The just steward

X

A circle of Fellah grooms and Arab camel-men, coarse-mouthed, evil-eyed, old in the ways of vice—are gathered about a little creature in the dingy blue print robe, yellow-white outer-robe of sheeting and coarse double veil of the Fellaha. To the majority of these Ummshni is known, not so to the others; who crowd round, eager to taste the joy of baiting the veiled woman who has ventured alone into the crowded court of the Khan.

"Hail, O Beauty, in search of a lover!" jests a squint-eyed Arab. "Couldst thou not pay an old woman to tout for thy customers? Has business been so bad that thou art driven forth under the eye of daylight? Nay then, show thy face for a foretaste of pleasure. Insh'allah!—unless thou art ugly as a daughter of the Jinniyeh, here is Abu Mulâd the Tuareg camel-man, ready and willing to take thee on!"

"The Daughters of the Jinniyeh have legs shaggy with hair, and not seldom one eye in the middle of the forehead," squeals a scullion, as Abu Mulâd, a huge and hideous Tuareg from Central Sahara, whose face, arms and legs are dyed with indigo, whose back hair is plaited in tails with straw, and whose top locks are hogged like a cob's mane under the black tribal head-cloth, is thrust into the forefront of the circle by a dozen officious hands. "While this moon's husband fell down dead for sheer joy when his bride was first unveiled to him. Is it not the sheer truth, O Bestower of Delights?"

"Verily thou dost not lie, for once, O Kasib the scullion!" says a thin but audible voice from behind the close-drawn veil. "Wilt thou risk the same fate, O Abu Mulâd the Tuareg? Then—then put forth thine hand! ... Or—shall I save thee the trouble? See then the face that killed a man upon his wedding-night!"

With a thin, shrill cackle of derisive laughter, she draws the screen of coarse towelling. Abu Mulâd stares, grimaces behind the strip of black cloth covering his mouth, curses and spits copiously.... While the little active figure, galvanised into sudden activity, revolves before him in an impish dance, chanting to a weird, unholy tune, words in a strange, unknown tongue:—

"O, you rode the Desert and he flew the Air!—
    And now he has sent me to find you;
A message from him, and a letter I bear—
    From the bonny bonny Maid of Kerr's Arbour!"

There is something so gnome-like about the little capering figure, revolving lightly as a withered leaf, or an eddy of Desert sand, upon the unclean litter of the courtyard of the Khan, that—and there is not one man of all the throng who does not believe in witchcraft—even those who know Ummshni best, quail at the possibility of falling under some evil spell, blasting in its effect upon the body as upon the soul.

Kasib the scullion claps his hand before his mouth, as do a dozen others, invoking the Protection. But Abu Mulâd is of the type of man that, ordinarily slow, dilatory and lumpish as a buffalo, is rendered tigerish by fear. He shakes in his hide sandals and bleaches under his indigo mask as he splutters through the V-shaped gap between his filed front teeth:

"Be thou accursed, thou one-eyed sorceress! abominable ghoul, conceiver by the seed of devils! Insha'llah! this good blade of mine shall purge thee of thine evil blood!"

Not a man puts out his hand to save the woman, as the Tuareg leaps upon her, grasps her frail shoulder, and the curved iron knife flashes out, when a sharp clear voice, with the unmistakable ring of authority in it, arrests the lifted hand.

"Shwai!"

The whites of eager eyes roll, as the dark, excited faces are lifted to the balcony where stands the Emir Fadl Anga. Now his sharp, authoritative voice rings out again:

"Release the woman and bid her come up hither. Who shows her violence will reckon with me!"

The Tuareg's heavy blue fingers fall from the slender, bruised shoulder. Ummshni mutely salaams to the imperious Presence above, and moves with her customary, artificial limp to the outer staircase leading to the balcony, as the crowd of idlers, frustrated of the pleasant thrill that is born of the sight of bloodshed, disperse to their various quarters.

Imperiously beckoning the woman to make haste, the Emir moves back into the room, and presently the shadow of the little feminine figure is cast across the balcony and the three-inch high window-sill, that is grooved to receive the heavy shutter that closes the room at night....

With a strange premonitory thrill, Yaill speaks to the little creature:

"Enter without fear, O Mother of Ugliness!" He goes on as her fragile, dusky arms curve out, the hands touch the veiled brow in the Eastern salutation from an inferior, and noiselessly as a moth she flits into the room: "And without fear—for here we are in privacy—tell me who taught thee that song?"

"O Saiyid!" How faint and whispering a voice is hers.... "I learned the song from a big man—-a soldier of the Army of Ingiltarra—who sat on a sack of biscuits after Sheria, and hummed while the Sons of the Desert made the Prayer of Afternoon."

"Where is the man to be found?"

"Saiyid, he lies in hiding in a tomb upon Mount Ebal, having been lamed in leaping from a landing aëroplane. His liver is charred with anger at so untoward an accident. Strong is his brain to help thee plan, and strong as iron are his hands—that could choke the life out of an enemy's throat—even as a child twists a rotten cucumber. But he is lame!" Yaill marks the falling note of anguished pity in the voice. "He can but limp upon a stick, he cannot leap or run...."

"Tell him from me.... Stay! ... Tell me first how thou didst encounter him?"

"Sir," Ah, the woman knows too much, she is actually speaking English, "Sir, to me, a woman of many sorrows, secretly dwelling in that desolate place of which I speak, he came as a stranger seeking succour. Then, by the Will of the Most High, was discovered between us kinship: the bond of religion, the call of race, and the unbreakable tie of blood."

"Madam—"

"Give me not that title. I am no man's wife!"

"Then, Miss Hazel—"

"Chut! Call me only Ummshni." A black eye sparkles at Yaill from between her veils and a little finger, slender and supple as a lizard's tail, signs to him to beware. "I heard a footstep overhead, but now!" the thin voice whispers, reverting to Arabic, "And it did not pass on, and see there—that hole!"

With an upward gesture of her supple hand she barely indicates the whitewashed ceiling, in which there is certainly a hole, rat-gnawed, or made by human hands for spying purposes—and reaching to the surface of the flat mud roof above.

"O Ummshni, there is a hole indeed, cleverly made for eavesdropping, but the man who keeps guard above it is a follower of mine. Stay—thou shalt prove it so!" Fadl Anga whistles, shrill and sharp, the call of the pigeon-master; and there is a rap on the roof above, and an answering, echoing call. "Now take a message for thy man. Tell him from me, that since by Fate he is doomed to be out of the adventure—"

"Give me a message worded in some other way. I will not wound him so!" There is sensitive pride in the thin, whispering voice. "And first let me discharge mine errand. Here are the letters I spoke of in the song."

"Give, then," says the Emir briefly....

She draws from beneath her coarse white outer robe John's square of sewn parchment-paper, inked with the signs of the Zodiac, touches with it her veiled forehead, and offers it in both her outstretched palms.

"The letters are stitched within, I was to tell thee. And that one of them comes from the hand of her—who is dearest to thee of all!"

A great wave of emotion goes through Yaill, as he takes the inky double square of soiled parchment-paper. His hand trembles for a moment, and there is a dimness before his eyes.

"Thank—"

"Do not thank me, sir," the little creature quietly says in her Paris-learned English, "I acted in obedience. Shall I not carry out the orders of him who is Head of my House? Now give me the message to carry to John Hazaël in the Mountain, for at dark I have business that brings me back to this town."

"Shall I write, Miss Hazel, or shall you remember?"

"It will be safest not to write, and I shall not forget. Tell me in English, time and all.... It will be clearer for John Hazaël, I being commanded to repeat your very words."

"Then tell John Hazel from Edward Yaill that I have received the packet, and that as earnestly as ever man thanked man, I thank him for what he has done! To-night, between twelve-thirty and two o'clock—European time—we break into the Wired Enclosure. We have learned of an easy way to get in; and except for one man, who cannot be dealt with, I think we can dispose of the guards."

"To-night between half-past twelve—no! ... Twelve-thirty and two o'clock you break into the Wired Enclosure, having learned of an easy way to get in...." The tone is studiously calm, but the throbbing of her heart shakes her. "Is that all, or is there more to tell? ..."

"There is a tunnel running from the wooden hut that was used as a mess-room by the English officers. Do you follow? It begins under the bed that is in the hut, and running eastward, passes under the broken cart that stands near the side of the road. Five paces from the sentry-box of the man we cannot deal with—the Darweesh who neither drinks wine nor smokes."

"Nay. But it may be—" The talk has swung back to Arabic, and the voice that is thin and soft as a trickling rivulet of hill-water, sounds as though Ummshni's hidden mouth were smiling behind her veil. "It may be that Ishak Baba the Darweesh, who drinks no wine nor tobacco, and cannot be drugged into blindness—hath no strength to refrain his lips from the offered goblet of love?"

"Ah! So there is a weak place in his priestly garment, that," Yaill remembers something the Shaykh Gôhar has said, "that the little fingers of a woman might widen to a hole?"

"Verily, O Emir! To-night when the Dark comes, Ishak Baba going on guard at sunset—it is a pact twixt him and me, that I, Ummshni, may feed the—the English prisoner, if—if a shameless woman of the Bazâr, a gipsy whom Ishak Baba loves—visits the Baba in his sentry-box. I, Ummshni, keeping watch the while."

"Isht! (Bravo!) O woman of a thousand! Hast thou carried the assignation to the gipsy courtesan?"

"Nay, not yet."

"Then, do not carry it!" The Emir's grey eyes gleam, under the green silk kuffiyeh that drapes his tarbûsh, and the thin lips under the henna-dyed beard curve into a smile that shows his white, rather irregular teeth. "One of my men will keep the love-tryst, walking with a mincing, womanly carriage—and swathed in the white izar. Was the gipsy not to pass the Baba on his beat, dropping an almond or a flower, and before he wheeled about, slip into the sentry-box? Dost thou nod? Ay, I well thought thou didst, it is an ancient game!"

The Emir's white teeth gleam in his red-dyed beard, and Ummshni gives her little mirthless titter.

"As my lord says, the game is old, but while Earth spins between the Poles it will not lack for players. One thing there is to ask...." The voice falters and the little figure trembles. "Thy man ... He will not kill the posta?"

"Nay. Do not tremble. He will only gag him well, and bind."

She gives a small sigh of relief.

"There will be the green rods for him, the luckless one! when the prisoner's escape is discovered."

The Emir's thin eyebrows mount in his bronzed forehead. He says in his languid, high-bred tones:

"So there be an escape to find out, I am even content that he should taste the asayisi. I do not love Turks."

"Nor I, Saiyid! But—" and another wave of shuddering goes over the little shrouded figure: "since the ninefold curse of War fell upon this my unhappy country, I have seen such rivers of blood flow—"

"O lady, the whole world bleeds; nor shall its wounds know stanching until the enemies of Peace are brought low. They are the Turk and the German, and yet another who wears the skin of many races, and plots evil in many tongues. He works underground, and flies by night, and does not show his face in sunshine; but when his hour comes, he will be revealed! Russia has the disease of him—and Ireland is rotten with him!—and in India and the Far East the papers that bear his teachings are cast abroad, and carried on the winds, and shower down like the falling leaves."

"And here. Even in this town—"

The black eye sparkles between the folds of coarse towelling, and the grey eyes lighten in an answering look.

"So! ... Thou couldst tell a tale—"

"Saiyid." The eye-gleam is hidden in the folds, the tone is humbly deprecating. "I am only Ummshni. Who looks over his shoulder when a thing so despicable limps by with her basket or sharbi?"

"I understand. Now, attend. Tell your John Hazel that we four men—I with my two Bedwân and Father Forbis, ride out of Shechem before dawn, having the password and making the pretext, that a carrier-pigeon being to fly for Mecca at daybreak, we mean to launch her from the Mount. There is a good chance that—Shechem being full of strangers—the fourth mounted man of us shall pass unobserved. But, in any event, for us there is no turning. Dost thou understand?"

The lean sunburned hand touches the butt of one of the Emir's silver and ivory-mounted revolvers.

"O Saiyid, I understand!"

"Good. Tell John Hazel to wait for us a mile west of Shechem, where the Road of the Wady Azzun—going to Jaffa, turns southward through a deep defile among the hills. Is that clearly understood, or shall I repeat it?"

"It is understood, and John Hazaël will meet thee, where the road of the Wady Azzun, going to Jaffa, turns southward through the defile among the hills."

"Can he, being so lame? ..."

"He can if I say he can. I will see to it!"

"Then we will leave it so. Near the mouth of the defile, is a Turkish Army Service motor-lorry. It broke down there yesterday and it is there to-day. Let Hazel wait in the shadow of it, for the sound of our horses. If we can get a spare horse we will bring it. If not, one of those we ride will have to carry two men. For Hazel is our partner in the adventure. We are not going to leave him in a hole!"

"I hear, O Saiyid! and I shall not forget. By the broken Turkish lorry where the road turns south, running between the walls of the defile.... It is for Jaffa that you ride?"

"For Jaffa, where the British are.... Naturally."

Nationality unconsciously asserts itself in the tone. She answers in her whispering accents.

"There are British, five miles nearer here than Jaffa, striking north from the Cross-Roads of Gilgal—over the levels, and again west at Nebi Karen.... For there is the Tower of Kir Saba, and Kir Saba is the Headquarters of—what you call—a Mounted Brigade.... Not of soldiers from England—but British of the Dominions—and yet not Australians, though looking like them.... Dark, stern-faced men with crimson bands and little green tufts on their soft brown hats—riding little, thick-necked, active horses, sitting not loosely as does the Arab, but close, as though horse and rider were one."

"They are New Zealand Mounted Rifles. You have certainly a gift for detail, Miss Hazel."

The grey eyes of the Emir lighten appreciatively under the Hajj's green turban. The little veiled creature, as unmoved by his praise as she was by the Tuareg's insult, goes on with what she has to say:

"'Anzacs,' that is their name. And since yesterday their Headquarters is Kir Saba, whose Tower stands north from the Cross-Roads two miles upon the slope of the hills. The Turks and Germans drove their trenches through the vineyards and gardens, but, though they emptied the vaults, and wine-cellars, and broke the refrigerating plant, they did not cut down the orchards and olive-groves that stretch for miles over the Hills. They were wire-fenced and gated in the time of Eli Hazaël. Lest the wire should not have been cut, or the locks of the gates broken,—I will place in thy charge this key that I have here."

She is holding out to Yaill a clumsy metal spatula, evidently the work of an Eastern hand.

"There are other keys upon the ring," she shows the slip-ring of copper wire on which some smaller metal spatulas are strung. "They are the keys of the habitable rooms that are on the Tower ground-floor. We lived there part of every year, during the Spring and vintage. Turks having been there—" the slight inflection given to the word conveys a contempt that is boundless; "the rooms may contain nothing that is fit for usage; yet were it otherwise, all is at the service of my lord."

"You are very kind!" Yaill says, more than a little awkwardly, for one to whom the sonorous speech and stately bearing of the Bedwân are second nature by now.

"By the Saiyid's leave," again Yaill has the impression that the hidden mouth smiles coldly, "I speak of another—to whom the Tower belongs."

"Ah, yes, of course."

Yaill is suddenly switched on to a fact he has forgotten:

"Of course, the Tower of Kir Saba and the land about it, have been for many generations the property of the Forbis family. And Father Julian is the only living male heir. But how do you know?"

There is pride in the low voice that answers:

"Saiyid, though but a woman, I am of the race of Hazaël. For sixteen hundred years and more our men have been Keepers of the Tower and Guardians of the Shrine. Thou wilt deliver the keys to my lord? It is a promise?"

"It is a sacred promise. Pardon that I forgot!"

"Now I go back to carry thy words to John Hazaël on Mount Ebal. Then I return to Shechem. At sunset Abu Ishak goes on guard, at the end of the Wired Enclosure where the wooden hut is, and when it is dark, I feed the prisoner."

"Is it wise to risk so much for that?"

"Being a man," the little voice is very cold, "the Saiyid speaks man-fashion. Being a woman, descended from Her who is the Mother of all men save Adam, I speak after the manner of my sex. How shall the lord of Kir Saba ride for life—and over the hill-roads—if he be fainting? Will he not sit the saddle better if he be strengthened with broth and wine?"

"O daughter of our Mother Eve, wise art thou, and full of forethought! One thing before we part. What time shall the gipsy-woman come to the sentry? It shall be for thee to say!"

She thinks an instant, then says:

"When the boruzan of the guard sounds his bugle, and the lights of the camp are darkened, let her come, stepping softly, and pass the Darweesh on his beat—dropping a white flower, or a piece of white paper—and then slip swiftly as a snake, or a lizard, into the sentry-box. When the Baba returns—"

"In the hope of finding waiting—the only one of the Forbidden Things he hath not power to forego—he will kiss a gag of oiled camel-hide, smooth and tight-fitting and greasy, instead of his gipsy's hot, painted mouth. She will come when they sound 'Lights Out' at the camp of the Wired Enclosure.... And so, good-bye, Miss Hazel," says the Emir Fadl Anga, and his sorrowful grey eyes are kindly as they rest on the little shape. "Forgive me for asking the question, but under the circumstances—seeing that we clear out of here to-night—what is to become of you? ..."

"Of me? ..."

She gives her queer, rustling laugh, and by the sound of it he knows himself in the presence of a despair that is greater, because more hopeless than his own.

"What becomes of the Dust when the puff of wind hath passed over? Does it not settle down again—to be trodden underfoot by men?"

"But," Yaill feels something like awe of her, so small, so desolate, so set apart, enfolded in her tragic sorrow, "at least, in case of trouble at the gates to-night, you had better let me give you the pass."

"I am Ummshni.... I need no pass! ... Again I am like the Dust in this—that when men tread me underfoot I am carried on their sandals, wherever I would go. Farewell, O Saiyid! May the Most High preserve you and your companions—and grant my lord deliverance by your brave hands, to-night!"

And she is gone, and Edward Yaill takes a dagger from his girdle, and rips open the inky, stitched-up double square of tough parchment note.

Two letters tumble out of it into his eager fingers. One is in the familiar, beloved script of Katharine Forbis, the other—the buff envelope, blurred with postmarks, patched with stamps and scrawled with re-addresses he thrusts carelessly into a pocket within his silk kaftan.

One shivers, contemplating the loss of that wonderful buff envelope, and the consequent slip between the cup and the lip. But Yaill has no thought but this! To him, on the eve of the Great Adventure, has come a God-speed message from his love....

"My Man of all the Men that walk this world!" she cries to him. "My full heart lies between your darling hands to-night. And your dear, dear letter—O Edward! I have it close to me. It lies where my own love's head rested when we said 'Good-bye.' You remember that sweet, sad parting in the chapel at Kerr's Arbour? ... I shall never smell violets again, or put on my mother's black lace veil to wear to Communion, without going back in memory to that day ..."

It is a long letter, written all over eight pages, and running along the edges of the filled sheets. Love and solicitude and anxious wistful yearning, overflow into the smallest corners, curling and flourishing like tendrils of the vine. It is not a high-browed letter, nor even a passionate one, though pure womanly passion throbs through it from beginning to end. It is Katharine in her fullest expression—and than Katharine, Edward Yaill, her lover,—asks nothing better for this world and for the next.

"Dearest," it ends, "John Hazel has promised to get this letter through to you, and the other that I have written for Julian,—and yet another that was sent to Kerr's Arbour for you. How strange that at the parting of our ways, so true a friend should have risen up to help us. With you I feel—more strongly than I can say here—that this man is linked with my Fate! With 'our' fate, I would once have said—but must not now, Edward. Ah, though I do not speak or write thus, I always think in the plural, dear! ...

"My own, though you make so little of it, you are in danger. An accent misplaced, an unguarded gesture—a twitch of a muscle—might bring you Death. If it add to your peril to give you this—John Hazel has my authority to destroy it, this letter that I have kissed where your dear, dear hands should touch! Julian's Rosary and your bit of asphodel I keep where I can feel them, as I go about my business of driving cars in Egypt for our Red Cross. Thank God, I have lots to do! And I do it, as well as I can, with both of you tugging at my heartstrings,—lie down to sleep with a prayer for you on my lips—wake in the night, crying for joy, because I have dreamed that you are safe, and we are happy as we used to be. And rise to another day of anxiety and loneliness....

Oh, well! it can't go on for ever! Even suspense like this must come to an end. God keep you both, my Precious Ones! and bring you back safely to—

"Your loving, faithful, anxious,
            "KATHARINE."

Yaill reads the letter three times and kisses it lingeringly. Then he puts it carefully away. With certain other documents, maps and diagrams of fortified places, tracings on silk tissue-paper, and two or three other letters in Sanscrit and Arabic, in a small flat case of tough glass, double, and metal-jointed; covered with green gazelle-leather, stamped with an Eastern design. The flat paper-case closes hermetically; and a twirl of a stop-screw liberates the acid contained in a reservoir at the top. Thus, its contents may be destroyed,—or rendered completely illegible, at the will of the agent who carries the case....

At the last moment Yaill remembers the buff envelope, brings it out, turns it over and sniffs at it.... It exhales no cheap and violent perfume, displays no gaudy monogram.... The handwriting, large, flourishing and square, is quite unknown to him, and yet—as it lies under his incurious eyes, the image of his wife, Lucy Yaill—once Burtonshaw—is flashed upon his brain.

He will not open the buff envelope just now.... The thing with its English superscription, being dangerous to carry, he puts it away with the other papers in the glass-lined case, one twirl of whose lever-screw can blot out words, penned in the sprawling hand, that mean Hope renewed, Happiness restored, Union with the woman so faithfully loved, a blessed possibility—granted that Katharine's tender prayers for her beloved's protection and safety are heard, and answered soon....

XI

A huge Arab, mounted on a very little ass, ambling along the stony roads while a woman trudges in the dust behind him, is so common a spectacle in Palestine as to occasion no remark. Were the positions reversed,—did the woman ride the donkey and the man tramp after, then by so unprecedented a breach of etiquette, popular comment would naturally be provoked.

After the fashion indicated above, Ummshni, conjuring the little beast from some source unknown, has conveyed her man to Fadl Anga's appointed meeting-place, a mile west of Shechem, where the road of the Wady Azzun, switchbacking down to Jaffa—or more properly Gilgal—turns southward, running down a steep-sided defile among the hills. There, where the broken-down Turkish motor-lorry stands by the roadside, she has left him, taking with her a cherished asset he has carried hidden about him, in the shape of a pair of insulated wire-cutters. Her parting words still sound in his ears:

"Thou art the Head of our House, my cousin. Bless me before I go! ..."

Now John tingles with a scalding sense of her worth, and his own unworthiness, as he remembers how he put his heavy hand on the small veiled head, and muttered some incoherent words. Then she turned, and went from him so quietly that he has barely realised the risk that she is taking. Now that she has gone, it comes sharply home to him, and salt stinging moisture gathers under his eyelids, and a lump is in his throat.

The little donkey, hobbled by Ummshni before she went, to prevent its straying, grazes contentedly by the roadside, where rich green weeds, and grass and brake, and clumps of late-flowering asphodel betray the presence of moisture in the soil....

The sides of the hill-pass opening here, are chocolate-brown where the soil shows bare, as those of any cliff at home in Devon or Somerset, and trickling with little streams, thick-fringed with maidenhair.... Snapdragons of many hues, cyclamen white, and violet, and pink, spring in the crannies of the rocks, with the purple amaryllis, and a smell suggesting violets is sweet upon the air.

It is close upon the hour of sunset now. There is a great view here, from the top of the stiff up-gradient that climbs up from Shechem to plunge in a long series of downward curves, westward towards Jaffa, until, Gilgal reached—it turns at an acute southward angle and leaps the Cana Road. Nobody comes, though Turkish cavalry patrol the wadys at irregular intervals, and there are outposts with machine guns among the hills. Save for the thudding of those restless guns south-west and east, it would be even sweet and peaceful. For the air is divinely spiced with that rare perfume that is so like the smell of violets; the orange-winged Syrian blackbird pipes out his good-night song; and every thorn, or wild-olive, or mulberry-tree of all that mantle the sides of the defile, seems to accommodate its pair of bulbuls, warbling and jug-jugging in the very rage of ecstasy—sometimes breaking off to mew—after the provoking habit of nightingales. And John Hazel lights another strong Arab cigarette, swings himself to the driver's seat of the broken-down Turkish motor-lorry, and for a brief space, listens and smokes, and thinks....

He recalls the great experiences of War, forgetting War's miseries and discomforts. The social joys of the camp-fire, the long, confidential talks of the bivouac, the short, hard hand-grip pals exchange before going into action; the parting kiss that a soldier may set on the lips of a dead or dying friend. Men have seen men's souls face to face in the midst of hideous slaughter—in the pauses between horrible explosions—and until the heavens are rolled up as a scroll, and the sea is dry from shore to shore—and the Earth stops spinning between her poles, they will not forget these things.... Perhaps not even then....

And then John's thought goes back, as it has not done for long, to the thriving Firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance Brokers, of London City; and Beryl Lee-Levyson, John's former love—Muriel, Beryl's sister, and his brother Maurice—now piloting a Handley-Page bombing 'plane on the Western Front, Old Mendel, and Miss Birdie Bright, pass in imagined rotation over a stage, oddly backed by a composite drop, in part representing the Underwriting Room at Lloyds, the Office in Cornhill, and John's bedroom at Campden Hill....

Dannahill, still haggard from the shock of his grandson's death, (the wire had only come from the War Office that September morning) and Lee-Levyson and Copples the Senior Clerk, are shaking the Junior Partner's hands, as he comes out of his stuffy little office with his working coat in a brown paper parcel, containing a lot of odds and ends, some pipes, and Beryl's tinted photograph in a flamboyant silver frame. John is in a full suit of pink-striped silk pyjamas, and there too is Mrs. Hazel, John's mother, handsome in her pale blue crêpe dressing-gown, with her still abundant auburn hair in a thick plait down her back. To her John hears himself saying in his acquired British accent:

"Anyway, if the Pater was a Syrian Jew, your governor was British enough, anyway! Symes sounds like a good old English name."

And the answer comes like a douche of cold water on his secret hopes—like a crunch on the pill deftly concealed in the middle of a spoonful of jelly:

"That was why your grandmother adopted it. After your grandfather's death, of course. His name was Simonoff.... A Russian Jew from Moscow...."

The chill of the cold water, the bitterness of the pill. How John Hazel has shivered at the one and grimaced over the other. Some shock! to learn that between the Jew of Palestine and the Jew of Greater Russia he has been wrought all Jewish. That not one globule of British blood mingles with the strong Semitic tide that gallops through his veins....

And now—though his big body sits still and smokes, his spirit is abroad to-night on these hills of Samaria. He snuffs the sweet wild November breeze with wide, distended nostrils, and shows his big white teeth in a silent laugh.

This Hither Asian land of Syria.... How he has despised and belittled it—this Garden of Miracles from whose teeming soil—burrowed by a nation of cave-dwellers and idol-worshippers, and tracked by the footprints of nomadic shepherds—prophets, sages, seers, philosophers, poets, musicians, artists, architects—leaped into birth at the Divine Bidding, while as yet the world was a jungle of ferocious human beasts.... This Palestine, no bigger than the County of Middlesex, in Religion, History, Science, Law, hygiene and moral teaching—has she not ever led the way and pointed to the zenith? What if her star, after long eclipse, should now be in the ascendant? Strange, strange, if after all the centuries of war, exile and oppression, Christian hands are to give back Palestine to the Jews! ...

He hugs himself, muttering:

"A hell of a country to get hold of you, and no mistake about it. But she is IT, this little old Palestine! She's got it in her to whack the globe—given the men and the money. I'm one of her men.... I've got some money. And it's going to be spent with lots more to set her going again. Golden blood pumped into her veins to set her heart beating—and make her buried splendours, her Temple with its golden dome, her matchless Holy City—her towns, and gardens, and hippodromes and palaces jump out of her yellow soil as quick as mustard-and-cress." He chuckles. "I'm a bit potty! ... 'Fey,' a Scotchman'd call it.... I feel as if all my Big Old Men—those dead old Hazaëls—right away down from the Kings of Damascus who laid siege to Ahab, King of Israel, and afterwards joined up with him against the Assyrians!—were alive and swarming over these hills of Samaria to-night...."

Perhaps the man, in his normal state, is oblivious of the postscript he supplied to the story of the inscription on the tablet. He may not know the blood of the Hazaëls is tinctured with the Israelite blood of Istâr the Princess, daughter of Jezebel of Tyre and Ahab of Samaria. Half a mile north of where he sits on the lorry,—parallel with the road to Gilgal, runs the great seaward-going road of the Wady-es Sha'ir, forking off at Anebta, past the Watch Tower hill of Omri, to Carmel and the sea.

From her nest of purple cushions in the high balcony-window of her ivory palace at Samaria, Jezebel, Ahab's Queen, daughter of King Ethbal of Sidon, looked—when her people's god, red as though dyed with the blood of the murdered prophets—was blotted out of sight by the rising curve of the earth.... Famine withered the rainless land, and beasts and men were perishing, as the Prophet of the Most High lay prostrate on the summit of Mount Carmel, pressing his face against the sod....

"And while he turned himself this way and that," as a worm might writhe in anguish, the little cloud rose out of the sea. And the troubler of Israel rose up and sent word to King Ahab:

"Prepare thy chariot and go down, lest the rain prevent thee!"

Over this broad Road of the Wady-es Sha'ir, the fleet horses of Ahab's jewelled ivory chariot thundered, as "the heavens grew dark with clouds and wind, and there fell a great rain." And the King raced down to Samaria before the pelting storm, while the lean prophet, the swift Hound of God, scoured fleetly on before....

And Elias, being threatened with the vengeance of Jezebel, because he had killed the priests of her golden temple of Baal Zebub, fled south to Beersheba, and being miraculously fed, journeyed to Horeb, and lived in a cave. And after the Vision on the Mountain, returned by the Divine Command through the desert to Damascus, and anointed Hazaël of Damascus to be King of Syria....

Now John, lineal descendant of the race,—inhales the rank smoke of his Arab cigarette, and pursues his train of thought. Sitting on the broken-down Turkish motor-lorry, with knees drawn up to his long chin, and his long arms hugging them; with his Arab head-cloth pushed awry, and prickly burrs tangled in his coarse black hair, that is powdered with limestone-dust like his mahogany skin—the huge man with the great nose and the fierce black eyes that blaze under their bushy, knotted eyebrows, is an awesome spectacle—having much more in common with the lean and dusty Prophet than with his own remote ancestor the Baal-worshipping King.

He is engaged, as he sits there, in a death-struggle with the strongest and most ruthlessly selfish of all human passions. That smell of violets brings Katharine back—dwarfing as great artists will—every other player on the stage of his mental theatre. He sees her on a certain February day, standing in the chintz-hung drawing-room looking on the terrace at Kerr's Arbour, with a bunch of greenhouse violets in her beloved hand....

"I was going to take him these.... Perhaps you would like to?" she had said, giving the violets to John.... Then he followed her up the little aisle of the chapel, and stood with her beside the General's long coffin, looking down at the grand old face, and the rigid clasped hands....

"Father, dear, this is a friend of ours, whom you have wished to see!"

Again he hears her, speaking as though the old man were not dead but in a quiet slumber. She touched his hand in showing him how to place the violets under the rigid fingers, that held a Crucifix and had a Rosary threaded between....

On that first day she seemed to John, older, graver, sterner than afterwards, when Edward Yaill came upon the scene. He remembers how their eyes met, and she kindled into beauty. He recalls his brief, stern interview with Yaill, and that parting "Carry on...."

He conjures up the Funeral, and Katharine veiled and draped in black—offering him in a silver shell some earth from Palestine to sprinkle on the coffin. He recalls her summoning telegram, and the finding of the khaki kit of the "Missing British Officer" hidden away in the fox-earth in the wood. He glows again with joy as she comes to greet him at the Hospital, beautiful, strong and womanly, in her uniform of cool white drill. He welcomes her to the cradle-house of her Roman race, the House of Philoremus Fabius, on the ancient Street of the Four Winds, now lost in the Rue el Farad. Again he waits for her outside the Chapel of the Shrine, again they sit on the granite seat under the moss-cup oak. And once more he thrills exquisitely at the velvet touch of her warm, sweet mouth upon his clumsy hand.

It was a cruel thing to do, but she had no thought of coquetry. He knows that the kiss was a belated tribute from a woman of her race, to the last male Hazaël but one. That she looked past the recipient of the kiss to the huge, swart, bearded ancestor, who first held the onyx ring in trust, guarded the Title Deeds, and preserved the house at Alexandria—and the Tower of Kir Saba in Palestine, to be handed down, a sacred charge—by his children's children, and their children, down to the present day.... A tribute of gratitude and respect, that kiss, and nothing further. But it was set by a woman's mouth upon the hand of a man....

He knows that there is no hope for him, this ungainly worshipper of Katharine, even though her lover should never be free to marry her—though the tie that binds Yaill to Lucy Burtonshaw should endure for both their lives. He, John, has hated Yaill with the virile strength of jealousy. He has conquered that baseness in himself.... He hates the man no more.... He has risked and borne much to carry Yaill her letter. He has been even warmed and heartened by his enemy's gratitude:

"Tell him that I have received the packet, and that as earnestly as man ever thanked man, I thank him for what he has done! ..."

But even with Yaill's message fresh in mind, John is not cured of hoping. He hopes—and sets his huge foot upon the neck of his hope—while yearning over it as a man may yearn over his first-born. For this that has come to him is the knowledge of true Love, and even as Jacob in old days wrestled with the Angel,—John Hazel strives with his masterful, bright-winged passion—not trying to detain Love, but rather to compel Love, by force of thews, to go....

The blood-red sunset glorifies the West, fills the defile from cliff to cliff, and now smoulders out in amber and jade-green, peacock blue and rose-madder. Grey twilight comes—and the birds are still, as a giant owl flies over, and sinks, as a shadow sinks, amongst the shadowy trees.... No one draws near. The cavalry patrols of the Turk are oddly infrequent on this particular Shechem end of the Jaffa-going road....

John gets up and shakes his dreams and hopes and memories from him, as a swimmer emerging from a sluggish stream might shake off clinging weeds. His hopes are scarcely weeds. Rather are they trails of blossoming lotus or water-lily. But lilies or weeds, they hamper. And there is work to do.

He stretches himself, shakes his giant frame, pitches away the stump of his cigarette—gets down from the driver's seat, climbs into the body of the lorry and proceeds to inspect the boxes that form its load. They are heavy wooden cases roughly dovetailed together, painted a dirty stone-blue and grossly daubed with the Crescent and Star in bright vermilion paint. They are branded with the initials of the Turkish A.S.C., carry the stamp of the shell-factory at Makrikeui, and belong to the 2nd battalion of the 4th Infantry Regiment, (Headquarters Salonika) of the IIIrd Ottoman Ordu.

John thinks it would be as well to have a look inside a few of those blue boxes, with the assistance of a spanner, and his pocket electric torch. He looks about for a spanner and presently finds one in the tool-box aft of the driver's seat. It is a large spanner of good steel, and—in the hands of John Hazel—makes a most efficient substitute for the key of the Turkish lock. The nails draw, the wood splinters, the lid is lifted.... The box—instead of being full of packets of Mauser cartridges, proves to be packed with metal spheres the size of biggish cricket-balls, painted a bilious brown....

"Bombs ..." With a thrill of pleasurable recognition John picks up one of the cricket-balls and weighs it in his hand. "Our make too. Some find!" he thinks. "Now, where did they get these? ... Snapped up a string of mules at the tail of an ammunition-convoy, or found 'em in some abandoned dump on the Peninsula, when the Expeditionary Army evacuated Gallipoli! ... Anyhow they come in handy. Damned handy! ... Let's look in another box...."

He breaks open four more, with the assistance of the spanner. Two out of the lot hold bombs, British-made, pitched in higgledy-piggledy, with the recklessness that may be born of Mohammedan fatalism. The others prove to contain paper clips of cartridges, marked for use in the 1890 pattern Mauser magazine-rifle of 7.56. mm.

Two boxes of British bombs, at this especial juncture, come to John Hazel as manna from the skies. If there is a weapon the ex-insurance broker of Cornhill prefers before all known devices for killing other men—that weapon is the bomb, of the cricket-ball, hand-pitched variety, that makes of one long-armed man, the equal of many men armed....

At Rondes Poix in the March of 1915, a party of Fenchurch Street Fusiliers being hemmed in at an advanced post by the enemy, Private Hazel and Private Spurge—a rival star-artist in the line of effective bomb-throwing—kept the Hun at bay for eleven hours by pitching cricket-ball bombs.

Again, in the April of that year, east of "that mad place called Ypres," John, possibly urged to derring-do by the urgent spirit of Sergeant Harris, and armed with a bag of bombs of this variety—crawled through a hole in the enemy's barbed-wire, and single-handed—argued in such wise with the Germans established at a certain machine-gun position, that the Fenchurch Streets—charging over the front-line parapet at the critical moment, were able to clear three hundred yards of the trench in question, and held the same triumphantly for the rest of the fighting day. The D.C.M., that silver disc bearing his Sovereign's bust, which he calls his "bit of tin" and is secretly vain of,—was subsequently bestowed on Private Hazel when a patient at the Auxiliary Military War Hospital, of Colthill, Middlesex, in recognition of this feat.

"Given they're not duds," he murmurs now, lovingly toying with the spring-pin of one of the cricket-balls, "I could hold up a half-battalion of Turks with these, until the cows come home! ..."

He looks up to his left and right, roughly estimating the height of the defile, the perpendicular walls of which are somewhat lower on his left than on his right-hand—and calculates the width of the road here at under twenty feet. More like eighteen-and-a-half. Well, given that to-night's attempt at the rescue of Father Julian Forbis does not prove a washout—here is the wherewithal to keep the road, in case of a pursuit....

Twilight creeps on. The crickets chirp, and noiseless as a shadow, the great owl slips from the thicket and takes his soundless flight. The little owls hunt in the grass for frogs, lizards and beetles, and the great bats come out of the crannies in the rocks to gorge themselves with fruit.

For a while the guns have ceased to argue, and the night is still and breathless; not the clear violet night of Syria, radiant with dazzling silver light of moon and starshine, but a moonless night of semi-obscurity, and diffuse and formless shadows, with menacing rumbles of thunder in the east, where sheet-lightning flickers now and then. Venus suspends her sapphire lamp above the hills of Judæa, and the Pleiades shine almost directly overhead. Bright-armed Orion rises in splendour over the ramparts of blue-black cumuli that brood in the east over the Mountains of Gilead. Low down, through a jagged cleft in these, twinkles the star Y Crucis, that forms the summit of the Southern Cross....

No trot of hoofs on the stony road draws nearer from the eastward; no clink of spur on scabbard, or bit against chain-bridle, tells of the approach of a cavalry patrol along the Jaffa Road. There are yet three hours and more to wait for the sound of hoof-beats coming from Shechem, that may signify the escape of the prisoner from the Bey's wire cage.

Does all go well? Has Esther Hazaël carried out her stratagem? She has shown John how—when the Dark comes down—she will feed the prisoner. By a device almost absurd in its direct simplicity—used, in this Eastern land, millions of times ere now. Women are cunning in such tricks, and full of subtle resources.... Well for men that it is so!—especially in time of War....

Ummshni is at her business now. John feels certain. He nods to himself, solemnly, and sitting on the lid of one of the broken bomb-boxes, folds his great arms, narrows his eyelids and sends his Thought ranging abroad in search of her.

Perhaps he sleeps and dreams, sitting there. Who knows whether he does or does not. But after some moments of silent concentration, he sees his messenger go forth. A tiny thing—human in form, light as a puff of thistledown, no bigger than a locust—it leaps down to the big Jew's knees, and thence to the bottom of the lorry; drops from it into the dust and scours down the road. Swift as the wind, it passes over the highway—reaches the west gate of Shechem and slips through a crevice in the ponderous iron-studded timbers, lodging between the sandalled feet of the Mustahfiz infantry guard.... Now it goes by the Khan of the Fox, darts through the square where the archway is (under which the Orderly Staff Sergeant Major of the German Intelligence Department waited for the dropping of the despatch-bag from the Two Faced Nightingale), traverses the town, thronged to-night with variously attired strangers of many nations, and—lightly as a withered leaf, and inconspicuous as a dust-swirl—traverses the main thoroughfare of the ancient town.

Shechem is packed to the walls to-night with the exiles from Jerusalem. And in addition to these, with strangers in foreign clothing, diverse in type, sinister-faced and stern-eyed, speaking unknown languages.... There are many Turkish officers, young and old, in uniform and out of it, and German officers of many ranks and decorations, accompanied by women, painted and overdressed.

So many strange feet, bringing strange dust from strange lands. Yet the little thing no bigger than a leaf finds a way between them all. Now it spins out at the east gate and rolls down the rutted road towards the Wired Enclosure.... Here storm-lamps hang outside the guard-tent and on either side of the entrance. The officer's tent is lighted within, but unlike the tent of the postas, it is furnished with a door-flap. From inside comes the sound of laughter, the clinking of glasses, and unmistakably, the rattle of shaken dice. Near the gate, in conversation with the bash-châwush of the guard, stands a tall, thin, elderly Bedawi, known to the reader as the Shaykh Gôhar.

"Nay, nay! Do not trouble the Yuzbashi." He waves a hand in the direction of the tent whence comes the convivial clink. "The affairs of the humble must wait upon the leisure of the great ones. Yet if thy dignity were not lowered by the mention of a hundred piastres—one lira Osmanli—" Gôhar carelessly displays the coin.

"O my friend! O my soul!" hiccups the bash-châwush, who at this early stage of the evening is only amiably drunk. "I will do thine errand with gladness for friendship's sake only!" Having duly received and pouched the coin, he adds: "Now tell thy business to me."

"Briefly, it was but to ask thy Yuzbashi to accord me the watchword, the Emir Fadl Anga having cause to pass the gates to-night. In thine ear, O friend! he hath a pigeon to fly at dawn for Mecca, and he is minded to loose the bird from the Mount."

The bash-châwush nods and disappears into the tent, whence, sung in a high nasal tenor voice to lute-accompaniment, issue the unblushing erotics of an Arab love-song. The Shaykh turns to one of the postas lounging near the guard-tent, and smilingly offers him a handful of thick Arab cigarettes.

"Dost thou use the Consoler? ... Take, then!"

"May Allah make it 'take' upon thee, O generous hearted one! ..."

As the handful changes owners, and other soldiers look out of the corners of their eyes and sidle nearer, the Shaykh plunges both hands into deep pockets beneath his mantle, and draws them forth generously filled with the thick, strong cigarettes.

Upon the return of the bash-châwush with the information—willingly placed at the service of the Emir—that the pass-word of the night is "Baal Zebub," he, too, accepts a handful of the cigarettes that are so heavily drugged with opium. And then the Shaykh Gôhar, with ceremonious farewells, stalks away from the Wired Enclosure, knowing his work begun.

XII

Since the departure of the Shaykh Sadân, the man who sank fainting to the floor of the wooden hut has moved once only. It was when he revived, dragged himself to his knees, and while his strength sufficed—lifting his clasped hands above his head—sent forth his soul in prayer.... Exhausted then, he collapsed once more, and dropped forwards, falling with outflung arms across the palm-wood bed-frame, and for how long he does not know, was lost in unconsciousness.

When sight and hearing return to him, thick darkness presses on his burning eyeballs, and the "Lights Out" of the Turkish boruzan is ringing in his ears. Half kneeling by the anghareb, half lying across it, his face is turned towards the east wall of the hut. Through a biggish knot-hole in the planks, he has found it possible to see—given sufficient light outside—beyond the barbed wire fence a circumscribed patch of the south-going road, the tumbled hills in the distance and the dome of the Tomb of Joseph in the foreground.... These intermittently blotted out by the figure of the Turkish sentry, passing to the end of his beat at the south angle of the Enclosure, or passing back to the angle at the junction of the road that leads to the town's east gate, with the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

Even in darkness, the edges of the knot-hole are outlined by a fitful glimmer. The flash of an electric torch, the twinkle of a firefly, the ray of a shooting-star—there are many in this month of November—find their way through the knot-hole in the wall.

But the knot-hole is no longer there. They have stopped it up from outside! he thinks, and a groan breaks from him. He has borne so much that this little thing—fresh evidence of studied malice on the part of his jailers—hurts, like the brutal tearing of a bandage from a stiffened wound.... He shudders, hearing a curious, scratching, rasping sound, mingled with low whispering:

"Sidi, Sidi! ... Sidi, Sidi!"

His blood freezes in his veins. What is that strange, soft voice, and where does it come from? Can this be another essay on the part of the Shaykh Sadân? He waits for the next move—setting his teeth, steeling his soul with faith in his Master. Now, now, the whispering comes again:

"Sidi, Sidi! Do you hear me? O Sidi, are you there? ..."

It is the thin, rustling voice of the little Mother of Ugliness. He utters a stifled cry of joy, and dragging his chain with him, rolls off the anghareb, and in his weakness, sinks down close to the hut's east wall. Passing his thin hands over the wall in the darkness, he encounters a projection. The end of a long rubber-covered cane, from which the whispering comes:

"If the Sidi hears my voice, let him be pleased to answer! It is Ummshni! ..."

"I hear," he calls back through the improvised speaking-tube. "May God reward thee, gentle heart! How didst thou find me out? ..."

"How, is a long story meet for telling elsewhere. Has the Sidi a bowl, or other vessel? If not let him set mouth to the end of this," the speaker taps on the tube gently with a fingernail, "and I will pour milk through the canes. Tap thrice when I am to pour! ..."

He does so, and the tube is slowly tilted, and a cautious trickle of boiled goat's milk flows over his parched tongue. He sucks for life, and when he has drunk:

"Rest now," says the whispering voice. "It is ill to take overmuch at the beginning. Next time I will give thee broth, and afterwards good wine. For the Sidi must be strengthened against the hour when for the prisoner comes Rescue. Let him tap thrice on the pipe if he has heard...."

He taps on the cane-lined length of rubber tubing.... The little voice goes on:

"Listen, my lord! ... At midnight thy friends will come to deliver thee. So, when thou hast well taken the soup and wine, lie down on the bed and rest.... Sleep if thou canst, but not too sound. When there comes a scraping in the earth under the bedstead, rise up and move aside the anghareb. My lord has clearly heard? ..."

He signifies assent, and the voice goes on whispering, sending a reviving stream of Hope into his empty, sapless heart, that is invigorating to his drooping spirit, as the milk to his famished body.

"Lift up the anghareb, and thou wilt find a hole in the earth under it. Planks covered with earth hide the hole. The hole is the Gate of Hope for thee!—the Way that leads to Freedom! Does the Sidi understand?"

"I do, and thank thee from my soul! ... Who are the friends, Ummshni? I only have known of one beside thyself. But no word has reached me from that man, since the War Prisoners were shifted from camp at Beersheba to the Barracks here at Shechem!"

"Thou hast four friends here besides myself!"

He did not know he was so rich, and a thrill of joy goes through him.

"The chief of them is Edward Yaill. Thou dost recall that name? Ay! Then comes John Hazaël...."

That the prisoner has no knowledge of John Hazaël, his silence seems to testify.

"It does not matter!" The little voice is dry. "The friends to whom we owe the most are often strangers to us. Now it is time to give thee the broth!"

He sucks the life-giving stuff through the tube. With her womanly, maternal solicitude, she checks him after a little:

"Stay, now.... The Sidi feels his strength increased? ..."

He does, and says so gratefully.

"Then—lest it make the Master sleep too heavily, I will not give him the wine yet. Now let him lie down awhile on the bed that is in there. I remain outside, watching. What says my lord?"

"The sentry.... How is it he does not see thee? ..."

Something like Ummshni's little rustling laugh comes through the rubber-covered pipe-stems.

"Love hath no eyes, it is often said. Since a white flower fell on the dust in the dusk, and a light foot went past him, is Baba Ishak, the Darweesh, blind—and dumb as well, ah-hah! Now he is at the other end of his beat, his face set to Ebal, and the Tombs of the Sons of Mohammed. He is waiting Opportunity, as a dog near the butcher's shop.... When the butcher looks the other way—or goes into the house to speak to his wife, the dog sneaks round the doorpost and—his head is in the scrap-box! Sweet,—the first greedy crunch, and gulp.... But then comes the butcher's chopper—down on the dog's skull! Now lie thou down and try to sleep. I have said I will keep watch here! ..."

Holding his chain so that it may not clank, Father Julian creeps back to the verminous bed, and tries to do her bidding. But the throbbing of his anxious heart and the roaring of the blood in his ears make sleep impossible. The cheap gun-metal wrist-watch that he wears has not been taken from him, and it has been kept wound up—it is ticking companionably now. Four matches are left in his box. Sheltering the flame within the coat that serves him as a bed-covering, he strikes a match, and looks at the watch. It is twenty minutes past ten o'clock, and Deliverance comes at midnight. How wait through the long hours, for that knocking under the floor?

The Darweesh who is imâm of his platoon, and can resist all the Forbidden Things except the Cup of Beauty, stands at the north angle of the Wired Place, looking towards the Tombs. In his hot thick hand is a white rose, sweet and musky-smelling, in his nostrils a whiff of sandal and some pungent Bazâr perfume. The Baba is a little man, and his inamorata a tallish woman, but she looked a strapping wench to-night, as she passed him at the other end of his beat, with a whispered word and a dropped flower, and a provocative flash of her gipsy-eyes from the folds of her white izar.

He wheels, smacks the butt of his Mauser rifle with the flat of his broad hand, and licks his thick lips longingly. Turning out his sandalled toes—for the second-line troops of the Redif stick to the old-fashioned chariks, with bandages wound round the leg from the calf down—he marches towards the sentry-box where Delilah waits for him.

There is little breeze on this muggy night of scant starshine and blotted shadows, but a south-going waft sends a withered leaf or a torn scrap of paper scurrying at Baba Ishak's heels along the dusty road.

"Tr'rp—tr'rp—tr'rp!" ...

A tiny sound, and yet it irks and fidgets.

"Trrp—tr'rp ...!"

Whatever it is, it scurries past, as the Darweesh halts before the sentry-box. Snuffing the clamorous perfume of the Bazâr with an anticipative smile on his thick lips, he stands on the threshold and peers into the darkness.

"Inaini!" he coos, amorously to the odorous obscurity. "My soul! My eyes! Thou hast come to me! Tell me that thou art there? ..."

Undoubtedly Inaini is there, he can see her white figure plainly against the shadowy background. It is late in the day for Inaini to be coy, but too early not to humour her. He stretches out a greedy, perspiring hand. It touches the folds of her izar. Stung to enterprise, prodded by propinquity, the Baba puts down his Mauser, carefully leaning it against the side of the sentry-box, and blunders forwards. Aha! At last he has her, the willing prisoner of his eager arms.