style="font-size:15px;"> “Carry on, boys!”
So we, who had gone forth that night but a party of three, returned a twenty-man platoon, dumping our prisoner at the jail en route. They lugged him like a corpse with heels trailing, and he hardly recovered consciousness before being locked up, which was a good thing for him as well as us, for he began acting like a caged wild animal at once, yelling as he wrenched at the cell bars, setting both feet against them, cracking huge shoulder-muscles in the effort to break loose.
There was almost a mutiny when Grim insisted on six of Ali Baba’s gang offering themselves at once to Dr. Cameron for a body-guard.
“Ask him to come soon, and you hold that Egyptian while he attends to him.”
“But Jimgrim, why? Surely such a man is better dead! And he is cunning. Later, when the rage has left him he will make plans and talk to the other prisoners through the bars.”
Grim laughed. “And give away the secret of the fire-gift, eh? Tell ‘em you haven’t it any longer? Too bad!”
“One might go in there and kill him, as if it were by accident,” suggested Mahommed ben Hamza genially—he who had done the damage in the first place. “Or I could strike him through the bars, thus!”
“You for the gallows if you dare!” Grim answered. “There’s a row of old cells below-ground. Some of you men go down and clean out one of them thoroughly. I’ll have him put down there after the doctor’s through with him; then, if all’s well and you all play the game straight, he shall be taken to Jerusalem.”
All except six of them and Ali Baba trooped down-stairs with the easy familiarity of old frequenters of the place. They knew where the brooms and buckets were—whom to ask for soap—where to draw water; the whole routine of that establishment was at their fingers’ ends.
But Ali Baba and the six who went to offer their strong service to the doctor had to cool their heels. He was at the Governorate to breakfast, and had brought the nurse with him—a big, raw-boned Scots virgin from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where they call fish “fush” and the girl who cannot do the work of two southron men is not thought much of. I think she could have licked that Egyptian single-handed. She and Cohen were already in an argument about religion, and just as we came in she was telling him he would better mend his doctrine while there was time.
“For Hell’s an awful place!”
“Maybe you know?” he suggested. “Tell me some more, miss.”
She talked to him about fire and brimstone all through breakfast without any kind of malice but a perfectly sincere desire to scare him into Christianity.
“Ain’t you afraid you’ll get killed before night?” he asked, trying at last to turn the subject.
But she was not afraid of anything except bad doctrine, and only of that in case it should get by her unrebuked. As Cameron had said the day before, she was a good lass; she would stand.
“Tell me about Heaven,” sighed Cohen. “I’m tired of hearin’ about Hell.”
“Man, man! You may be in Hell before bedtime!” she answered and Grim laughed aloud.
“She’s quite right, Aaron. Initiation takes place directly after breakfast. Third degree follows, and Hell tonight!”
All through breakfast there were interruptions. De Crespigny had to keep leaving the table to interview local notables, who called to complain that the city was growing more turbulent every hour and they could not fairly be held responsible.
Jones swallowed a few mouthfuls and started off alone to look alert and confident in the swarming suk, since to appear the reverse of afraid was about the only available resource, though that seemed limitless. And just as breakfast finished there came once more the splutter and bark of a motorcycle down-street.
“Can you beat that?” asked de Crespigny, coming in and handing the dispatch to Grim. They let me look at it; in fact, it was passed around the table afterward, although the envelope was stamped “SECRET” as usual in enormous letters:
Your message of yesterday received. Troops here are busy. Governors of outlying places are expected to carry on accordingly. A demonstration will be made by airplane from Ludd this morning; the pilot will be expected to report whether all is quiet or otherwise. In the event of his reporting all quiet no action is expected to be taken in your direction before tomorrow morning, when a Sikh patrol will be sent with machine guns if it can be spared. Please report by bearer if there are any symptoms of a concerted attack on Jerusalem, rumors having reached us.
It was signed by the same staff-major who had written the message of the day before. But this time there was a foot-note, not typewritten but in the angular long-hand of the administrator himself.
“Carry on, boys. Kettle.”
“That postscript’s typical of ‘Pots and Pans’,” said Grim. “I’ll bet he’s sent help to some of the weak sisters elsewhere and counts on you fellows to worry through. There’s probably a raid in force coming up from the Jordan Valley and every available man in Jerusalem combed up to deal with it. How will you answer?”
De Crespigny wrote two lines and showed them:
Carrying on, sir. No sign of attack on Jerusalem from this place yet. Sikhs welcome when available.
“Good!” said Grim. “He likes telegrams. Man fired at on the way?”
“Says not.”
“That proves nothing,” put in Cameron. “I’ve been five-and-twenty years here, and know their ways. They’re flocking into the city. So the fields are deserted. The Turks understood how to deal with them. The Turks, in a crisis like this, would have hanged out of hand any man found in the streets who did not belong to the city. I’ve seen them strung up in front of the jail in a row like haddock drying in the sun. Djemal Pasha would have straightened out this business in less than half a day. He was a rascal, though; he’d have lined his pockets afterwards with fines that would have kept them all too poor to make trouble for a year to come! Well, we’re not Turks and they’re gone. But I heard ex-president Roosevelt speak in Egypt. ‘Rule or get out!’ That was his advice. Speaking as a missionary, I’d say take the latter half of it—get out! Teach, yes, if they’ll listen; but teach ‘em what? They’re as moral as we are. Teach ‘em our Western commercialism? God forbid! Literature? We don’t read our own books, so why should they? Which of you can quote me half a line from Robbie Burns?”
“Speaking of burns, Doc,” put in Grim, “You’ve got to teach me some chemistry before lunch—something to prevent them.”
“I’m a very busy man.”
“Have you plenty of drugs?”
“I’ve plenty of nothing! Fifteen hundred pounds a year our Mission scrapes together for this hospital, and out of that must come my salary, if, as and when I choose to draw it. I’ve drawn it seven times in twenty years. Ye’d think Hebron would contribute something; it did at times under the Turks; but now all the rascals do is steal my stores. Teach, eh? Come wi’ me to the hospital and I’ll
