you from Jerusalem?” de Crespigny asked him.
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“I have just come.”
“And you left Hebron after seven o’clock this morning to my knowledge! Have you got so virtuous and truthful that you’ve suddenly grown wings?”
“I went half-way and met three men, who said the Jews of Jerusalem have risen and have already killed three thousand Moslems. So I came back.”
“To talk about it, eh? Well, if I hear of your repeating such a lie in Hebron I’ll clap you in the jail, d’ you understand me? Go home and hold your tongue.”
”Taib (All right).”
The man slouched out again, but three more reports arrived by way of the back door within the next ten minutes, the last one giving the total of slain at exactly four thousand eight hundred and one Moslems, adding that the Jews were parading through Jerusalem in triumph.
“All of which probably means that a Jew has been killed and the Moslems are looting,” Grim commented quietly.
The next alarm was a message from the Arab jailer to say that his prisoners were getting out of hand and that a crowd was collecting outside the jail.
Jones volunteered to go and investigate, but before he could leave the room two policemen came running in with word that the crowd was swarming up- street toward the Governorate. We could hear them a moment later. They were taking their time about it, singing as they came, pausing at intervals to dance a few steps in measure and then surging on. The song was like the Carmagnole of the Terror. De Crespigny got up from his chair—thought better of it —sat down again and lighted a cigarette. After that he passed the case around and we each took one, Cohen included.
“What’s going to happen?” asked Cohen. “Those guys coming to kill us?” He looked less afraid than I felt. “Well, I guess it’s up to you fellers to fix this.”
“I’ll go out and talk to them,” said de Crespigny.
“Take your time,” Grim advised him. “Let them wait for you.”
It was obvious that de Crespigny and Jones felt better for Grim’s being there, although to my mind he was stretching his policy of non- interference to absurd limits. I had seen enough of his influence with Arabs at one time and another to convince me that he could do nearly what he liked with them and I itched to tell him to take charge and use his resourceful wits. He made no move whatever, but sat like a wooden Indian in front of a tobacco store, blowing out the cigarette-smoke through his nose.
The crowd—there must have been two or three thousand of them —came thundering up-street, chanting over and over again a rape-and- murder chorus in response to the stanzas of a solo sung by a man who was carried shoulder-high in their midst waving a sword. I could see his sword through the window, over the top of the shrubs and the stone wall. They halted in front of the gate and the song ceased. In the silence that followed when the shuffling of feet had died down you could hear them breathe.
“I suppose they’ll swipe our camels?” I suggested.
“Not yet,” Grim answered. “They’ll do nothing much yet unless they think we’re rattled. Take your time, de Crespigny.”
The Governor of Hebron got out of his chair again with all the stately dignity of twenty-six amusing years, and lighted another cigarette with a deliberately steady hand.
“Do I look as if I’d got the wind up me, or any rot like that?” he asked.
“You look good,” Grim assured him. “Be sure you smile, though. You’ll pull it off all right.”
“Shall I come with you?” asked Jones.
“No. Better not. They might think we were scared, if two of us went. So long.”
De Crespigny walked out, doing the most difficult thing in the world perfectly, which is to act exactly like your normal self when fear is prompting you to bluster and look preternaturally clever. Jones began talking in a matter-of-fact voice to Cohen about his emigration scheme.
“Care to come with me?” asked Grim; and he and I went upstairs to watch from a bedroom window, screening ourselves carefully behind the curtains.
“These are two good boys,” said Grim. “More depends on them than you guess. If they can hold Hebron quiet for two days, all’s well. If not, the next thing will be a march on Jerusalem, and every Moslem in the country is likely to follow suit.”
“Couldn’t the British machine guns deal with that?”
“Of course. But who wants to slaughter ‘em?”
“Pity the wire’s down,” said I.
“Uh-uh! Wouldn’t be any good. All the troops Jerusalem could spare would only whet these fellows’ appetites for blood. Judging by the symptoms before we came away I should say Jerusalem will have its hands full for the next forty-eight hours or so. But watch de Crespigny.”
* * * * *
The crowd in the street was packed so densely that those nearest were pressed against the gate and de Crespigny could not open it. There was only one gap in their midst, where one of our camels lay and the other stood moving his jaw phlegmatically. Camels get excited only when they shouldn’t, and insist on taking human climaxes with the indifference they possibly deserve; those two beasts were the only meditative creatures within view, although the crowd was silent enough—sweating in the hot sun—a sea of faces set in the white frames of kufiyis, angry, but intensely anxious to know what this youngster of an alien race proposed to do.
De Crespigny did not hesitate. He vaulted on to the wall, stood on it for a minute to judge the number of the crowd and get a bird’s-eye view of what was happening on its outskirts, then sat down on the wall facing them, with his feet hanging on a level with their breasts. They could have seized him easily. A fool would have stood up and tried to look dignified out of reach.
“Now, don’t all speak at once,” he began. “What do you want?”
Of course they all did speak at once, at the top of their lungs for the most part and he waited until the tumult died.
“Suppose one or two of you speak for the rest,” he suggested at last.
A burly man of middle age took that duty on himself and de Crespigny had to draw his legs up, for the men in front were crushed tight against the wall by those behind who wanted to hear better. So he set his feet on the shoulders of the men beneath him and they seemed rather to like it.
“We are told that the Jews in Jerusalem are murdering our co- religionists!”
“I’ve heard that story too,” said de Crespigny. “If it’s true, it’s bad.”
“Give us rifles, then! We are going to Jerusalem to help our friends!”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The military might mistake your motive; then there’d be an accident. Let’s find out the truth first; I’m as keen to know it as you are. Tell you what: the wire’s down, so I can’t
