“The world is a mirror; show thyself in it, and it will reflect thy image.”—Arabic Proverb.
“The world is a mirror; show thyself in it, and it will reflect thy image.”—Arabic Proverb.
Helen looked over her shoulder at her lover and smiled without a trace of bitterness, then turned and looked straight into the Arabian’s eyes.
For a long moment the two girls looked at each other, until, unable to bear the contempt in the steady blue eyes, the Arabian lowered hers, and pointed to her sandal, then lifted her head sharply as Helen knelt.
Pushing Helen to one side, Zarah sprang to her feet and walked quickly to the top of the steps and stood staring at the doorway, through which could be seen the star-strewn sky and through which could be heard the baying of dogs in full cry.
Her face was white as death, her eyes wide in fear; her hands pressed down upon her heart as she backed away from the savage sound, until she stood upon her train, which swept around her like a shell.
The men stood facing the doorway, whispering to each other. They had hunted too often with the dogs; they knew every sound of their voices too well not to know that they were hard on the scent of whatever they were so strangely hunting at this hour of the night, when they were never allowed to be at large.
Bowlegs, who loved the dogs almost as much as he loved his horses, under a strange excitement which had fallen upon him as well as on the other men, spoke to Helen, whom he knew to be so beloved of the dogs.
“They cross the plateau in a pack, hot on the trail, ah! they have lost. Canst hear Rādi the bitch, the finest in the kennels? They near the water’s edge! Hearken to the echo thrown by the rock above the cavern! They have found. Ah! hunt they the devil? Or is’t a pack ofdjinnshunting the dead from the quicksands? Tell——”
A man came running from the doorway, his eyes full of fear, his dagger in his hand. He ran up to the foot of the dais and stood half turned towards the door, to which he pointed frantically, and shouted up to Helen.
“They come, they come, the greyhounds and the dogs of Billi. They mount the steps; their eyes shine in the dark; they are mad with rage; death hunts with them——” He turned and looked at Zarah, who stood like a pillar of stone, wrapped in her train.
She did not seem to count in this moment of great danger.
Helen, knowing the dogs’ inexplicable hatred of their mistress, turned and looked at her, the contempt in her eyes deepening to scorn as she saw the frozen look of fear in the Arabian’s eyes.
“The dogs have got out,” she said sharply. “Look! your men are running before them. Look! Wake up and do something. Order the doors to be shut or they’ll be in. Quick, Zarah!”
The Arabian took no notice. Lost in one of the visions which swept down upon her at times, she was looking into the future.
She stood stark with terror, her eyes wide and glassy, her crimson lips drawn back from her teeth, which chattered like gourds rattled by the wind. She shook from head to foot, and put out her hand and tried to speak as the dogs suddenly gave tongue.
She clutched at her throat and pointed to the door, and Helen, who did not understand, turned away from the picture of abject fear and held out her arms to her lover, who stood a prisoner in the hands of men who showed great signs of uneasiness as they looked at their mistress and then at the door.
Then Helen stamped her foot and shouted, so that the men who stood near the door turned towards her, then impeded each other in their haste as they tried to obey her.
“Shut the door!” she cried. “Keep them out! Quick! they’re almost at the top! Shut it! You’re too——”
Her words were lost in a piercing scream from Zarah as she ran back and back until she reached the wall. She flung her arms out and fought, fought the imaginary dogs which in her strange vision she saw leaping upon her. She fought desperately, a wonderful picture against the glittering Byzantine wall, fought nothing but her imagination or the shadows thrown by Fate. Then she screamed and screamed and, covering herself in her train, crouched down, as the whole pack of greyhounds and the hunting dogs of Billi tore through the doorway.
“Ra!” cried Helen. “Ra! come to me! They’re after her. She’ll be torn to pieces before our eyes, Ra!”
The men holding Ralph Trenchard backed before the onslaught of the great dogs; he seized the opportunity and leaped for the steps, gaining the top just in time.
“My God!” he cried, as he watched the beautiful creatures tear across the floor. “If they leap to the top, sweetheart, we’re done; they’re too mad to recognize us.” He put his arm round her and kissed her on the mouth. “Darling! we shall win through, never you fear; keep a brave heart, beloved, and remember that I love you.”
Helen whispered as she put her hand in his: “And remember that I love you and that Yussuf is our friend.”
They had no time for more, the dogs were on them. Ralph Trenchard caught the splendid bitch and flung her back as she reached the top of the steps. He caught her again and yet again as she returned to the charge, meeting her teeth in the younger dogs who tried to outdo her or to pass her on the steps, whilst the dogs of Billi leapt and leapt and leapt again to reach the top of the dais, where crouched the woman they hated so deeply in their canine hearts.
Yussuf’s “Eyes” had over-reached himself in letting out the entire pack.
They were jammed too close together to get up the steps or for any single one to be able to get the necessary run which might have allowed the strongest to leap to the top. They baulked each other; they fought each other; they rushed the dais in a wedge and fell back and fought each other where they fell, until the place seemed a mass of maddened dogs.
The scent of the woman they hated was strong in their fine noses; she was there just above their heads, just out of reach of their mighty, snapping jaws. They rushed the steps when the bitch fell back, exhausted, and fought the man who held them at the top. He knelt upon the top step and caught them by the neck and threw them headlong back and down amongst those who rushed behind; whilst those far back in the middle of the hall flung themselves upon those in front, which turned and fought them, then turned again and strove to reach the steps.
Helen knelt beside her lover ready to help, and the men stood far back against the wall making bets upon the outcome of it all, watching the stupendous picture, full of admiration for the white people, who had tackled the situation without hesitation, whilst the grooms flung themselves into the seething mass of dogs and fought to dominate them.
And the dogs far back in the hall, who fought to get forward, flung themselves on the men against the wall and on the grooms, then, losing the woman’s scent in the male garments, sat back and howled and barked and fought each other, until the place was like a corner of hell let loose.
Rādi the bitch, in one last effort of revenge, made a sudden rush and making a spring-board of the Nubian’s body, with a wonderful leap, which brought shouts of approval from the men, landed on the top of the dais at Helen’s side.
With the Arabian’s scent strong in her pointed nose, she rushed to where she crouched and turned and rippedHelen’s coat as the girl flung herself sideways and caught her by the neck, calling to her, hanging on to her with both hands. The bitch recognized the voice she had learned to obey in love, and turned suddenly and thrust her muzzle into Helen’s neck and hands, just as the head groom shouted from the body of the hall.
“Whistle, Excellency,” he shouted. “The madness is past. They obey. Whistle to them, then with thy hand upon the bitch’s neck, I beseech thee to lead the way to the kennels.”
“Yea! Excellency!” yelled the different men from the kennels and the stables, as they stood holding on to a struggling dog with each hand. “They will follow thy whistle, loving thee.”
Helen laughed as she led Rādi to the top step, looking like “Diana of the Uplands” in a strange setting as the splendid greyhound strained to get down to her companions.
She gave a long, low whistle, upon which every dog fought as frenziedly to get to her in love as they had fought to get to the Arabian in hate.
“Hold them!” she cried. “I will whistle them back to the kennels.”
Which words were heard and taken up by a child standing outside in the shadows, and passed on to the women, who, with a hate in their hearts even greater than that of the dogs for the Arabian, had crept from their quarters and half-way up the steps to the Hall of Judgment.
The hate of these docile creatures for the white girl, planted and fostered by the men who had been so led astray by Al-Asad, was most truly to be feared a hundred times more than the instinctive hate of the dogs for the Arabian. They had done their best to please this foreigner, cooking for her, mending her clothes, fetching and carrying for her and waiting upon her; when their men had come back raving of her beauty and her horsemanship, the meek, downtrodden souls, who had lost their looks and their figures through hard work and overmuchchild-bearing, had said no word, but when they had heard the tales of the beautiful white girl’s mimicry of their efforts to please her, then they had vowed to themselves to be revenged upon her and at the first opportunity.
The news of the dogs’ escape had reached them. The opportunity had arrived, and perhaps a double opportunity for revenge, for why should the dogs not pull both the women down so that they should be quit of their dreaded mistress and the foreigner.
When the child passed on Helen’s words they crept swiftly down the steps and up to the kennels, and hid themselves amongst the rocks to wait just a little longer.
“No! don’t come with me, beloved,” Helen said, as she stood on the top of the dais steps pressed close to her lover’s side, with the dogs leaping and barking at her feet. “A love such as ours must come right in the end, and I don’t believe she meant what she said.”
In which she was mistaken, as she was to learn.
“Then, until we meet again, dear heart! I don’t like you doing this, somehow.”
“She wouldn’t let us be together, Ra! It’s wiser not to make herreallyangry!”
He held her close, and kissed her, and watched her run down the steps into the middle of the dogs, which nearly knocked her down in their exuberance; and watched her laughing, calling, whistling, as she ran down the hall, followed by them all, whilst the men, who were but children in their wrath and very good-tempered children when left alone, shouted their admiration.
She turned at the door, beautiful, radiant, and held out her arms.
“Ra!” she called. “Ra! beloved!” and disappeared into the night, the rocks echoing the barking of the dogs.
The men rushed to the door and out on to the broad ledge to watch the wonderful picture.
Down the steps and over the plateau and up the other side to the kennels she fled like Diana, preceded by thedogs and followed by the kennel grooms, who called the blessings of Allah upon her as they ran.
Her voice calling to the dogs came faintly on the soft night breeze; they heard her whistle; there fell a silence. Then were heard the shrill cries of many hate-filled women.
The clamour grew louder and louder and ended in prolonged, insufferable peals of laughter.
Silence.
Sick with horror, Ralph Trenchard took a step down and stopped.
Al-Asad sat on the bottom step, looking up.
His handsome face was drawn in pain, his lips pulled back from his splendid teeth. He sat crouched, still, looking up out of eyes filled with hate.
Ralph Trenchard swung round to the woman. She stood against the wall, a slender, silent figure, love and hate shining from her half-closed eyes.
He did not hesitate, he leapt clear of the dais to save the girl he loved from what the insufferable peals of laughter, which echoed in his ears, portended.
He had got half-way down the hall, when, upon a sign from the Arabian woman, hands caught him and held him, whilst a golden sound of laughter came from Zarah as she stood, a thing of love and hate, against the glittering Byzantine wall.
“Fear not, my children,” whispered Yussuf to “His Eyes” and Namlah the Busy some time later as they talked over the failure of their plans within the last few hours. “Even as the pounding of many grains of wheat goes to the making of bread, so is life learnt in many lessons. Dawn breaketh. To revenge the loss of thy son, my daughter, thy speech, my son, and mine eyes, we will bring about the downfall of the accursed woman. The proverb says ‘Three persons if they unite against a town will ruin it.’”
“Before the clouds appeared the rain came upon me.”—Arabic Proverb.
“Before the clouds appeared the rain came upon me.”—Arabic Proverb.
Two months had passed in which Zarah had absolutely failed to break her prisoners’ indomitable spirit; two months in which her passion for the white man and her hate for the white girl had grown deeper and fiercer.
With the density of some women, she clung with an extraordinary and ridiculous tenacity to the belief that, if she only threatened or cajoled enough and held her rival up plainly enough to ridicule or contempt, she would ultimately win Ralph Trenchard’s love.
Also did fear urge her to force or cajole him into becoming her husband.
She knew her own men were blown like cotton threads before every passing gust of their facile emotions, and that their suddenly aroused hatred of Ralph Trenchard had given place to genuine admiration; by that she had come to realize she had no real hold over them and that, where they had obeyed her father, the Sheikh, through genuine love, they merely obeyed her because it pleased them so to do.
She was just their nominal head. She pleased their sense of beauty, and they almost worshipped her for her courage in raids, but they were too well fed, too sure of an unfailing supply of the necessities of life, too secure against intrusion and interference to wish to relieve her of the reins of government with its attendant burdens.
If they had formed one of the itinerant groups of Bedouins which have to literally fight for their existenceas they flee across the desert, she knew they would not have tolerated her for a day.
True, they made no effort to run counter to her orders and to ameliorate the white man’s position. They considered the rough hut he lived in on the far side of the plateau, and the rough food sent him, quite good enough for any infidel; but they greeted him with friendly shouts when he arrived to teach them his tricks of cunning, and did their best to beat him at his own game.
If it had not been for his overwhelming anxiety for the future and for Helen, whom he knew, by hearsay, to be a very slave to the tyrannical Arabian, Ralph Trenchard would not have complained of his life or his treatment. True, he hated the half-caste, who did his best to humiliate him in the eyes of the men and, in a moment of forgetfulness in the early days, had forcibly rebelled against his constant espionage and irritating presence. He had been instantly cured of the spirit of rebellion by the sight which, with a mocking laugh, the Nubian had pointed out to him, of Helen, kneeling by the river surrounded by jeering women, as she washed the Arabian’s linen.
“And worse will happen, thou infidel, if thou dar’st disobey my mistress’s commands. Mohammed the Prophet of Allah decreed in his understanding that unto the faithful should be four wives given, neither did he in his wisdom say aught against an infidel wife being of the four. Nay! in thine eyes I see the lust to kill. The life of the white woman pays forfeit for my life; thy life if the white woman essays to shorten the days of Zarah the Beautiful.”
For fear of something worse than death befalling the beautiful, splendid girl he loved, he dared do nothing. For every word, for every act of rebellion on his part, some task even more menial than those she daily performed would be forced upon her; for any attempt he might make upon the Nubian’s life, to assuage his own outraged feelings, her life would be taken.
And there seemed no possible way out.
Not only did the Nubian dog his footsteps, but Yussuf, upon whom he had counted in his heart of hearts, had failed him, and without his help nothing could be done, no communication with Helen effected, no plans for escape made.
He saw Yussuf every day seated amongst the men gathered to learn the arts of wrestling and jiu-jitsu, and of all the little crowd he seemed to be the only one who still cherished his hatred for the infidel. He spat with vigour when the white man passed, and at other times shouted various abusive or ribald remarks, whilst urging his brethren to down the unbeliever in the tests of strength and cunning, for the glory of Allah the one and only God.
His days were most humiliatingly mapped out for him by the Nubian.
There seemed to be no satisfying the men’s craving to master the rudiments of wrestling.
From two hours after sunrise until the first moment of the great noonday heat they milled and boxed, with intervals of single-stick and jiu-jitsu, in which they invariably forgot instructions, lost their self-control and temper, and almost broke each other’s legs, arms, heads or backs.
The afternoons were passed in the heavy, unrefreshing sleep induced by great heat; from the moment the sun slipped down behind the topmost mountain peaks, throwing deep shadows across the plateau, they were at it again until the hour of the one big meal of the day, which takes place about two hours after sunset.
The best part of the night they passed in gambling, story telling, singing, or tearing over the desert on horseback, Ralph Trenchard accompanying them, invariably shadowed by the Nubian.
To his intense relief, Zarah left him entirely alone for the first month. Fully aware that he was surrounded by spies, he gave no sign of the rage which swept him eachtime he caught sight of Helen following the Arabian, fanning her or holding an umbrella over her; or descending the steps to the river with a great earthenware vessel on her shoulder, which she would fill for the tyrant’s bath and carry up the steep steps to her dwelling.
Zarah had passed the month in trying to break Helen’s splendid spirit, ignorant of the strength which real love gives to those who, either through physical weakness or untoward circumstances, are at the mercy of those moral cowards who take advantage of their distress or defencelessness. Cowards who, amongst the educated and the ignorant, the clergy, the laity, in the highest profession or in trade, place themselves morally on the level of the man who kicks his dog or hits his opponent when he is down.
She made no impression on the English girl.
Strong in her love, certain that her prayers for help would be answered, she endured all things.
She waited on the Arabian hand and foot, climbed the ladder to the golden cage, wherein Zarah lay during thesiesta, with coffee, sherbet, or whatever she desired, and descended and climbed again with ever the sweetest smile in her steady, blue eyes. She brushed and combed the red curls until her arms ached; carried and fetched and read aloud and looked after the birds; fanned the woman, fetched water from the river for her bath, washed the silken garments, and waited upon her at meals, without a murmur on her lips or a shadow in her eyes.
She spoke to no one, but through the gossiping of the women learned that the body of the surly negress had not been discovered, and that Zarah, owing to a certain spirit of insubordination that had lately swept through the camp, had not dared to punish the grooms of the kennels for their gross carelessness.
She was continually surrounded by the women, who, ignorant of the lies told them, jeered at and laughed at her and did everything in their power to make her taskseven yet more distasteful. When away from Zarah her every movement was spied upon and reported.
She slept in a hut in which tools had been stored during the alterations to the building, rough and infinitely uncomfortable, but a very haven of refuge at the end of the day when she returned, to fling herself on her knees and pray for strength and patience.
If only she had known it, spies watched her at her prayers, noting the look of peace which followed quickly upon them, and the content with which she stretched herself upon the bed composed of rugs flung upon the sand; watched her asleep and at her toilette, and ran to make report on all things, especially upon the delight she seemed to take in combing her masses of beautiful hair and in her bath in the river long before the dawn.
And when a rough hand shook Helen out of her sleep and ordered her to Zarah’s presence, it seemed that God had turned a deaf ear to her prayers and that fear must, after all, dominate her splendid courage.
It was long after midnight when, with a heavily beating heart, she entered the luxurious room.
Two Abyssinian women, nude save for a short petticoat which stopped above the knees, stood behind the divan upon which Zarah lay smoking anaghileh. She lay and looked at Helen without a word, hating her for the ethereal look, which heightened her beauty and had come to her in her days of toil and privation.
“I am told,” she said after a while in Arabic, “that the hut you sleep in is not clean, that your habits are not the cleanly habits of the Mohammedan, that your hair has not escaped contamination from the disorder in your hut; therefore——”
When Helen interrupted her quickly, she looked back at the tittering black women and laughed.
“How can you say such a thing! I am perfectly clean, my clothes are in holes through being washed on the stones, my hair....” To her own undoing andyet, if she had but known it, as an answer to her prayers for help, she undid the great golden plaits and shook the rippling mass out over her shoulders, holding long strands at arm’s length until even the negresses exclaimed at the glory of its sheen. “My hair is combed and brushed every day and washed once a week; it is perfectly clean!”
Zarah laughed as she puffed at her hubble-bubble, inhaling the fumes of the tobacco of Oman, which is calculated to absolutely stun the uninitiated in its gunpowder strength.
“Anyway, I do not like these tales of uncleanliness to be spread amongst my women, Helen R-r-aynor-r,” she said curtly at last. “I therefore have decided to keep you beneath my eyes. You will sleep in my room, on a mat, you will bathe under the supervision of this slave here, who will now cut your hair off so that you are clean.”
“I’ll kill her if she touches me!” Helen cried sharply, and, gathering the glory of her hair round about her, ran to a table upon which lay an ornamented but most workmanlike dagger. She loved her glorious, naturally curling hair, looking upon it, with her beautiful teeth, as the greatest asset with which nature had endowed her. Her lover loved it, and had often told her that she had ensnared his heart in its golden mesh. Forgetting her impossible position as prisoner and the utter futility of any effort at resistance, determined to fight for the glorious mantle which covered her to her knees, she picked up the dagger as the two gigantic women approached her.
“I’ll kill the first one of you who touches me!”
Zarah laughed and raised her hand.
“Go and find Al-Asad and bid him bind the white man and bring him here.Stop!”
Helen had thrown out her hands in surrender.
Even her hair would she willingly sacrifice in her great love, everything she would sacrifice except her honour, and that she knew was safe in a place aboundingwith deep precipices and paths where the foothold was precarious.
Save for her tightly locked hands, she made no sign when the beautiful mass lay about her feet; in fact, with an almost superhuman effort of courage, she refrained from touching her shorn head, and leant down instead and picked up a handful of hair, which looked like a great skein of golden silk.
“It’s a pity to waste it, Zarah,” she said gently. “Why not stuff a pillow with it?”
The Arabian bit hard on the amber mouthpiece of thenaghileh. With her short hair curling round her face, Helen looked like an exquisite girl of fifteen, defenceless, helpless, and calculated to inspire pity in the heart of almost any man.
“Call Namlah!” She lashed the Abyssinian across the thigh when she had to repeat the order. “Art deaf or bereft of the use of thy limbs, thou fool!” she screamed, seizing the dagger from her belt and throwing it after the rapidly retreating negress, missing her shoulder by an inch as she emulated the speed of the ostrich through the doorway.
Namlah, upon whom Helen had counted in her heart of hearts, had failed her, and without her help nothing could be done, no communication with Ralph effected, no plans for escape made.
Of all the crowd of women who jeered and laughed at her she seemed to be the one who cherished the greatest hatred for her. She spat with vigour when the white girl passed, and at other times shouted various abusive and ribald remarks, urging the women to see that the unbeliever performed her menial tasks thoroughly, so as to enhance the glory of Allah the one and only God.
She ran in and prostrated herself before her dread mistress, then pulled the masses of hair roughly from under Helen’s feet and tossed it this way and that as though it were the hair of goat or camel.
“A kerchief for thy head, O great mistress, could I weave, or a plaited girdle set with pearls, though ’twere wellnigh sacrilege for the middle of the believer to be bound by the hair of the infidel. Behold the infidel looks even like the skull of one dead, with her face like unbaked bread and her head like unto the wing of the ostrich plucked of its feathers.”
With instructions to make what she could of the silky burden which filled both her arms, she spat or, rather, for fear of her mistress’s humour, made the sound of vigorous spitting in Helen’s direction, and vanished through the doorway.
Helen lay on the floor that night, her beautiful shorn head resting on her arm, and poured out her heart in gratitude that Zarah had not seen fit to shave it completely.
“What is in the cauldron is taken out with the kitchen spoon.”—Arabic Proverb.“A thousand raps at the door but no salute or invitation from within.”—Arabic Proverb.
“What is in the cauldron is taken out with the kitchen spoon.”—Arabic Proverb.
“A thousand raps at the door but no salute or invitation from within.”—Arabic Proverb.
During the night, in the passing of a second, for no apparent reason and with all the Arab’s lamentable instability, Zarah grew suddenly tired of baiting her prisoner, and, with the extraordinary density of the woman in love, decided to make one last endeavour to break down Ralph Trenchard’s resistance.
She could not understand, and she would never be able to get it into a mind narrowed by self-love, that one might as well try to stem the Niagara Falls with straw or hold amustelephant on a daisy-chain as to influence the invincible love of soul-mates.
She decided she would offer Ralph Trenchard Helen’s liberty. She would offer to give up her mountain home, her freedom, her power. She would offer herself as hisservant, his slave, to cook for him, to wait upon him, anything to keep him by her side, no matter if he returned her love or not, as long as he lived near her; and if that failed, as a last resource would use the despicable lever of the lowest type of coward.
To gain her end she would threaten to commit suicide. So the night following the cutting of Helen’s hair, which was also the night preceding a tournament, in which the men were to show how much they had learned of the art of pugilism, she attired herself in great splendour and summoned Ralph Trenchard to her presence. Helen, surrounded by women who gossiped, knelt at the river edge rubbing silken garments on a stone, with Namlah mocking and jeering beside her when the Abyssinian, sent to fetch Ralph Trenchard, shouted her errand as she passed. Helen shrank back when Namlah suddenly sprang at her and wrenched the silken garment from her hand.
“Thou fool!” Namlah shrilled as she knelt. “This wise, and this and this. The soap? Or hast thou eaten it in thy imbecility?” She leant across Helen and snatched at the soap, which slid into the water, then rung the garment as though it were the neck of an offending hen as she whispered: “Give me a message for the white man. Zarah offers him thy freedom for his love.” Down came the garment on the stone as though she essayed to soften the tough carcass of some female Methuselah of the poultry world as she screamed at the top of her voice: “Wilt thou never learn? Did Allah in his wisdom not teach thee even how to wash a garment? Take it and try, lest I smite thee with it!” She flung the silken remnant at Helen, who, eyes alight, caught it in both hands and crashed it on the rocks until one half followed the soap into the water, whereupon Namlah leant across her and gripped her wrists.
“Fool! This wise, and this and this!”
The women crowded round to watch Namlah swinging Helen’s arms like flails.
“Tell him,” whispered Helen as she beat her best, “that—— Nay, Namlah, thou tearest out my arms. Behold, I can do no more.” She fell forward with the woman underneath, and in the confusion whispered her message. “Tell him I prefer death to my freedom at such a price,” and shrank back, for the benefit of the onlookers, when Namlah, flinging all that was left of the washing item in her face, ran off, with much cursing, up the path to where Yussuf waited in the shadows.
And hope sprang up in Ralph Trenchard’s heart as he climbed the steps in answer to Zarah’s summons, followed by the Nubian at some distance.
Suddenly, and with a most amazing clumsiness, Yussuf walked out from behind the great boulder straight into his arms.
“Sorry!” said Trenchard shortly, as he tried to free himself from the grasp of the infuriated Arab. “You came out so——”
“Hast no thoughts for others?” shouted Yussuf at the top of his voice. “Thine ear,” he whispered, whilst he shook Ralph Trenchard violently. “Zarah will offer thee thy white woman’s freedom for thy love. The white woman prefers death to freedom without thee. She loves thee. Nay,” he suddenly yelled, “wouldst push a blind man to his death?” The two seemed locked in anger as Al-Asad raced up the path. “A message,” he whispered. “Shake me in anger. Give me a message for thy woman—give me a message.”
The Nubian was close upon them.
Trenchard grasped the blind man and shook him.
“Tell her to stand fast and to fear nothing,” he whispered, then shouted angrily. “How can I hear thy noiseless feet on the——” He reeled as Yussuf hurled him backwards and continued to climb the steps, whilst the blind man filled the night air with curses.
Zarah was quite alone.
The Nubian, under orders, sat down upon the steps to await developments.
He was well content to wait.
He had gauged the white man’s strength of resistance and had no fear that he would become entangled in the beautiful Arabian’s wiles. He smiled as he crept, as noiselessly as a great cat, to the platform before the door and stretched himself flat upon it, the blackest spot in the black shadows, to listen to the woman he loved pleading for the love of one who loved another.
Lost to all sense of shame as are those women who have not learned the meaning of self-control and self-sacrifice, Zarah pleaded with Ralph Trenchard for his continued presence by her side. Pleaded for his company and his comradeship so that she might enjoy the shadow of his great good looks and actual presence whilst keeping the substance of his love from her rival.
She had made the greatest mistake in her toilette.
None too over-dressed at the best of times, she had a startlingly undressed appearance as she stood like a beautiful exotic flower beside the Englishman.
She had not—how could she in the name of decency?—discarded a single garment, but had donned the most transparent outfit in her wardrobe.
Her feet were bare and jewelled, as were her arms, her hands, her waist. The trousers, worn by most Arabian women, were voluminous in their transparent folds, her body shone through a jewelled vest which fitted her like her skin.
Trenchard looked at her from head to foot, and with the perverseness of the human mind immediately thought of the picture Helen had made as she stood beside her grandfather in the desperate battle; and he backed a pace before the Arabian’s semi-nudity, whilst the Nubian buried his face in his arm to stifle his cry of longing.
“I love thee,” Zarah was saying softly, looking up atthe man she loved with love-filled eyes. “I love thee, R-ralph Tr-r-enchar-r-d. I have loved thee ever since I lay against thy heart so many, many moons ago. I will give up my home, my people, I will name Al-Asad as ruler in my stead, I will follow thee upon the path of thy choice, to the country that should please thee. I will wait upon thee, serve thee, devote myself to thee, if thou wilt give up the other woman. I love thee.”
“I have already told you, Zarah, that I do not love you, could never love you.” Ralph Trenchard, loathing the scene, spoke curtly, and stepped back quickly as Zarah flung herself at his feet. “Do get up,” he added in English, as he tried to loosen her grasp upon his knees. “If only you knew how we English loathe scenes like this, and what we think of hysterical, unbalanced people!”
She sat back on her heels, lifting her hands in supplication.
“I offer you Helen R-raynor-r’s freedom if you will stay with me. I do not want to keep her. Let her go back to her own country. She is young; she will forget; she does not know what love is. Besides, I fear my slave. He is handsome; he, too, is young; he wishes to take a wife. I will send Helena safely away from him if you will stay with me.”
Trenchard showed no sign of the horror of the fate in store for Helen; he spoke quite calmly, slowly, almost indifferently.
“You will not gain anything if you hurt Helen. If she dies I die; if you try to harm her she will find a means of killing herself, and I shall kill myself. Not because of my love for her—our kind of love is higher than suicide, it endures—but only so that you shall find no pleasure in her death.”
He pulled her hands apart and stepped back as she sprang to her feet. She failed to understand that, living or dead, she was no more to the man than one of the birdsin its cage, and played what she mistakenly believed to be her trump card.
“Then I will killmyself, R-r-alph Tr-renchar-r-d.” She choked with rage, the r’s in the English words rolling like little drums. “And you will never forget that upon your head will lie the death of a woman, never be able to wipe out the picture of my broken body lying amongst the rocks.” She ran close up to him, shaking with the unseemly rage of the uncontrolled woman. “I go to my death.” She pointed through the doorway, striking a most dramatic attitude, whilst watching for a sign of interest in her proceedings in the man’s indifferent face. “To my death!” she screamed as she saw none, and fled through the doorway, missing the astounded Nubian by an inch.
She stopped upon the edge of the very steep incline and listened for the sound of footsteps hastening to her rescue. At the absence of all sound she looked over her shoulder, to see Ralph Trenchard, with his back to her, lighting a cigarette. She tore back into the room with the last shred of her restraint gone and swung him round by the arm.
“Oh, you didn’t do it?” He looked her straight in the eyes. “We have women like you in England, never very young or very pretty, who, verging upon the sere and yellow, and with nothing to fill their days or occupy their minds, try to coerce the people they love by threats of suicide. They never get what they want, either. The slightest chain frets love, real love, you know. You can’t inspire love just because you keep the personyoulove, but who doesn’t loveyou, in the same house with you. You can’t hold love by cooking or serving. Love, real love, will thrive on a crust offered by the one loved, but will sicken at the sight of a basket of sweetmeats offered by anyone else.” He had no intention of giving her the slightest cause to hope by offering her any sympathy in her tantrums. He added coldly, cruelly, as he turnedfrom her: “It’s rather a pity these silly, hysterical women don’t carry out their threat of suicide; the world would be no loser by their death.”
He backed before her as she burst into a torrent of reproach which ended in a storm of abuse.
“ ... Go!” she screamed at the highest pitch of the Arabian voice, which is none too sweet in wrath. “To-morrow at the tournament I will decide what is best to be done with this white woman who is not fit to mingle with my women and children. Yea, even, owing to her dislike of water have we cut her hair so that——”
She screamed and struck at Ralph Trenchard as he caught her by the wrist and pulled her roughly to him.
“What did you say? You’ve cut off Helen’s hair? All that wonderful golden mass! You have dared to do that? Speak, can’t you!”
He flung her on the divan as she laughed and clapped her hands at the sight of his horror-stricken face, and laughed again at the plan for revenge which flashed into her mind.
“So I have prevailed in making you feel, R-ralph Tr-r-enchar-r-d,” she shouted after him as he left the room and ran down the steps, followed by the amazed Nubian.
She ran to the door and laughed until the mountains echoed and re-echoed to the sound, then turned and flung herself on the floor, where she gave way to the violent hysterics of the uncontrolled, jealous woman.
“Tyrannical, cheating, of ill omen.”—Arabic Proverb.
“Tyrannical, cheating, of ill omen.”—Arabic Proverb.
The overpowering heat of the day had given place to the lesser heat of early evening as the sun sank behind the western edge of the mountain ring. The interior of the ring looked like the inside of some rough-edged, painted flower-pot, with grey, purple, blue-black foundation and sides of green and richest reds and browns, melting to saffron, topaz, amethyst and rose, crowned by great peaks which seemed to flicker in the terrific heat radiated by the sun-scorched rock. Little golden, pink and crimson clouds, faintly stirred by the blessed evening breeze, sailed serenely across a sky of deepest blue which stretched, a gorgeous canopy, above the heads of the men seated on the ground or up the gentle incline rising from the plateau.
Those opposite the steps down which Zarah would have to pass sat with knees to chin, placidly chewingkaator smoking red or blacksebeland longer pipes with big, open bowl.
Those to the north and south of the steps sat sidewise, also contentedly chewing or smoking, with eyes fixed upon the steep path.
There was no laughing, no gambling, no betting upon the outcome of the different sporting items in the tournament for which they had foregathered. They were strangely quiet, with a certain expectancy in their eyes and a vast amount of meaning in their expressive gestures as they commented upon and argued about the tales the Nubian had spread anent their mistress’s strange behaviour of the night before.
“Bism ’allah!upon the very edge, with one eye upon the running water into which the Lion thought she desired tothrow herself, and one eye upon the white man, who, by the wool! is a man of strong heart, even if he be an infidel.”
Bowlegs laughed as he stretched his circular limbs and pressed himself against his neighbour so as to make room for Yussuf as he came towards them, led by “His Eyes,” down the path made for him through the serried ranks.
“Welcome, brother, thou true believer in the shaven crown,” cried the handsome youth who had been swung like a club, and who had not followed the precepts of the Prophet to the extent of shaving his head. “Hast heard that the white woman, who holdeth the heart of the man who loveth her and who is loved of the beautiful Zarah, and may Allah guide their footsteps in the crookedness of their paths——” As he spoke he pushed his way between Bowlegs and Yussuf, and as he looked up into the mutilated face, touched the blind man gently. “Hast heard that the tiger-cat, in her rage, has caused the head of the white woman to be shaven so that, if she were lost in the Robaa-el-Khali, the ostrich might even wish to brood upon it as her egg?”
The men shouted in ribald mirth as they bandied jokes, mostly unprintable in their Oriental flavour.
“Yea, and shaven after the setting of the sun,” said the Patriarch bitterly, whilst every man in earshot touched his favourite lucky amulet or made the finger gesture against ill-luck. “Behold, will Zarah’s mocking of Fate surely bring catastrophe upon the camp, for what but misfortune can follow the shaving of a crown after the setting of the sun?”
The fine sons of one of the most superstition-ridden races in the world performed divers tricks to placate the fury of the false god of ill-luck they had raised up in their minds, then continued in their merriment.
“Who has seen the shaven head?”
“No eyes have seen the head, O brother, but mine own eyes have seen Namlah the Busy, seated like a bee in the heart of a golden flower, weaving a kerchief from the infidel’s wondrous hair.”
Bowlegs shouted with laughter.
“Yea! verily! a kerchief to replace the gentle Zarah’s garments, torn asunder ’twixt her teeth and fingers in her wrath at the white man’s coldness.”
“Or to wipe the tiger-cat’s face, which, wet with tears and hot with anger, was like an over-ripe fruit of thedoomtree, fallen upon the sand!”
“Or to remove the dust from her chamber, wrecked like unto a house swept by the hurricane, with feathers of many fowl, liberated from the burst cushions, clinging to the silken curtains and her hair.”
Prodded by Fate, the handsome youth turned and laid his hand on Yussuf’s arm whilst the men crowded closer yet to listen to their conversation.
“O brother,” he said laughingly, “thou who hast suffered, thou who even now dost pass sleepless nights of pain, wilt thou not in thy goodness, to quieten the agony of the tiger-cat’s gentle heart, give unto her a few drops of the sweet water prescribed thee by yon old herbalist for sleep?”
Yussuf smiled as best he could for the distortion of his mouth, as he searched in his cummerbund and pulled out a flask, filled with the strong narcotic he took to still the throbbing of his torn nerves when the wind blew from the north.
“’Tis overpowerful, little brother. A drop too little and she wakes from her sleep like a tigress bereft of her cubs; a drop too much and she wakes not at all.”
“Twenty drops and what....”
The voice from behind was stilled suddenly as the men rose quickly and stood staring up to the platform outside Zarah’s dwelling.
Zarah stood looking down.
She stood almost upon the spot from where some years ago she had hurled her spear at the fighting dogs, and, killing the one intended for a gift to her father’s guest, had followed the decree of Fate, who had tangled her life’s thread with those of her white prisoners.
“Zarah is a very queen of loveliness!”
“Yea! with hair like the setting sun!”
The hawk-eyed men with the superb sight of those who live in the clear atmosphere of great spaces criticized in detail the Arabian’s garments, which at such a distance would have shown as a white blur to the eyes of the westerner, accustomed as he is to an horizon bounded by walls and a sky ever limited by chimney-pots or partially obliterated by smoke or fog.
“The white man tarries! Would that the Lion were here to tell once again of the calmness of his face in the storm of yester-night.”
“Perchance does his heart fail at the thought of the maiden’s shaven crown.”
“Likewise does she tarry, fearful perchance of beholding her lover’s eyes empty of love light.”
“‘She gave her the vinegar to drink on the wings of flies.’” Yussuf touched his sad face as he quoted the proverb. “Verily were the words of wisdom written to describe the refinement of the tortures our thrice gentle mistress meteth out to her prisoners.”
There was not a movement, not a whisper from the men when Zarah turned and lifted her hand, but there came a great cry from hundreds of throats as Helen appeared in the doorway, followed by the two gigantic Abyssinian women.
“Hast seen the shaven crown, brother?”
The handsome youth turned to Yussuf, who stood with his sightless face raised to the skies.
“Nay, blind one,” he replied quietly, all the merriment gone from his face. “I have seen the white woman. She stands behind the dread Zarah, her golden hair, even the length of thy longest finger, twining about her head like a crown of flowers upon a young acacia tree. She is like an orchard of choice fruit in her beauty. Yea! like an orchard of pomegranates and peaches, and as the gentle incline of the rocks where the evening sun kisseth the oranges and apricots and luscious fig. If it were not thatshe is of a race of infidels, likewise cursed with a spirit of mockery and a lack of gratitude, I would e’en woo her in the shadows of the night and make of hermywoman.” He moved forward, drawn by Helen’s radiant beauty, as she descended the steps fanning Zarah with a circular, painted fan of dried palm leaves.
The men stood as though spellbound at the sight of the two beautiful girls.
They forgot the tournament, their wrath, their merriment; they stood speechless, staring, then moved forward in a body as Zarah reached the bottom step and made a way for her up to where an ebony chair, inlaid with gold, stood upon a carpet of many colours.
The expression of Zarah’s sullen face was almost as black as the shadows spreading half-way up the mountains; her heavy brows were bent above her strange eyes; her crimson mouth set in a line which boded no good to those who might thwart her.
A chance word, an indiscreet gesture, would be spark enough to start the conflagration, and Fate, close to Helen Raynor, stood ready to fire the Arabian’s raging jealousy as Ralph Trenchard, followed by the Nubian, walked slowly from the men’s quarters towards them.
There was not a sound and scarcely a movement in the vast throng of men as they stood looking from one to the other of the three who, even in the desert, made the seemingly inevitable love triangle. And so enthralled were they, and so oblivious were the three who composed the triangle to their surroundings, that no notice was taken of the downtrodden, docile women who, headed by Namlah, and imbued with the spirit of insubordination which was sweeping the camp, also with a fierce desire to see the white woman’s shaven head, crept in ones and twos from behind the rock buttress which hid their quarters from the greater part of the plateau.
They stole along the river edge, behind their men, who were too engrossed in the picture before them even to bet, let alone to notice the doings of their womenkind.
They crept up behind the gigantic Abyssinian women who stood behind Zarah’s chair, and turned and looked at them as a couple of Yemen buffaloes might turn to inspect an ant heap.
The radiance of the blazing sky seemed to fill the mountain ring for a moment as Ralph Trenchard passed down the path made for him by the men, and stood suddenly clear of them, and exactly opposite Helen as she fanned the Arabian.
The mountains echoed Helen’s name as he called to her, holding out his arms, and her cry of joy as she flung the circular fan with pointed edges sideways, so that by mischance it caught in the Arabian’s hair, and ran to her lover.
The rocks echoed Zarah’s screams of wrath and pain and her sharp order to the Abyssinians, and the downtrodden women’s screams of hate, as they swept round the chair headed by Namlah, and cut Helen off.
Zarah shrieked in agony as the fan pulled her head down to one side, scratching her face and her shoulder, and beat the arms of the chair and the Abyssinians’ glistening bodies as they tried their best to relieve her whilst she fought like a wild cat, with her eyes fixed on the fight which was taking place in front of her.
The women were trying to prevent Helen from reaching her lover, and the men were endeavouring, and none too gently, to push the women on one side, so that the white man they had come to admire and like might meet the woman of his heart. They did it for the sport of the thing, and to assert their authority over their women; also, in their heart of hearts was there a certain amount of admiration for Helen’s beauty and courage.
The women who had come to titter and jeer at Helen’s bald head were consumed with wrath at their disappointment and fought their men tooth and nail, taking advantage of the scrum to pay off many an old score and avenge many a lash of the whip or tongue. The men, amused at first, then astounded, then really angry at this sudden exhibition of women’s rights, slapped theirown particular womenfolk with the flat of their hand, then smote them smartly with themihjan, and finally shook them violently until their sleek heads seemed like to leave their shoulders and their beautiful teeth to break in their chattering.
Ralph Trenchard stood at the back of the men who slapped and shook and cursed; Helen stood, looking towards him, towering above the dusky little women like a young acacia tree in the bush.
In spite of the peril in which they knew themselves to stand, they smiled across and called messages to each other, which were lost in the universal torrents of abuse and vociferous yelling, interspersed with screams and sounds of slapping and tearing.
Namlah, wedged on the outer circle of the maelstrom, fought like a fury to get at Helen, screaming abuse, hurling her fighting sisters from her path in the excess of her seeming rage, whilst Yussuf, led by “His Eyes,” rattled his staff on the shins of the gentler sex as he strove to reach Namlah.
Bowlegs brought about their meeting.
Aided by the mighty muscle of his legs, he leapt free of the shrieking sisterhood high into the air and, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a hawk and a field mouse, pounced upon his second and obese wife, whom he had spied fighting with the best in much torn raiment.
The tremendous impact from above flung her backwards against Namlah, who in her turn was flung backwards against Yussuf.
Proceeded a pretty passage of arms and tongues between these two, during which the blind man slipped a silver bottle down the front of Namlah’s tornqamiswhilst she belaboured him, and “Yussuf’s Eyes” rained blows upon his mother’s back.
“Aï! aï! aï!” she wailed, as she rolled the flask in the top part of her torn petticoat. “Would’st tear the verytannurahfrom my limbs, thou wifeless, childless, breaker of the Prophet’s law? Push me forward—ha! thouwould’st push me forward, thou rascal son of mine, even unto the first line of my fighting sisters. Well, push, push hard, so that I leave the mark of my nails upon the white girl’s face!”
Helen turned at the sound of the woman’s voice and raised herself on tiptoe the better to see, and caught the look in the dusky little woman’s twinkling eye, which in no wise responded to the wrath of her voice and gestures.
“Yea! white woman,” she shrieked, “come nearer to me, or let me come nearer unto thee, if thou art not afraid. I will show thee what manner of woman it is thou did’st mimic and mock.”
“Afraid,” cried Helen, forcing a way through the men. “Afraid! Come to me and——”
She reeled back as Namlah flung herself upon her, pushed by her son, who pulled the blind man after him, whilst the men who were not actually engaged in taming their shrews surged round them, shouting in delight.
Namlah landed right on Helen’s chest, to which she clung as a woodpecker to a tree trunk.
“Take this! Ten drops this night before she sleeps—then wait in the shadows,” she whispered; then shrieked: “Ha! thou infidel. I would tear out thine eyes, I——”
“Yussuf’s Eyes” suddenly and forcibly pinched the underpart of his mother’s arm, upon which she yelled, let go her hold on Helen and leapt at him, then slid meekly to earth and tried to cover her face with her torn veil, which she spread out to arm’s length as Helen hid the silver flask in her belt.
The sun had set, leaving the sky in a tumult of violent colouring, through which, in a small patch of deepest blue, shone one great star. Helen looked up to the banners of gold and red and orange, the curtains of saffron, the trails of rose and wispy bands of grey, then looked across at Zarah, who walked slowly towards her, blood trickling down her scratched cheek. Her eyes flamed in her white face, which showed over the top of the dead black satin cloak she had wrapped round her like a skin;and Ralph Trenchard, who saw the menace in her sombre eyes and the cruel twist to her mouth, seized the men nearest him and threw them on one side as he raced to get to Helen before the Arabian could reach her.
He was a second too late.
Even as he touched her one of the gigantic Abyssinian women reached her and, lifting her like a straw, carried her to where Zarah stood insolently, contemptuously watching the scene, whilst Yussuf stepped in front of him and pushed him back as “His Eyes” got tangled up in his feet.
“For God’s sake get out of my way, you fool!” Trenchard shouted, and lifted the dumb youth by the neck of hisjubbahand dropped him as Yussuf rushed blindly at him, guided by his voice.
“To-night, when the dog barks thrice,” he whispered, then shouted: “Harm not ‘Mine Eyes’ lest I stray from the right path so that——”
He stopped and turned as Helen’s voice came clearly through the night air.
“Don’t worry about me, Ra! I’m all right; no one can harm me,” she cried; then stepped back quickly as Zarah turned on her and, seizing her by the wrist, pulled her forward.
Held by Yussuf, who whispered without ceasing, Trenchard stood in the centre of a semicircle of men and women with the Patriarch at the end nearest Zarah and Helen, and Namlah, in a most indecorous and dishevelled state, at the other.
The two beautiful girls stood exactly opposite the man they loved, with the gigantic negresses close behind.
“Move not—have patience until the dog barks thrice to-night—make no effort to help—all is well—Allah watches over thee and thine in thy need—nay! make no sign—nothing can be done to her until the morrow.”
Yussuf whispered without ceasing, whilst, sick to the heart at the menace in the air, Ralph Trenchard stood waiting, with what patience he could command.
Zarah raised her hand and, fully aware of the backing she would get from the women, began to speak.
“I am speaking for my children,” she cried, “the children this white woman has mocked and derided, and for whom she has not had one word of thanks, not one little feeling of gratitude.”
“Na’am, na’am!” wailed Namlah in full acquiescence.
“For myself I do not mind that she strikes me until the blood runs, but my children I will protect!”
“Akhkh!” wailed Namlah, crouching on the ground and beating her breast with much vigour.
“And I will punish those who hurt my children. Yea! I will make ofthema sport, a mock. The white man—nay, Al-Asad, come thou to me—the white man I bear no ill will, for he has worked well among my sons.” She put her hand upon the Nubian’s arm when he ran across to her, and smiled up into his handsome face as she shook her head. “I am mistress here; thou shalt not touch the white man. For the white woman....” She looked at Helen, who looked at her, then across to Ralph Trenchard, who stood with Yussuf’s hand upon his arm and “His Eyes” at his feet. “For the white woman who has derided my children I do now place her amongst them as their servant, and to humiliate her even as she has humiliated them, do order the Abyssinian Aswad to shave her head this instant, before us all, so that she appears not before mankind without——”
Her words were drowned in the scream which burst uncontrollably from Helen, and the shout from her lover as he flung himself towards her, only to be tripped by the dumb youth at his feet.
“Ra! Ra!” cried Helen, clutching her lovely curls in both hands. “For God’s sake save me, Ra; don’t let them do it, don’t, don’t——” She turned and struck the negress across the face as the Abyssinian caught her by the arm, and struck again and again as Ralph Trenchard tore at the arms of the youth who clung to him like a leech. Helen made no other sound as she wrenched herselffree from the woman who held her, nor when, filled with the desire to kill, she flung herself upon Zarah.
The Arabian stepped back quickly and laughed, laughed until the place rang with the sound, then flung off her mantle and drove her dagger down on to Helen’s heart just as the Patriarch sprang and caught her hand.
Helen turned and ran towards her lover, and struck at Namlah, who suddenly caught her by the knees and held her, screaming abuse.
The men and women stood silent, looking from one to the other of the three principals in the love drama, then turned their attention to the Patriarch, who by that time was speaking.
He made a magnificent picture as he imposed his will upon the furious woman for the welfare of his brethren.
“In the days of thy father the Sheikh, my daughter,” he said, “no blood was spilled, no punishment proclaimed, after the setting of the sun. If thou desirest the death of this woman, then must thou wait until sunrise. Neither shalt thou bring misfortune upon this camp by shaving a head after the setting of the sun; that also must thou order to be done after its rising.”
“Wah! wah!” yelled the men, and smote the women who dared to differ.
“And for fear of the wrath of these women, who should have the whip laid across them for their unseemly behaviour, keep thou the white woman in thy chamber to-night.”
“Yea!” cried Yussuf, walking forward, led by “His Eyes,” until he stood exactly opposite the Arabian, who withdrew a pace before his terrible appearance. “And in the name of thy father, O Zarah, and for fear of the Nubian’s wrath being vented upon him before the rising of the sun, I claim the watching of the white man this night. Fear not that he sleeps over-sweetly in my care.” He turned and spat in Ralph Trenchard’s direction, then, led by “His Eyes,” strode towards him and seized him bythe arm. “Thou infidel,” he cried savagely, “thou and thy white woman!”
Zarah raised her hand.
“The women to the cooking, the men to the eating, the morrow for the punishment.” She turned and looked at Ralph Trenchard, her eyes filled with a terrible jealousy. “Look upon thy white woman for the last time, for, behold! the morrow thou shalt be taken back across the desert by the road by which thou didst come unto her. She shall work here amongst my people, with her shaven head for a space, then will I send her to the slave market, where her white skin will fetch a great price. Get thou up, Helen R-r-aynor-r!”
She pointed up the steps.
Helen turned and held out her arms.
“Ra! Beloved! I love you!”
The Arabian struck down her arms as Yussuf pulled Ralph Trenchard back.
“Come thou with me, thou infidel!” he cried.
“Get thou up, Helen R-r-aynor-r,” commanded the Arabian.
The stars blazed in the sky as the women scuttled back to their quarters and the men talked together.
“Behold, has my acacia tree no luck!” said the handsome youth.
“As saith the proverb of those whose luck changeth not,” replied Bowlegs, as he shook his fist after his retreating, obese and second wife. “‘The misfortune either falls upon the camel or upon the camel driver or upon the owner of the camel.’ Ha! wouldst show me what thou hast learned from the white man?”
He caught the Arab who had sprung at him in a friendly desire to show his pugilistic skill, tossed him on one side like a bundle of clothes, and shouted defiance to the whole camp.
So that the tournament, if somewhat impromptu and lacking a referee, took place after all and lasted well into the night.