the picture? No blossoming apple trees on the desert, eh? I guess you don’t knowme! Billy, an apple tree, full blossom!”
The man addressed obeyed swiftly. In a jiffy he had brought one from the property aeroplane and raised it in place.
“O, Good Lord,” again and again reverberated in the ears of Verbeena, “you squint so with that snub-nosed face of yours! You—gently—gently, gently into his arms. You’re not wrestling him—you’re loving him—you—not that sidelong glance—a big look into his eyes and now then—remember although we’ve only begun here, this is the end of the picture—the final close-up—now, extend lips in full, both—stick ’em way out—that’s it—now then, kiss—kiss—hold that—hold it—kiss, kiss, kiiiiiiiisssssssssss!”
“You know nothing of kissing! Nothing! And you’re supposed to have had Oriental training too! Here—come here—likeTHIS! Kiss—kiss—LIKE THIS!!”
A gleam of anger shot into Verbeena’s tired eyes but she was powerless. The compellingquality of this terrible creature, the force with which he held her, the exultant, horrible, heavy, hot, and, she could feel, relentless, half savagely cruel, indifferent way he was doing it to her!
WHEREIN THE MOVIE MAHOUT INFORMS VERBEENA SHE WILL NEXT BE REQUIRED TO BE SHOT OUT OF A PALM TREE BY HER LOVER IN MISTAKE FOR A SQUIRREL.
WHEREIN THE MOVIE MAHOUT INFORMS VERBEENA SHE WILL NEXT BE REQUIRED TO BE SHOT OUT OF A PALM TREE BY HER LOVER IN MISTAKE FOR A SQUIRREL.
She dropped to her knees at the end of it begging for mercy.
He laughed at her coldly.
“You must get the idea of it—the sooner the better,” he said with a hauteur that made her cringe back into her old caterpillar crouch.
“Now the next scene—and we must hurry up or the light will be bad—is where you are shot out of the top of a palm tree by your lover in mistake for a squirrel.
“Come now—action—Cameras!—Cameras train on that palm tree over there. The tallest one, of course. Remember, Mrs. Amut, you fall dead—a dead fall—right straight out of the tree on your face. What’s that? Dangerous? Nonsense! And what if it is? What do you suppose we are paying you for? What’s a cracked nose for art’s sake! No more nonsense, no more words—up you go!”
Verbeena climbed.
Sometime later on being restored to consciousnesswherein she knew what was going on around her, she heard the great Gristmille saying:
“Very well, hop up there, leading woman! All ready for the next scene.”
“What—what is it?” faltered Verbeena.
“How dare you ask questions? Your instructions will all come in due time. And now’s the time!
“In the next scene you fall from your horse—you’re shot or something, perhaps struck in the back with a lance—I haven’t quite made up my mind—and then you will be run over by a herd of wild Arabian horses with Mr. Arbuckle pursuing in the hope of rescue borne by eleven camels, one for the hope and ten for Mr. Arbuckle.
“Come now—quick—and remember you are not to look frightened as the horses—about two thousand of them—rush over you. As a heroine you are calm-eyed in the face of certain death. If you do we’ll have to keep repeating the scene and I don’t want to give too much time to it.
“Come on now—there must be no delay—the horses are ready—at great expense—they are ready and now—hey, Billy, Jim, Grady, Bert—quick—how dare she!—quick—catch that girl!”
But Verbeena’s early education when she used to beat all the Harrow boys at sprinting served her well.
She covered the three miles back to her own Oasis leaving all pursuers in the ruck.Time 42-1/2 seconds, but record not official.
Verbeenafloundered wild-eyed, wide-mouthed, panting into the tent of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.
She fled into the arms of Amut. She clung there girlishly trembling, so tired she was exhausted.
“O, dash it all, dash it all—that man—that man—thatterribleman! Save—save me! I’m all for you and Allah hereafter, Amut, save—save me—save me from thatterrible man!”
He held her as he had never held her before—as he never had been able to hold her before.
He regarded the pitiful, gasping little figure which tried to kneel at his feet, and, once more a deep and splendid chestiness came upon Amut Ben Butler.
He—in spite of all—Allah, and by Jove, he loved her!
He had long wrestled with himself concerningit because it was preferable than trying to wrestle with Verbeena.
Ah, the dear head now drooping that once so proudly poised with its jaunty clubbed curls.
A lion’s heart grew under the jelab of the old-time Boss of Oasis Nos. 4, 5, 12 and 16.
There was the sound of horsery and the clangor and click of camera men without.
“Save me, O God, save me!” gasped Verbeena anew. “That man—thatterribleman!”
Amut Ben Butler strode proudly to the flap of his tent and looked out.
“You just go away from here, every one of you, do you hear? Yes, I mean you too—you big stiff with the silver cigarette case! I think it’s phoney anyway. My wife doesn’t care to have anything to do with you and I don’t either. So back to your aeroplanes and flooey!”
In horror, in abject dread Verbeena’s clubbed curls were buried in the cushions. But in a little while her distrait, white face was lifted.
“Amut,” she ventured, “Amut—has he gone?”
Amut Ben Butler carefully flicked a sandworm off his silver and black girdle.
“Sure, darling,” he answered. “I just wentout and sent that whole moving picture outfit reeling, Kingpin and all!”
She crept closely to him. Her strong young arms went about him.
“Amut, my love,” she pleaded, “will you promise not to run away from me any more?”
“May Allah cross my eyes and crack my teeth, if ever again I think of it, my vibrant Verbie. I wouldn’t wanter—ever—the way you act to me now—so nice—so loving—just like a regular girlie.”
He kissed her otherwise clubbed curls.
They snuggled close.
Ooooooh, awful close!
Throbs palpitant and passionate passed from one to the other—strong, vertiginous, terrific, as of an aching tooth.
“Tell me, Amut,” she said more softly than she ever knew she could, “who after all the dickens are you?”
His blue eyes sparkling like opals in their ardor, looked down upon her with a tenderness too ineffable to matriculate. But he sighed and was silent.
“And—and why do you hate the English?”
“Hate the English? With you in my arms,sweet Verbie? Hate the English! Only I used to, Verbeena mine—used to. But——”
“Who—who are you? Amut, as you love me speak!”
“I——”
“You——”
“Am——”
“Are——”
“I—I can hold the secret back from you no longer, throbbing jewel of my passion. I——”
“You——”
“Am——” He doffed his turban and stood erect. He glanced fixedly into her uplifted eyes. “The Crown Prince!”
“Crown Prince! Amut. Crown Prince of—of——”
“Of Chermany!”
“Mine Gott!” gasped Verbeena!
“That partnership has been dissolved, Verbeena lieber. But as soon as Popper schnapps the manacles of Holland off him, a new and splendid project will be put in operation by us ever magnificent and glorious Hohenzollerns. New and great fortunes await us—here on the desert, Verbeenalina! You bet your life on that! What do you think? We intend to establisha chain of Imperial Breweries on the Sahara where everybody is always so thirsty. Isn’t that great, Verbie? How’s that for high?”
“Great—but I—I am English!”
“Aw—the war’s over! Aw—come on, be a good little feller—I mean sweetheart. Stick along.”
“But your princess!”
“The Sahara is a wide-spot and there ain’t many princesses got the fare to Reno these days, Verbeenagaborden. And, besides, didn’t you draw up a fine Saharatic marriage contract? In lots of desert love affairs in the novels they jolly well—how do you like my English so swell spoken to please you?—don’t never get so far as a scrap of paper between them. Nothing between them—just nothing but——”
Verbeena looked at him demurely.
“True for you, Goldielocks,” said she, adding with a courage that was easily tantamount to bravery, “I’d rather be respectable than a best seller any day!
“But—who in the world are these people around you? Spaghetti—who is he?”
“The only ferdombt Italian who stuck whenthe treaty busted. Popper was going to make him King of Rome or something good like that only for what happened.”
“And Hulda?”
“Sh—the Grand Duchess Hautenglautenschlitzenburg! She’s hiding!”
“From what?”
“That name.”
“But Mr. Hitchings—however did you come to have him for a friend?”
“Verbeenaheimer,” laughed the Crown Prince, “that wasn’t Mr. Hitchings. It’s Charlie of Austria. He expects to organize a circus troupe and enter Vienna with a large company of desert men, himself disguised as a dancing girl. Then some night they will burst from the tent and Charlie will pull his crown from under his skirts and—there you are! He’ll be king again—for a minute.
“But me and popper and the chain of breweries——”
“Ah!”
“Yah!”
She snuggled to him closer and closer and closer and closer and closer than that. Her magnificentlong black lashes dusted off his cheek. She smoothed back the fair hair that had been so strange to her in company with the jet whiskers that once he had worn. She thought of Cyril Gristmille and then she clung to him like a little leech—only, you know, a warm leech.
“My prince—my prince—my Sheik Amut Never Ben King,” she sighed gustfully.
Entranced he grasped her to him fiercely his lips against her lips! Their eyes were blazing, their veins throbbing, their bodies writhing as he whispered tensely, tickling her under the chin:
“Tweetsy, tweetsy, Verbeena mine!”
Beyond the tent flap they saw the silver shaft of the magic moon and caught glimpses of the stately palms where the dates clustered into the years and to their ears came the sweet, silvery, insistent, impassioned twillipping of the sandworms, the neighing of the beloved horses, the music of the mules and the vibrant sweet cough of the camels.
In delicious hectic harmony their pulses beat mutually at 110.
HOHENZOLLERN ANT. SONImperial Sahara BreweriesOUR TRADE MARK:Hoch der Bock!
HOHENZOLLERN ANT. SONImperial Sahara BreweriesOUR TRADE MARK:Hoch der Bock!
Transcriber’s Notes:Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.