The just steward

VII

The stuffy interior of the prison hut swims about the priest as he speaks. He sees a look of something like irritable compassion cross the handsome face on which his eyes are fixed. Its owner regrets the oversight, and will give orders that it shall not be repeated. Even as the prisoner voices thanks, he has a fleeting glimpse of an ugly, mocking grin on the flat brown features of the brick-faced German General. He hears a little, hateful, malicious laugh from the dark, bearded, white-robed personage who stands in the background.... He sees him approach the brick-faced man, and whisper in his ear.

And his ordinary senses, wrought to preternatural acuteness by suspense, hunger and sleeplessness, and that sixth sense which belongs to some anointed Servants of Heaven, warn Julian Forbis—have warned him since the mysterious shock and thrill that accompanied the stranger's entrance—of something more than sinister—more than terrible or dangerous, in connection with this white-robed, bearded man. He feels, emanating from his personality, an aura of sheer Evil—poisonous to the soul's health, paralysing to the will....

"I—"

His voice dies away. He is dizzy with weakness. Lights flash before his eyes, the hut spins round, and the two tall German officers and the man in the red head-drapery seem to join in the giddy whirl. Now he staggers, and sinks down fainting, his head and shoulders resting against the framework of the bed:

"It is damnable!" impatiently says the wearer of the Order of the Black Eagle, pulling out a gold pocket-flask, and finding it to be empty. "The man is dying—useless! See if there be not water somewhere. Tell somebody to bring some here! ..."

"Immediately, Excellency."

The flat-faced general is going to the hut door when the wearer of the red head-drapery gracefully interposes:

"What says the Shaykh? ..."

"Excellency, that wine will be better than water!—and that if you will observe a moment's silence, I will undertake that some shall be brought...."

"Indeed. Most exceedingly interesting, my very dear friend Sadân! ..."

A meaning look is exchanged between the two German officers. Smiling, the smoke-dark, bearded man steps into the middle of the floor-space, faces to the East, and looks back at his companions, saying in a sharp, clear tone:

"Uskut! ... By your Excellency's leave, I must strictly enjoin respect—and silence...."

He lifts the long, wide ends of his gold-embroidered girdle, with them covering his dark, slender, joined hands, and turns to the East again, saying: "Dastûr! By Your Permission, O Ye Blessed Ones! ..." Their spurred heels aligned, their hands rigidly at the salute, the two officers standing behind him, erect, unwinking and stiff, might be mistaken for coloured statues—save that their broad chests heave slightly with their noiseless breathing, and the glittering hairs of the Commander-in-Chief's moustache bristle like the whiskers of a watchful cat. There is a sobbing gasp or two from the fainting man lying propped against the anghareb; from the man in the red head-drapery, whose joined, covered hands are lifted—comes a sibilant low murmuring, but in the hut there is no other sound....

Until with a sharp, hissing final utterance, that might be the close of an invocation, the covered hands of the Shaykh are lowered. He bows his red-veiled, gold-crowned head over them, and turns round with a flashing smile:

"Kolossal! Wunderbild!" the Germans mutter, relaxing their attitudes of stiff respect, and exchanging glances of awe and astonishment....

For whereas the dark hands beneath the girdle-flaps were empty, their slender fingers, now uncovered, are seen to be enlaced about the stem of a glittering beaker of delicate, iridescent glass or crystal, brimming with pinkish-tinted liquor that diffuses an exquisite bouquet upon the mouldy atmosphere of the hut.

"It is nothing, O my lords! The Messengers are swift-winged and duteous," he says with his glittering smile....

Both Germans hugely admire the marvellous glass vessel, but neither is over-eager to handle and examine it. Or, when pressed, to taste the fragrant wine, which the Shaykh Sadân proceeds to pour down the throat of the swooning prisoner, lifting his head and shoulders with an ease that shows the great strength latent in his own small-boned Asiatic frame and delicate extremities....

The glass is nearly empty now, and between gulps of strange, poignant, reviving sweetness, Julian Forbis is coming to the use of his wits again.... As he sits up, then staggers to his feet by the help of a hand—he knows not whose!—except that it is small and strong, and that its strength is as unexpected as its deadly, stinging coldness—the Shaykh Sadân turns away and empties the remainder of the wine upon the beaten floor. A light flame flickers unperceived upon the spot as the earth drinks the liquor.... The Shaykh, smiling, offers the empty goblet to the German Commander-in-Chief.

"Beautiful indeed. And of immense antiquity. The value of this must be great, very great! ..."

Somewhat reluctantly the Chief has taken the thing, but its strange beauty and evident rarity tickle the connoisseur. It is thin as a soap-bubble, and as light. It might be blown of melted jewels—so dazzling are its minglings of ruby and topaz and jacinth,—of sapphire and emerald and dusky amethyst. Flawless, it rings like a bell as he taps it with his finger-nail. Now, wearying of the inanimate toy, he looks about for a shelf or table, but finds none; the hut being innocent of furniture other than the bed, a battered metal bowl lying in a corner, and a bottomless palm-wood stool....

"Permit me, O Excellent Lord!"

Seeing the Chief's evident difficulty, the Shaykh Sadân relieves him of the fragile goblet, and with supple ease and a graceful carelessness, sets it down upon the unsubstantial air. Where it stands a moment—under the surprised observation of the Commander-in-Chief and his satellite—until, with a slight yet perceptible shrinking of its outlines, and dulling of its jewel-bright colours—such as might have been observed in the soap-bubble to which it has been likened—it delicately vanishes away....

"Himmelkreuzbombenelement!" sputters the brick-faced general. His dull eyes protrude with genuine alarm, and his morale having deserted him, he makes a hasty movement in the direction of the door.

"See now, you have scared Von Krafft," says the Chief with a laugh that is not quite natural. "A hundred years ago, in England or in Germany, they would have burned you for that, O Shaykh Sadân!"

"It may be, O Excellent Lord!" he answers with the smile that is so ingratiating and yet so sinister. "But not in Egypt—nor in Arabia, where—when the Lands of the North were girt with ice, and inhabited by savages, the Divine Art of Magic had for cycles of centuries been known.... Lo! the good Shiraz wine hath worked its own witchcraft. Speak to the priest now—and he will hear and understand...."

"Prisoner, listen to me and prove yourself worthy of the consideration I have shown you. Admit frankly, that as a Catholic ecclesiastic, you have so far forgotten your cloth, and misconceived your duty, as to egg on the Allied War Prisoners of Germany and Turkey to insult their conquerors.... Append your signature to a confession of your offence, and in return take my assurance that what mercy it is possible to show you shall be extended forthwith...."

The priest's thin face is suffused with crimson as he listens. He is bewildered; that wine was strangely potent in its effects. But his candid eyes rest quietly on the Chief's angry face and he answers without passion:

"Sir, you have already heard me declare most solemnly, that I am guiltless of inciting the prisoners to rebel. Against their torture, and outrage at the hands of the Bey, I have protested strenuously, and will continue to do so as long as I have voice."

"You persist in accusing the Bey of crime and violence?"

"Most certainly and most truthfully I do!"

"Das ist nicht wahr! Have I not already the testimony of my Staff Officer? Added to that of Hamid Bey, who is an honourable man. Consider, if you exhaust my intolerance, what fate awaits you! Admit your guilt, sign the paper, and you shall immediately be released from this vile place, and admitted to parole."

"Sir, as a priest I refuse to accept your offered conditions! My body is your prisoner—my soul is not in your hands. Beware what you do! ... I refer my case to my Bishop—to the Latin Patriarch, and the other high Catholic dignitaries in Jerusalem...."

"Were you in Jerusalem at this moment, my good sir!—they would be equally impotent to assist you." As the priest does not know that these ecclesiastics to whom he refers have been forcibly deported from the Holy City, the barbed point of the jest is lost on his ignorance. "For even if your protest reached them—which is unlikely!—after what fashion would these persons enforce their authority? ..."

"I do not know! ..." The voice breaks upon a note of anguish, and the priest's head droops for a moment on his breast. He lifts it, and his hoarse, faint voice gathers power and rings out bravely. "But one thing I do know, that He Whom I serve and trust in, will not desert His poor servant in this extremity."

"Your faith is more admirable than your wisdom, sir. But I will waste no more words upon your obstinacy. Understand, that if when I leave you," for he has lent his ear to a soft whisper on the part of the dark man in the red kuffiyeh, "the Shaykh Sadân will, of his goodness, endeavour to bring you to reason. If he does not succeed—I wash my hands of you! The Prison Commandant Hamid Bey,—whom you have so vilely slandered,—may deal with you as he will! ..."

A terrible shudder convulses the priest's thin frame. As the heavy tread of the spurred boots shakes the crazy floor, words rush to his lips that—were they uttered—would be a cry of surrender. The footsteps reach the door, the door opens, but still his teeth are clenched and his lips firmly shut. His soul, beaten upon by gusts of terror, striving in blackness jagged with infernal lightnings, is like a ship in the fury of a cyclone. Of all the great and noble things—that are jewels in the crown of classic Literature, of all the texts of Holy Writ—of all the liturgies of the Mother Church, with which he has stored and enriched his memory—only six words come to him in his dire necessity:

"Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine!"

The door opens. Red sunset dyes the floor. The long shadows of the two German officers appear to stretch across a pool of blood. Now the door is shut, and Julian Forbis is alone with him from whom his spirit and flesh shrink in an agony of terror and loathing—all the more that his person is superbly handsome, that his smooth, cultured voice is exquisitely melodious—that from him radiates a power that allures, and persuades and charms.... He does not mock or gibe now. He is all delicate sympathy. But the priest traces the outline of the sneer through the smile of the Shaykh Sadân, and the mockery that grins behind the compassionate mask.

"O Darweesh of the Inglizi, listen to the words of the Shaykh Sadân of the Beni Abba, a poor recluse of the Desert of Igidi! For believe me—I speak as a friend, and not as an enemy!" murmurs the smooth caressing voice,

"Unhappy man, be not bigoted! ... This obduracy works to your own undoing. The great pity I—Sadân the Shaykh—feel for you—compels me to speak thus! Surely the garment of a priest is cut of the cloth of tasalidn—the rendering of obedience to superiors—and tahammul, endurance of injury.... And is not the heritage of the Prophets, Wisdom? And to prefer life to Death—is not that wise? ... And who gains Wisdom but at the cost of Sacrifice—ever since in the Spring-tide of the World, Isis—the Sister-Queen of King Osiris of Egypt, yielded her beauty to the Angel Amnaël, one of the Fallen Sons of Radiance,—in return for the secrets of Magic and Chemistry.... Consider, also, that by this great Chief, on whose breath hangs thy life, but little is required of thee? Nothing injurious to thine honour, or inimical to British interests in the East. Yield, as under the death-threat!—for verily the mercies of a furious elephant—or a hungry lion—were preferable to those of Hamid Bey.... Bear thy share! ... Do as thou art bidden—and solace thy soul by saying: 'This would I not have borne!—that would I not have done.... But He Who ruleth all things willed—and it was so? ...'"

Smiling, the speaker ceases, receiving answer:

"Sir, I have no need for sugared sophisms, nor specious consolations.... I know too well the source from which they come. Set my hand to a lie will I never!—nor shield the crimes that a tyrant has committed—to save my body at the cost of my soul!"

"'Your soul!...'"

The last two words are re-echoed by the Shaykh with delicate contemptuousness.

"Who barters in souls in these days, O priest?" he asks with terrible contempt, shrugging his supple shoulders. "For verily in the market they are as a worthless drug! ... Come! ... Decide, for I waste my kindness on you. What is your answer? Yes, or No? Here are paper, pen and ink." He draws an Arab writing-case from the folds of his girdle. "Write now, and sign...."

"No!"

Julian Forbis adds in a hoarse whisper—for the strength of the strange liquor he has drunk is ebbing out of him, as his numbing hand gropes blindly for something in his breast: "Tempt as you may, I shall not yield!—He Whom I serve being my helper! 'VADE RETRO SATANA! RECEDE A ME, MALEDICTE DIABOLI! IN NOMINE PATRIS, ET FILII, ET SPIRITUS SANCTI. AMEN....'"

In faith and courage he rises above his bodily weakness. He plucks from its concealment the hidden Symbol, and lifts it high as he utters the terrible words. And as they vibrate upon the sultry atmosphere, there goes forth a terrible, ear-splitting cry upon it, and a gust of air icy as the breath of the Polar frost, and dry as the wind of the Sahara—moans through the darkling place. He is alone, the Enemy has left him, and as Night falls, he sinks down senseless on the crazy floor of the hut.

VIII

On the summit of Ebal, a little east of the ruined fortress, is the wreckage of Khirbet Kuneisch—in Syrian Arabic, "The Little Church." Some twelve feet distant from the skeleton of its tiny sanctuary there is a tomb hollowed in the living rock.

And in this place the Mother of Ugliness dwells alone with her sorrow. Secured against the intrusion of the curious or thievish (did either discover the jealously-guarded secret) by the belief common to Syria and the East generally, that Afrits, ghouls, and vampires inhabit such ancient tombs.

Goats are cropping the short, sweet herbage. They are Ummshni's and come—like the willow-wren and chiffchaff, the robin and the yellow-and-white European wagtail—at her low, twittering call. Others, feeding lower down on the wild gum-cistus and the thyme that clothe the crumbling limestone terraces, have recognised their mistress, and follow her footsteps, as, with the big hand of the lame Arab leaning on her frail shoulder, she toils up the path upon Ebal's northern side.

"See, here is my little house, O Ali Zaybak, Bedawi...." Panting, she shows him a broken flight of limestone steps descending to the eastward-facing entrance of the tomb.

Supported in deep-cut grooves, on either side the low square aperture that serves as the entrance, is the circular stone employed of old times as the door of such a burial place; a block of the shape and size of a millstone—having no central hole to admit the shaft. A knob that projects from the surface of the stone some three or four inches below its upper rim, and another at an equal distance above its lower rim, can be used as the fulcrums of the human lever, that when necessary, rolls back the stone. From within, the tomb can be opened or closed in the same way.

"Canst thou roll away the stone, cousin?" asks Ummshni-Esther, "for 'tis a task that tries me sorely. Yet must I ever close my little house in this fashion when I leave it,—more need than ever now since Turks came to the Mount!"

"But if they came when thou wert here, and found the door open?" asks John Hazel, from midway down the steps.

She nods her head, and from between the folds of the Syrian veil comes her dry, rustling chuckle.

"Knowest thou what I would but need to do to send them down the Mountain quicker than they came up it? Even step boldly into the doorway, and—by the sunlight if 'twere day,—or by the flare of a brand from my fire if it were night—unveil and show them! This—that makes the Turk spit, and the German show his teeth in a grin, and the Englishman say, 'Poor devil!' or 'Poor thing!'—and all three hurry away from the sight. My one-eyed, crumpled face, that save thyself, O John my cousin! and one other!—is the best friend I own. What, dost thou hold back at the threshold until thy hostess bids thee enter?" For as the great stone rolls groaning into the opposite groove, leaving a narrow irregularly-shaped entrance, John has turned towards her, reaching up a long mahogany-coloured arm and huge hand to help her: "Verily then, in the name of Him Who sent thee, be thou welcome under this roof!"

So the two, so strangely met, so far apart and yet so nearly related—pass into Ummshni's strange, desolate home—out of the early morning sunshine, for it is barely seven o'clock. Three milch-goats with their kids troop after, their little split hoofs making a soft pattering; and at a sign from his cousin, John Hazel closes the entrance with the stone....

It is not dark within the tomb, nor is there any closeness in the atmosphere. This has a pleasant, dry coolness that is soothing, like the tempered light. Both the air and the light come through long cracks and chinks in the roof of limestone slabs, dressed with the hammer in bygone centuries, and intersected by glittering streaks of crystalline carbonate; and the sloping sides that, like the roof, Nature has thickly clothed with bracken and bramble. The place may be about ten feet in height—and owns three rooms or mortuary chambers—in whose sides are shelves, hollowed in the limestone rock—to receive the embalmed and swaddled bodies—of which (if any have ever rested there), the passing ages have left no trace.... The third chamber is some thirty feet in length and reaches under the ruins of The Little Church. Here, within a hearth of mud and stones, a wood fire smoulders; its smoke escaping unnoticed through a hole in the roof above it into the nave of the ruined building overhead, that is thickly mantled with tamarisk, and choked with cactus, prickly-pear, and the spina-Christi thorn. Various cooking-pots and vessels hang from pegs driven into chinks in the walls of limestone. Here are a stool or so, and a small folding-table. Here, too, a native bed—brought up here piece by piece—stands on one side, with some coarse woollen coverings folded on it. Some clean, but ragged draperies of blue cotton-print, and veils of coarse towelling such as Ummshni wears,—hang on a cord stretched from wall to wall, with a thick overgarment for use in winter, an Arab abâyi of woven camel's hair.

And that is all. No anchorite could own less than little Ummshni, but the poor soul makes John welcome with what she has.

She makes him lie down on the anghareb—folds the camel's hair mantle into a pillow for his head—milks the goats, and brings him a bowl of the thick, frothing-white, pleasant beverage. He empties it and says, setting down the bowl:

"Thanks, O my hostess! May milk never be wanting in thy house! ..."

"May God bestow upon thee long life and prosperity!" returns the thin, shadowy voice, in the set terms of the response to the formal expression of gratitude: "You have honoured me! ..."

"By your life, O lady! I have honoured myself! ..."

"By your eyes, O my guest! I am the distinguished one!" She laughs her queer little dry laugh, and says, kneeling by the hearth, and rousing the embers into a glow by puffs of breath from between her veils, and bits of dry fuel discreetly thrust into the reddest places: "Yet why should thou and I talk as Mohammedans? Are we not Jews?"

"Well, I dunno! ..."

"Thou dost not know? Not even that this is New Moon? Wouldst thou not be in Shool this morning, if 'twere possible?"

"Well, I can't say for sure. That is, about myself. Of course, I'm certain about you and your mother! ..."

"Ah'h!" She winces as at a sudden knife-thrust and sinks back on her heels, trembling visibly. "The beloved one—is—is alive?"

"Alive and well, that is—as well as she can be! ... You didn't know?" John asks in surprise.

"How should I know within a year? ... News filters in but very rarely." She masters herself, rises to her knees, and goes on coaxing the fire, but the reddening embers hiss as her tears keep dropping on them from underneath her veils. "And it is best she should believe that—that I am—that I died when Jacob! ... O, my cousin, have pity! ... Let us speak of her no more! ..."

"All right. Count on me! ..."

He watches as the little flitting shape glides about the dusky chamber, and in and out of the narrow door,—bringing to feed the fire,—more dry fuel, of which she has a heap in the outer chamber, that serves as a store-room. From whence, presently conjuring ripe figs and olives; fresh eggs, green coffee-beans, salt and rough sugar, and a little stone mortar and pestle; some flaps of unbaked native bread and a wooden dish of goat's-milk butter, she boils the eggs; roasts and pounds the coffee; bakes the bread upon a metal cone placed amongst the embers; and assembling the constituents of a decent meal—including a jug of fragrant coffee, and another of boiling goat's milk, upon a little battered metal tray—sets it upon the little table at his side, and brings him a bowl of water, a bit of soap and a coarse, clean cloth.

"Washing and—benediction, Cousin John."

He washes and mumbles something, reddening under his head-cloth.

"Now eat and drink, mingling the coffee with milk in the good French fashion." She gives a small sigh. "Would I had better to offer thee! But than this there is nothing else."

"The tucker's A-1. But you—"

"Trouble not for me. I am a Syrian woman.... I eat my food after the man has fed...."

Intuitively perceiving that she shelters behind this excuse her sensitive horror of her own disfiguring mutilation, John protests no further, but applies himself to the eggs, coffee, bread and butter and fresh fruit, with hearty good will.

When he is satisfied she clears away; pours boiling water into a big earthen bowl; fetches lint, bandaging and arnica from a burial-shelf where she seems to have some store of things like these, and tying back her long sleeves in true Fellaha style, by knotting the ends and slipping them over her head, addresses herself to the fomenting and bandaging of the sprained ankle, saying:

"If thou hast tobacco with thee, smoke, O my Cousin John!"

And so he brings out a packet of maize-leaf paper, and a bag of good Arabian tobacco, stowed away with divers other requisites upon his large person, and rolls himself a thick cigarette. She gives him a light with a flaming stick from the fire, as he is feeling for his matches; and at his:

"Thank you, little Esther!"

—bends her poor face low over the damaged ankle, to hide the tears that will break forth anew. For thus did old Eli Hazaël speak to his daughter's child, and this deep voice is very like his: and the familiar words re-open deep, unhealed scars in her wounded and suffering heart. Thus there is deep silence in the tomb, broken only by their breathing; by the flitting sound of Esther's movements within the cool, dusky place—and by the soft munching of the three goats and their kids in the outermost chamber—where a heap of grass and herbage has been heaped to meet their needs. Indeed, this newly-found friend who has come into the desolate creature's life, as though dropped from the skies—which in fact he has been!—is so silent that Ummshni looks up in wonderment. John is smoking his strong Arab cigarette with deep, regular inhalations of enjoyment, and staring at a piece of ancient sculpture that catches the sunshine—still that of early morning, that falls through an aperture overhead more strongly as the Day-Lord climbs higher in the eastern sky. It is the bust of a man, nearly life-sized; carved in the shallowest relief, and bearing remains of colouring; surrounded by a half-circle of reddish rays, from which, possibly, the gold has centuries ago faded. His head is noble, haggard and mild—the long tresses of waving, reddish-yellow hair mingle with the beard, which is slightly pointed—the splendid forehead is deeply scored with lines, there are premature markings of care about the eyes. These are blue, and austere under dark, widely arching eyebrows, though the stern lips smile sorrowfully. Under this ray-crowned half-length—which is bounded by a line of blackish colour—is roughly chiselled the Sacred Monogram. Below the letters of the Holy Name is the date of the Year 400 of the Christian Era. As the lengthening ray reaches this, the soft voice asks from between Esther's veiling draperies:

"At what art thou looking, my Cousin John? ..."

"Just at—that." He points to the stern and gentle Face rather awkwardly.

"It is the Messiah of the Christians. Didst thou not know?"

"Well, of course I'm aware of that. Only, as you're a strict Jewess, it struck me as somehow curious to see it here."

"It is of great ancientness. It was here when this grey, evil world was young and golden-haired, and perhaps even more evil than it is now."

"Then it was pretty rotten! But, in fact, I was thinking as I looked at that sculpture, that the man who did it must have seen the ah—the Original. Though unless he happened to have a dream or a vision, the date quite puts the lid on that idea."

"If by chance it should be really like the Founder of Christianity, He hath a servant who resembles Him. For—that is the very face of the man whom thou and I would deliver! He lies in the hut of the Prisoners' Field, with the high fence of barbed-wire about its edges—that is beyond the gate of the city, opposite the Mohammedan Tombs. And—and," there is a quavering break in the faded voice, "since yesterday before the Prayer-Call they have not given him food or water—obeying the strict orders of—one whom I dare not name!" Quick panting breaths heave the wasted bosom under the old blue cotton garment, the little dusky fingers clutch nervously at her coarse veil. "All day I waited near the gates—thinking by some cunning wile, some secret bribe, such as hath often served before now—to win over the Turks on guard to give me entrance. But, though they licked their lips at the promise of wine and tobacco, and sweetmeats, and love-messages to be carried to the women of the Suk and the Bazâr—they did not dare to let me in. O, my cousin, I fear for the life of the Master!—I fear! ... And all night I lurked near, hiding whenever they changed the guard, in some covert of the Waste Places where they throw the city refuse—and jackals and owls and pariahs and lepers and malignant spirits dwell. And when the day-brow lifted I left one to keep watch—even a poor leper woman who is faithful. And I bought meat, and wine, and came back here to boil soup and milk for him. For to-night I shall try again," her glance goes to the bundle of canes she has leaned up in a corner, "and this time, by the help of the Most High!—this time I shall not fail!"

"Look here, aren't you ever afraid?" John asks, in mingled pity and admiration.

"Oh, yes, I am always terrified!" Her veils are shaken with her trembling and he can hear the chattering of her teeth. "Ever since I took upon me this work of helping the miserable and those who suffer, I have been frightened, John my cousin,—to the very core of me.... But I go on! ... There is no choice!" She wrings the little, shaking, dusky hands, and now once more quick sobbing shakes her. "Were there not things to do—sick folks to serve—dangers to evade or face—what were life worth to The Mother of Ugliness? Think, O think! ..."

Looking at the little quivering thing crouching down beside the now faintly glowing embers, John thinks, and comprehends, though not quite all.

"When I recovered sense and partial sight—after the horrors of which thou knowest!—it was to find myself in the house of a good, poor Jew of Nazareth, whither—may the Holy One reward his charity! he had bribed the soldiers to carry me under cover of night. They, who were bidden—I being as one dead and covered with blood—to dig a pit and cast me in with quicklime—were glad to be saved the trouble at gain of certain moneys. Later, by the secret sale to another man,—a Hebrew jeweller,—of an emerald necklace I had worn on the day when the sabtiehs arrested me—and which I had stitched into my clothing in the first hours of captivity—I know not whether it was overlooked or whether they did not dare to seize it—because!—" she does not finish the sentence—"I repaid the good Jew, though I found it hard to thank him. Hard as I find it even now...."

There is such tragedy in the low, whispering voice, such blistering truth in its plain, naked utterances, that John Hazel shudders as he listens to her....

"For I desired to die, when I did not remember Jacob! When I thought of him—what I wanted more than Death was—" A coal-black diamond-bright eye, sends a shaft from between the veils straight into the man's eyes. "Thou knowest. Three little words will hold it all:"

"Revenge on Hamid...."

Her veiled head nods at each slowly-uttered word.

"Verily, ay! but I did not want to say it. For that it was possible to endure this ordeal of Life. To kill him in some slow, strange, unimagined way, I would have given"—she laughs dryly. "What had I left to give, my soul being dead in me,—my body the foul thing his touch hath left it!—and the face my mother used to kiss, a mask to scare babes and men? Then I said,—I will wait and hate! ... Patience and hatred may bring me that I crave for. Meanwhile, keeping near him—I will succour those whom he hath wronged, feeding my hungry hatred with their curses—until the day comes when I shall hunger no more! ..."

"And surely the day of reckoning will come. Only be patient a little longer!" says the deep, stern voice that Katharine Forbis knows.

"How like thy voice is to our grandfather's. Almost I could believe that Eli spoke then! How strange, that he and thou, so greatly resembling, should never have met," sighs the woman beside the fire. "Of Hebrew hast thou any?"

"None but a word or so."

"Well, well, it matters not! Go on speaking in Arabic, or in the English that is thy home-speech—or in French if it pleases thee—thou art Hazaël in any tongue."

"It pleases me best to listen to thee. Tell me now, after what fashion wouldst thou have thy vengeance? ..." The man's voice sinks lower, and his face is very grim.

"My cousin, let us not speak of it!" she entreats in a whisper. He sees a wave of trembling pass over the fragile creature, huddled in her coarse disguise beside the rude stone hearth.

"Yet when a man bitten by a mad dog, goes to a Pasteur Institute for inoculation, he must—if it be possible—take the head of the dog." The fierce black eyes are upon her, and their strength seems a palpable weight bearing upon her frailness. "Since the beginning of this War, surgeons have attained wonderful skill in building up the bodies and faces of men, that other men have broken. When thou shalt go to the greatest of these, saying: 'Give me back my beauty!' I promise thee, little Esther, thou shalt carry the head of the dog!"

The big teeth gleam in the dark face, and she answers with her chuckle, the thin derisive cachinnation that is so far removed from mirth:

"And if such a miracle might be wrought, could thy great surgeon's scalpel cut from my woman's soul the scars that make it hideous? Could he burn from my memory with his electric wire, the things that I have borne? Could he set my feet amongst the flowers on the hills near Kir Saba, with Jacob's and Reuben's, and Leah's, and little Benjamin's—and brim my heart with the happiness that was Life's golden wine? Could he give me back my father and our grandfather, the good old man who so loved me? How strange it is to remember that if I had not vexed my mother—and worn the chain of emeralds that were old Eli Hazaël's birthday gift, that day the zabtiehs seized me, walking in the olive-groves near my father's house at Haffêd—I should have had nothing of value to sell for the wherewithal to live."

"It was Fate! Tell me, my little Esther, how old art thou?"

She laughs in her strange way.

"On that day—the thirtieth of Ab, in the Year of the World 5674,—the 8th of August, 1914—as thou wouldst write it—I was eighteen, my cousin John...."

Sickened to the very core, the man can barely keep back a groan. Twenty-one last August, and "beautiful as a rose of Sharon," to quote Old Mendel, and aged, withered, warped, body and soul, into the Mother of Ugliness. Words escape him, born of a sudden thought:

"Jacob and thy Cousin Eli are dead, like thy father, and our uncles, and our grandfather and thy little brother Benjamin. But—but Reuben the son of Ephraim lives. Has no one told thee?"

"Verily, I knew it. But"—her head is bowed and the words come faint between her veils—"the young girl whom Reuben loved lives no more. Even though thy surgeons might work the bodily miracle. Even if the herb Forgetfulness sprang from these stones, I would not gather it, and lose the memory of certain things that have lightened my labours, and sweetened my sufferings in this cruel place. As for my vengeance—more than once I have been very near it! Wilt thou believe?—I have opened mine hand and let the thing go!" The little dusky hand quivers into sight, shuts, opens and vanishes. "So—and so—the sharpness of desire for Hamid's blood having abated, since—since I came—to the knowledge of him!"

The little hand waves from the covert of her veils towards the ray-encircled head, past which the illuminating beam of sunshine has travelled. John, seeing this, says with something of astonishment:

"Knowledge of—the Christ? ... And thou a Jewess?"

"I speak of the servant, not of the Master, good Cousin John. For that stern, beautiful face is strangely like his whom thou didst come here to seek."

"I'll make a note of that. It may be useful." John Hazel's strong black eyes glue themselves upon the Face upon the wall, as the Mother of Ugliness goes on, whisperingly:

"This I have thought, seeing the life of the Sidi who is His servant. Thou art listening? ..."

"Verily, my little Esther. For it is needful for me to hear these things concerning the man."

So, with a full heart trembling on her timid lips, sometimes speaking in her swift, cultured Arabic, sometimes in her English that is tinctured with a Parisian accent—always speaking of the priest as the Sidi, or the Master, she tells John all she knows, up to the moment of Father Julian's arrest.

"And what happened then?" John asks.

"They took the Master to the—the Bey's room, over the gateway. The—the Bey accused him of pricking on the prisoners to rebellion. A German officer who was there bore testimony that the Master had so acted. He boldly—for he is as a lion, without fear—denied this, in the face of his enemies. All this I heard from a Turk, a posta of the guard at the Barracks. The man loves a shameless woman of the Bazâr—and—and I carry messages between them, no office being too low for Ummshni, the Mother of Ugliness. Can dirt defile dirt?"

In her faint voice she asks the bitter question. John says, grinding his teeth:

"Damn it, Esther, drop that! I can't bear it!"

"Swear not, my Cousin John, but hear. He—" John knows she is speaking of Hamid—"He says to the Master: 'You tell me this, that and the other thing I do, gives offence to your Christian Messiah. I pay no heed, and, He lets me alone, because He has no power to punish me. For it is Allah and Allah only who rebukes the evil and rewards the virtuous. And to prove this, I shall put you under guard—in the barbed-wire enclosure where we kept the British War-prisoner officers. There is plenty of room to walk about, and a wooden hut where you may sleep. You will have grass, and clean air, but nothing to eat or drink—unless you sign this paper that I have here—saying that you repent of the slanders you have spoken against me before my face. Sign it now in the presence of witnesses, and you will be sent down to join the other War Prisoners at Smyrna. Do not sign it—and you will be taken to the wired enclosure, and any one found giving you food or water, will be beaten to death with asayisi. This will give your Nazarene Prophet, Whom we Turks and the Kaiser of the Alamani and his officers—who are all good Mohammedans—esteem very highly!—a chance to prove how great He is, and how He values you—by keeping you alive....'"

John licks lips that have suddenly grown dry.

"And what did Father Forbis say to this—not particularly original devil?"

"He told Hamid he was an ordinary priest, with no pretence to extra sanctity, and that if this was a challenge to the Christ, he as His servant refused to take it up...."

"And then?—"

"'Deprived of food,' the posta says the Master said, 'I perish like any other miserable mortal. Yet if it were my Maker's Will that I should live through such an ordeal—I should live! ...'"

"Some priest that!" John imagines a voice like Katharine's saying 'I should live!' and a thrill goes through him. "And Hamid?—"

"Hamid said: 'We will wait and see!' and all the Germans laughed. It is a phrase well known in England? ..."

"And dam' well hated too! But your Father Forbis is a peach.... Worthy to be his sister's brother...."

"She is so beautiful and noble? ..."

"All that," says loyal John, "and more! ..."

"Ah! I am glad. For I have thought much since I have known the Sidi, and learned in watching, somewhat. This amongst other things: that to be abject, ill-used, poor and despised, even as a lame sparrow in the sight of men—and to go about doing good, with one hate in the nest of the heart that chirps for vengeance, that is human, human enough! But to be all this, without hate or bitterness—to be wronged and pity the wronger!—being sinned against, to pardon and love the sinner, this is Divine! ..."

The softly-breathed words fall upon the air like scattered rose-petals, diffusing sweetness as they fall.

"If Jesus of Nazareth were not the Son of the Most High, O John, my cousin! after no other fashion will He come when He comes. Taking nothing from the world but a crust, and a garment to cover Him. Seeking the things that are held despicable by men. His Gospel Love, Forgiveness, Sacrifice. His only diadem the Shekinah. His path beset by thorns— His triumph Failure.... His end a gibbet! ... What other could it have been?" ...

John admits....

"No other. For if there's one thing more prejudicial to a man than sheer Disinterestedness—I'm at a loss to name it! The world must have a motive—and it likes a mean one best. I don't pretend I've ever gone particularly deep into the subject, but I've sometimes thought—that if it were possible to see Jesus of Nazareth clearly for the Christians—we Jews might find Him to be very much a Jew!"

"Perhaps we shall see Him so, one day! ..."

She rises with noiseless, supple ease, and takes her bundle of sticks from the corner.

"Thou art weary. Deny it not, thy jaws ache with yawning, and already I have seen thee nod.... Take off thine upper garment and head-cloth, for it is warm here. Lie down and sleep, though the bed be somewhat short for legs as long as thine. For I have things to do—for the Master! 'What things?' Oh! the man! ever asking questions! ... Broth to make, milk to scald, these pipe-stems," she shows her bundle of new, clean canes, five feet long, bound by a generous length of red India-rubber tubing, "to fit together after a plan. The Master shall not die of hunger to-night, the Most High being my helper. For I shall be helped!" She nods her small, veiled head. "It is borne in upon me, since I have found thee, the Bedawi who did not spit when I let him see my face. There is another Arab here," she gives her dry little rustling chuckle, "an Emir with his following. He did not spit or curse, either, and his grey eyes said, 'Poor thing!'"

"The hell you say! ..." John, who has been horizontal, sits up suddenly and blurts out in English. "Forgive me, little Esther, but I happen to be on the track of an Arab with grey eyes. Where does the bloke hang out?"

"If thou speakest of the Emir Fadl Anga, he who lodges at the Khan et-Talab under that title—having with him two Bedu of the Beni Asir, and the horses of all three—"

"Good egg!" John sits up on the string bed in his brown camel's hair kumbas, grinning joyfully, and hugging his knees: "Does one of 'em carry a reed-cage chock-full of pigeons, strapped back of his saddle? Think!"

"Ay, verily, the Emir Fadl Anga being pigeon-master to one of the Princes of Mecca. Or such is the story that is told in the Bazâr." There is incredulity in the weary voice. "He hath brought the birds as a gift to the German General commanding at Nazareth, for use, so they say, in the Intelligence Department there. When the pigeon-master Sergeant Major comes from Nazareth, he will take them—and leave a cage of birds that have been trained by himself. All this I had in the Bazâr.... Where art thou going? ..."

John, lowering his feet to the stone floor, and reaching for his Arab head-cloth, very decidedly replies:

"To the Khan et-Talab, to dig out my man. For he's my man, this Fadl Anga."

"And how wilt thou get to the Khan, lame as thou art?"

"I dunno!" John gingerly tests his bandaged leg: "You've handed me a poser. What's to be done?"

"What wouldst thou do, if it were possible for thee to go? Think now and say! ..."

He rests his brawny arms upon his knees, and says, slowly, as the fierce light in his black eyes dies out and leaves their surface dim and lustreless:

"I'd find out which was Fadl Anga's room—loaf into the courtyard among the horses, camels, goats, Arabs and Fellah grooms—squat down under his window, and sing—not out loud, but just between my teeth—"

Sagely she nods her little veiled head:

"Bouche fermée,—some English song that is a sign agreed upon between you. Sing it me now, for I will go, and carry thy disguised Englishman the message, while thou remainest here—watching the soup that it be not burned or boil over."

For all unnoticed while they talked, she has set a covered earthen pot containing water, and some kind of meat that she brought up with her, and has chopped fine and mixed with herbs, amongst the glowing ashes; and a faint steam, not unsavoury, is already beginning to spiral through the hole in the knobbed lid.

"Is it agreed upon? ..."

"I should smile! ..."

She understands the odd utterance as assent and says with a diamond sparkle between her veils:

"Now sing me thy song. And give me thy message, but otherwise advise me in nothing of how I am to do. For, verily, I am the Mother of Cunning as well as the Mother of Ugliness, and have carried the lives of many men between these hands of mine!" Laughing softly, she stretches them out. "And they are not as big as thy hands, my giant Cousin John."

"You blessed little brick!"

He reaches out and captures in his own, one of the little dusky hands, gently squeezes it, lets it go, and takes from his neck a square of parchment that hangs there, suspended by a slender green silk cord. On one side are two interlaced triangles outlined in thick black ink. On the other a square containing Arabic letters of the Sacred Name—within a double circle in which have been traced and thickly inked—the Signs of the Zodiac.

"That's that! ... Makes some Arab amulet, doesn't it? ... I cribbed the figures from the title-page of Pittaker's Almanac, and the Name off an inscribed tile. Two letters are stitched inside this—I've another letter hidden away inside my tarbûsh, but that I'll deliver myself to Father Forbis. Meanwhile, you're to get this somehow into Fadl Anga's hands. If—but mind you not unless he tumbles to the first bars of 'Loch Lomond.'"

"Is it 'Loch Lomond'? That was one of the English songs we learnt to sing at my Paris boarding-school," says the Mother of Ugliness. "Hear now, O my cousin, if I remember it aright? ..."

She has a little faded voice, sweet but thin, and in this she sings to him the familiar refrain of the ballad that—hummed by a battered private of London Territorials—sitting on a captured bag of Turkish Army biscuits after Sheria—conjured up the chintz drawing-room at Kerr's Arbour, and Katharine Forbis singing at her piano in the twilight—before the stern, absorbed eyes of an Arab who knelt at prayer....

So it follows that, having taken a sparing meal of bread and fruit, and milk, the amulet containing the letters being hidden upon her person, and the song stowed away in her head, Ummshni-Esther sets forth, under the blaze of the sun of twelve o'clock midday (going by the watch under Ali Zaybuk's sheepskin wristlet, which is set at European time). He limps to the entrance of the tomb to let her out, and stands watching until the little slender, veiled figure—wrapped in the ample outer garment of coarse yellow-white sheeting, worn by Syrian women, passes from his sight.

"Good luck to you, you regular little Maccabee!" he mutters. "Now all You Big Old Men, butt in and help her! ... It's up to you to help her.... For she's thoroughbred to the backbone, if ever a woman was...."

"Thud, thud—thud! Thud thud thud—thud! THUD!"

The guns are still arguing heavily and persistently—in the hills west of Jerusalem, and in the vicinity of Hebron.... South, over Junction Station, the inflated grey bulks of three observation balloons wallow against the cloud-piled horizon, over the huge ark-like hangars that kennel them, as the experts in the dangling baskets read off, and transmit to their Headquarters by Wireless, the silvery flashes of helios from the hills. A Fokker biplane of pusher type with a Falk machine-gun mounted in her bows, is trying to drive down one of the observers; the rattle of the aviator's weapon sounding like the clickett of a typewriter. While a single-seater monoplane Taube with a "Roland" bomb-dropping device, is endeavouring to deal in a similar manner with the other O.B.'s, and a British Anti-Aircraft gun mounted on a motor is spraying vicious little shells of H.E. and shrapnel at the Germans, from rapidly-changing vantages upon the ground below.

Even as John gets interested in the battle, the Fokker, hit in her petrol tank by a projectile, suddenly vomits flame, and drops like a singed moth, downwards. The Taube departs in haste for Hebron—seeing a half-squadron of D.H.6's coming over from the aërodrome near G.H.Q. further down south.... Germany has few eyes in the air in these days, and the Turk is well-nigh wingless. But difficulties of transport threaten to hold the British up at Nebi Samwil; and knowing this, the enemy's resistance stiffens. The sun will not sink on Ottoman dominion in Palestine, while the Turco-German forces hold the Jerusalem-Shechem road.

There is a glorious view from the summit of the Mount of Cursing, silvered with streams on her lower slopes, clothed with her groves of olive and almond, fig and apricot, orange and pomegranate, as high as there is soil enough to hold their roots. Through a gap in the Hills of Galilee, snow-crowned Hermon stands out in splendid relief against the deep blue sky. East, across the Jordan, are the Mountains of Gilead, Osha's summit conspicuously capped with a streaming panache of cirro-stratus; the coastal Plain of Sharon rolls emerald to the turquoise lip of the Mediterranean, and the huge bulk of Carmel thrusts out into the glittering distance a fortress defying the uttermost assaults of Time.

"Some view!" John comments, baldly, in his acquired idiom, narrowing his eyes under the hand that shields them from the sun. Yet in his heart he is drunken with the beauty—captive forever to the spell of this land of Palestine....

"Thud, thud! ... BOOM! ..."

A colossal tree-shaped column of woolly brown vapour rises in the west where lies Jaffa. "We" are blowing up Turkish ammunition-dumps and provision stores.

"Rat, tatt, tatt—tatt 't tat!" go the machine-guns in the hills to the south....

"Thud, hud, thud 'd 'd! ..."

Great happenings are in the air. Trained as John Hazel is in the unimaginative school of London's Stock Exchange and the City, his keen Oriental brain is quickened to this consciousness. Time, after many ripening centuries, is giving birth to The Event foretold by and foreshadowed in prophecies, dreamed of by vision-seers. Can it be that after all these centuries of exile, Christianity is to give back Palestine to the Jews? ...

The onyx ring attracts the man's black eyes as he brings down the hand that shaded them. He tells himself that, after all, he wasn't quite such a blooming mug as little Esther thought. He remembers binding a cotton rag about the finger that wears the ancient heirloom, on the eve of the start from Ismailia. Somehow, the rag must have come off, either before, or when, he jumped from the aëroplane, at the signal of Essenian.

"The treacherous Egyptian brute! One of these days—" There is a promise in the hiatus that bodes ill for Essenian. There is also a token, adhering to the ring, that bodes not over-well for John. Only a speck of bright green sealing-wax, sticking in a fold of the lion-skin of Hercules, that was not there when its wearer left the house in the Rue el Farad, to dine with the Pasha at the Aviators' Club.

IX

The Khan of et Talab, or The Fox, is a thoroughly Oriental caravanserai; flat-roofed, two-storeyed, and built upon three sides of a square courtyard. The ground-floor rooms are deposits for travellers' baggage and stores, the windows of the guest-rooms look out upon the courtyard, the fourth side of which is a row of stables, with small rooms above them for Arab and Fellah camel-drivers and horse-keepers, cooks and scullions, and the tag-rag-and-bobtail of the Khan.

The rooms occupied by the Emir Fadl Anga, pigeon-master to the nephew of the King of the Hedjaz—purveyor of Intelligence to German Headquarters at Shechem, and owner of the dapple grey Arab mare, are upon the top floor, and possess the exclusive monopoly of the roof. Thus the smells which rise from the area of the courtyard and the harsh cries of itinerant fruit and sweetmeat sellers, pedlars of fish, hawkers of bread and vegetables; with the wrangling of servants and horse-boys, camel-drivers and muleteers, washermen and scullions, are somewhat tempered before they ascend to the nostrils and ears of the Emir.

The room is large, whitewashed and fairly lofty, with a cool tiled floor, on which are spread a few mats and Damascus carpets. Some stools, a few cushions, a low table; a carved chest with a huge, wooden lock, and the inevitable divan, are all its furniture. Opening on a broad balcony communicating by a staircase at each end with the housetop and the courtyard, the high, wide window is also the door.

On the right-hand side of the divan nearest the window, the Emir lies outstretched; pillowed on the embroidered saddlebags which contain his travelling-gear, and smoking his water-pipe. Its flexible tube snakes over the smoker's body, down across the dark red tiling; the roseleaves dance in the water that fills the glass vessel, the blue-brown incense of the good Persian tobacco spirals up from the burnt clay bowl. The carrier-pigeons in their reed cage upon the shaded balcony outside coo slumberously. The argili gurgles as is its wont—the flies that blacken the remnants of the midday breakfast of soup, chicken stewed in rice, pancakes fried in fat and honey, melon and figs—maintain a steady, persistent buzzing, and the rapid, minute tap-tap-tap of small hard objects hitting the clean starched cover of the divan never ceases. For, if the King of the Fleas of Palestine reigns—as is reported, at Tiberias—Abu Brârit, the Father of Fleas, lives at Shechem.

Of the Emir's companions, a tall, grizzled, elderly Bedawi in a purple and black jelabia with an ample white jerd swathed over an orange silk kuffiyeh, and a short, broad-faced young man, dark-skinned as a roasted coffee-berry, with a fine mouthful of dazzling white teeth, and flashing black eyes, in a thin kaftan of black camel's hair over an under-robe striped red and white, with a kuffiyeh of white, bound with a green head-rope—the junior squats on his heels beside a little stove of burned clay in which glows charcoal, which is placed on the broad balcony outside the window-door. On the stove boils a coffee-kettle of repoussé metal, whose fragrant vapours mingle with the smells of the Desert, and the smoke of the Persian weed. Meanwhile the little porcelain coffee-cups in their repoussé metal holders, the coffee-pot, the mortar in which the berries have been crushed, the brass pestle belonging to it, and a lime-bark box of broken candy-sugar, sit naïvely on the floor. That the son of the Shaykh Gôhar, a noted leader in the guerilla war between the King of the Hedjaz and the Sultan of Turkey, should preside over the coffee-pot, is in strict accordance with Bedwân etiquette. For to drink coffee that has been prepared by a woman, is a thing derogatory to masculine dignity. Hence Namrûd, his striped mantle doffed, squats on his slipperless brown heels beside the burning charcoal, and watches the bubbling pot.

The coffee boils, the smoke spirals up from the thin, well-cut lips, closed on the amber mouthpiece of Fadl Anga's argili.

Of what is Fadl Anga thinking, as the roseleaves dance in the bowl? Some ancient Arab palace with palm-gardens and apricot-groves sheltered from the sandstorms of the Dehna by forests of cedar and oak-trees, shielded from the burning winds that blow from the Gulf of Aden, by the mountain-ranges of Hadramaut? Of his horses and hawks, pigeons and hunting-leopards, or of some slender bride, with gazelle-eyes and henna-reddened fingers, and the rounded oval face that Eastern Asiatics liken to the full-orbed moon....

Actually, Fadl Anga is watching a man in a shabby grey tweed shooting-suit, burying the Service uniform of a British field-officer of infantry, in a fox-earth in a wood. A plantation of snowy Scotch firs knee-deep in wintry bracken. He has rolled the things in a trench-coat, strapped with a sword-belt. Now he savagely jams them down, and rises from the burial of Edward Yaill, panting and with a streaming face, though the wind has the nip of February.... He rubs the dry dust from his hands—crashes to the stile through the frosty covert—leaps out on the high-road. And goes his lonely way, oblivious that the end of the lanyard attached to the silver whistle sticks out among the briars for Meggy Proodfoot's wee laddie to pounce on by and by....

The flies buzz, the pigeons coo, the roseleaves dance in the water-bowl.... Now through the smoke comes the low command in the Bedwân dialect of the ancient Semitic language that is even more archaic than the Babylonian Semitic of 6000 years ago:

"O Gôhar, Shaykh of the Beni Asir! and thou, Namrûd, son of Gôhar! hearken to my word! ..."

"We hear, O Emir! ..."

"Friends, I have taken tracings of the despatch that was in the bag, dropped by the airman who came at dawn yesterday, and before sunrise I launched near Mount Gerizim, a pigeon carrying one of these for British Intelligence Headquarters at Lydd. The wise old blue dîk with the crumpled foot, who has served us well before, is my messenger. Now, here for safety's sake, is a duplicate tracing for each of you."

White teeth gleam in Namrûd's brown face as he takes the filmy square of tissue paper, touches it to his forehead, and says:

"O Fadl Anga! by thy favour, there is no place like the inner whorl of the ear-rim, for hiding a paper rolled up within a lump of bees-wax."

"O Fadl Anga!" the Shaykh's mimicry of his junior's self-important tone is really creditable, "by thy favour, since the clipping of the ears of spies hath not gone out of fashion, I will hide the tracing thou hast given me, in a place that is of all the safest, even beneath the eyelid of this my left eye."

"I will remember, O Gôhar! Yet a little pride is permitted when a young man hath carried out a stroke so cleverly." Namrûd's black eyes glow gratitude as the Emir continues: "Yesterday there was consternation at the Shechem Headquarters of General von Krafft, Chief of the German Secret Intelligence Department on this front, when the bag dropped from the aëroplane was opened, and found to hold a dummy message. And last night there was a smart young orderly Staff Sergeant-Major of the Department—who was exceedingly sorry for himself."

"Thou shouldst have seen, O Emir! to taste the jest of it. By Allah! 'twas like a monkey trying to carry two watermelons in one hand. Under the archway of the Street of Mabortha, looking on the Square yonder," the dark hand of Namrûd waves towards the rearward wall, "by the fifth hour after sunset I fell upon my prey."

"Had I not known, I had been gulled even as the German." The tone of the Shaykh is not untinged with fatherly pride. "When the old woman passed, and squalled like a peahen at the gleam of the white face under the archway—and then took courage because she found it fair! ..."

"Thou hast the wrong end of the stick, O my father! She dropped in the mud a letter she was carrying from her mistress, the wealthy young widow of Abu Husain the jeweller, to the handsome soldier of Germany, who waited under the arch."

"So, so, that was it! And was there a letter? ..."

"Nay, she could not find it, having trodden it into the mud.

"True, it rained heavily yesterday morning. And what kind of a tale didst thou spin to tangle the dupe?"

"But this, that having seen him thrice, close upon the blink of dawn, standing at his post under the archway, the jeweller's widow had fallen into the very rage of love. 'Her eyes, that were like torches, are extinguished with weeping. Verily thou wouldst have pity on her, O Sidi! if thou couldst see. Woe's me! this letter!' (Thus I, the go-between,) 'May the mercy of Allah defend me if I have lost it! for truly she knew no better, poor demented creature! than to wrap up in it a costly ruby ring! ..."

"Ha, ha! ... That was well thought of!"

"It made my gull begin to hunt about in good earnest, and, under pretence of the ring's having rolled, I lured him farther down the street. While with his little electric torch he was groping amid the stenches of the gutter, I heard the song of the Bird while yet afar off.... But cackling of lust and vanity, and greed, now in one of his fat red ears—now in the other, I deafened him,—else at a move, my grip had fastened round his throat.... Then the signal pistol cracked, and the orange light flared, and he grunted an oath: 'Boppis'—what tongue is 'boppis'? ..."

Fadl Anga laughs.

"'Potzblitz,' it may have been...."

"And, like the pig he is, he charged for the archway, knocking all the breath out of the old woman, who had got in his way. And while we twain rolled among the garbage on the pavement, I, dealing him scratches and cuffs, and squealing,—but not too loud! the second cartridge cracked out, and the bag dropped into the Square...."

The Shaykh takes up:

"And I ran out from my lurking-place and changed it for the dummy, ere the German floundered, snorting, from under the archway.... He will be wiser in future,—if they ever trust him further." Gôhar lights another powerful cigarette. "He will lend his ear to no sugared tales told by old women—when next he is waiting for despatches to drop out of the sky...."

"It may be so. But once a fool, twice a fool. That is my experience," says the quiet voice of the Emir. "Now, friends of mine, be it understood! Our work here is done, with the capture of the despatch, and the proof that Essenian Pasha is a traitor to England. To-night we throw the salaam to Shechem, taking with us the English priest."

"Wallah!—but that is good hearing!" The Shaykh Gôhar nods beamingly. "My blood warms to the word of a raid. Look at the boy!"

Namrûd is wreathed in grins as he squats on his heels—clearing the boiling coffee with a dash of cold water, splashed in at the critical time.

"He is thy very son. Now, tell me once more, O Shaykh Gôhar! what the War Prisoner officer told thee yesterday. Secretly, at the Mahatté (Station) of Nakr, before the German Mudîr came."

"Masha'llah! At thy behest, O Emir! ..."

And the lean-faced Shaykh, sitting on a carpet beside the divan, in his purple and black silk jelabia and silver-corded orange head-drapery, smoking innumerable cigarettes of strong Arab tobacco, re-commences the low-voiced tale:

"Thus, as I made pretence to bargain with him for a silver cigarette-roller he had, that I said had caught my fancy, he stoutly maintaining that he did not wish to sell—the English officer said to me secretly at Nakr: 'The furrow watered with our sweat shall yield us no harvest—yet are we not losers but gainers thereby. Since, refusing to give our parole to the Turks, they shut us up in the barbed-wire enclosure without the eastern gate of Shechem, we have taken it by turns to scrape out a tunnel—working in shifts throughout the nights, and taking it in turns to keep watch. From the wooden hut on the east side of the enclosure to the wire-fence is seven paces of a man. Inside the hut we began our tunnel, covering the hole with planks nailed together—scattering earth upon these, and setting the anghareb over the top, the better to hide the place. Two days ago we tunnelled under the wire. Now we are well under the road that runs by the Tomb of Yûsuf to the Well of Yakub, and so passes into the Shechem-Jerusalem Road. We are three paces south from the Turkish sentry-box that is outside the wire there. We should have broken through to-night!"

"That would be the night of yesterday," Fadl Anga murmurs, loosening his lips from the long amber mouthpiece.

"Masha'llah! 'But,' saith the English officer, 'that we heard we were going to Aleppo for Exchange. Now, finding thee a friend in disguise, we would have thee know of the tunnel, lest haply other War-prisoners—British or of the Allies—be put in the Wired Place. Remember, the hole begins under the earth-strewn planks that are beneath the anghareb in the wooden hut that used to be the Mess, The tunnel passes three paces south of the Turkish sentry-box that stands outside the wire. Four paces from the wire, where the broken-down Turkish grain-cart stands upon the road—it hath stood there ever since the Taking of Beersheba and no man sets hand to it!—under the grain-cart is where we should have broken through.' Wallah! And they would have thrown the salaam to the Turks and departed, but for the news of the Exchange."

"Praise be to God for men of good wit! Did the officer say no more to thee?"

"This, O Emir! that they had scratched the story with a nail on the inside of a metal bowl and left it lying in the hut for the next British prisoner. In the bowl are written the times when the Turks go the rounds by day and night; and the hours for relieving-guard, and divers other things time served him not to tell."

"But which," interrupts the younger man, proudly, "I, thy son Namrûd have since found out...."

"Hence, to thee we owe it that we can make the essay to-night, O Namrûd, rightly named 'The Hunter'! Is the coffee ready, thou cleverest of spies?"

"O Haji," Namrûd answers, tingling with the praises of his hero, "the coffee is ready even now!"

The Emir wears a flowing kuffiyeh of vivid green silk secured by the octagonal gold and silver head-rope, over his black felt tarbûsh, so the title bestowed by the Shaykh's son is no empty compliment. The long Arab jubba under his loose, open jelabia is of white silk, delicately stitched, the jelabia is of heavy black brocaded silk, tagged with gold at the seams, his red Arab slippers are gold-embroidered, there are diamonds in the hilt of the curved, gold-sheathed dagger his girdle supports. It must pay uncommonly well to breed carrier-pigeons for the nephew of the ex-Sherif of Mecca, now by the right of descent from the Prophet; by the strength of the sword (and the brilliant brains of an Oxford graduate) Commander of the Armies of Arabia and of the Hedjaz, King....

Now Fadl Anga lifts his slender, muscular frame, tense and wiry even in repose, higher against the saddle-bags and takes from the dark hand of Namrûd the little half-filled cup. The young man serves the Shaykh, his father; then, but not until formally invited, fills his own cup, and they drink ceremonially. Twice the cups are replenished; then Fadl Anga says, as Namrûd refills the clay bowl of the argili and puts, with his tough-skinned fingers, a bit of glowing charcoal on the top:

"Didst thou go to the mashásheh in the Bazâr, as I bade thee, O Namrûd?"

"Wallah! As thou didst bid me, I went to the mashásheh in the Bazâr."

"And didst thou buy the drug—the sweet conserve of hashish? And of the tobacco-seller, giving him the discreet wink, the cigarettes that are drugged with opium?"

"Verily, O Fadl Anga, these things I got, after the magúngi and the tobacco-seller had denied for a long time that they had any. And—Wallah!—the cost of both was as though I had bought jewels."

"It may well be, O Namrûd, yet I grudge not the money."

The Emir puts by the mouthpiece of his water-pipe, and takes from the young Arab chief a stout package of thick, rank-smelling cigarettes, with a Turkish label on it, and a little sticky cardboard box of square, dull greenish jujubes, saying with the smile that curves his finely-cut mouth under the short henna-dyed beard, but never reaches his grey eyes:

"For, to a man who would pump a spy, or stupefy a sharp-witted jailer, either of these were worth a handful of jewels."

"Masha'llah!" grunted the Shaykh, sending out a volume of cigarette-smoke. "Have I not proved that true?"

"Many times, O Shaykh Gôhar, and I also. Now, son of my friend and ally, go thou to the bath, which as thou hast found out, the Turkish Yuzbashi (Captain) who will be in command of the guard at the Wired Enclosure to-night, uses to-day,—his duty commencing after the hour of sunset,—and challenge him to a bout of wine and tobacco and salt stories to-night in his tent. His tent is on the left-hand side of the Enclosure and serves by day as his office. He smokes opium, and his sergeant, who is his crony, is a drunkard, and they leave the onbashi (corporal) to take roll-call and go the rounds, whenever the two are minded for a fuddle"—