We were hardly a quarter of a mile from the Governorate and through the open window came the yelling of a mob that surged by the Governorate gate. It bore no resemblance to the singing of the men who had come dancing up-street the previous day, but was shriller voiced, without rhythm, and there was the ominous mob-growl underneath it like the anger of a hundred upset hives.
“Ah!” remarked Ali Baba dryly. “That will be the end of it all! No fire-gift tonight! Better run, Jimgrim! Run for Jerusalem while there is time! I would be sorry to see you with your throat cut!”
Grim was listening and signed to Ali Baba to be still. It was difficult to pick out words from the babel of noise down-street, for the uproar came from a thousand throats; but it was clear they were shouting for de Crespigny, and that was a good sign as far as it went. If they had intended murder they would have rushed the building, instead of calling for the governor to come and talk to them.
Suddenly Grim ran from the room and I after him. I didn’t stop to reason it out, but followed intuitively—partly from a sense of dependence on his swift wit and also because it’s easier, though not nearly always wiser, to meet trouble half-way than to sit and wait for it.
We ran out through a side door into a garden and followed a wall fronting on the road. At the far end was a rambling old barn-like building that nearly faced the Governorate. We entered that by climbing the wall at the end of the garden and in another minute were lying on the roof overlooking the crowd.
“Good Lord!” said Grim. “They’ve got the Chief Rabbi with them! It’s all up to young Crep now!”
To say they “had” the Rabbi was to state it very mildly. They had dragged him by the beard and driven him with blows. They held him now in their midst, bruised and terrified, while thirty or forty young Jews and one pathetically brave policeman strove to force their way through the crowd and rescue him—all yelling at the top of their lungs and being yelled at.
When de Crespigny came to the gate at last he was not smiling. I think that boy could have smiled in the face of torturers, for he had the priceless gift of self-control and an inborn faith in the value of a grin. But, as he said afterward, crowds vary; sometimes it pays to laugh at them, but at others the suggestion of a smile will goad them into fury. The man who smiled at that crowd would probably have paid for the indiscretion with his life.
As he reached the gate they thrust the Rabbi forward to confront him; but if the Jew deduced from that that he was going to get first word in he was wildly wide of the mark. Ten Arabs, holding the old man by the clothing, foaming at the mouth with emphasis and gesticulating like fish-wives, denounced him to the governor all together, while the crowd tossed in reminders and the Jews on the outskirts shrilled rejoinders. You couldn’t make head or tail of it, except that they were threatening de Crespigny. And as everybody talked at once he couldn’t understand them either.
“Touch and go!” said Grim to me. “Crep’s got the wind up! Lord send he keeps his head!”
De Crespigny watched his chance and then picked out the noisiest, most violent man to do the talking—a very wise move that, for it let off steam.
“Now,” he demanded, “what is it?”
“This cursed Jew is a thing they call a Rabbi. He is their leader. He should die. He has defied us and says you will protect him. The Sheikh of the Mosque of Er-Rahman had a vision concerning the fire-gift. It was stolen by thieves for use against the Jews, so the Jews are to return it or be slain! We went to this Rabbi to tell him what he must do tonight, and to make arrangements; but the father of lies swore he knew nothing about it and, what is more, would do nothing!”
“Nothing! I know nothing, nothing! What do I know of any fire- gift?” said the Rabbi.
“Perhaps he doesn’t!” said de Crespigny.
“He lies! He does! One was released from the jail this morning, who says he knows the thieves no longer have the fire-gift. So the Jews must have it! Who else?”
“Kill the liar! Kill him!” yelled the rear ranks that were close enough to hear.
De Crespigny looked up, for inspiration probably, and caught sight of Grim’s face peering over the roof. Grim nodded violently, that being the only available signal for “go ahead.” De Crespigny seemed to understand, and smiled at last.
“I know a way to persuade the Jews,” he said. “They no doubt have the fire-gift and they shall return it tonight. Leave the Rabbi and his friends here. I’ll see justice done!”
“Good boy!” Grim muttered. “That young Crep has gall and guts. Couldn’t be better! Now we’ve got the Rabbi with the wind up where he can’t talk back and can’t refuse! Oh, good!”
CHAPTER IX.
“I am Rabbi, not governor!”
Crowds in those latitudes gather and disperse as suddenly as storms and, like the storms, leave a change of atmosphere behind them. In a sense they resemble waterspouts, destructive as the very devil if allowed to boil along unchecked—always fooling themselves that they are doing good, and hiding their real motive from themselves under a noisy pretense of moral purpose. And they can be handled in much the same way as a waterspout, with pretty much the same result. If you can sever the nexus, as it were, between the clouds and the sea—remove the connecting link between a mob and its desire—all’s calm again; or, if not calm, then at any rate much safer. There are typhoons, too, that have to be ridden out.
The nexus in this instance was the Jews and the underlying motive, loot. Ever since the heel of the Turk had been lifted the Moslems of Hebron had been aching to loot somebody. Turkish governor after governor had wrung from them in fines and taxes every piastre that he could and given nothing at all in return for it. So they were poor; and if the Jews weren’t rich, they were supposed to be.
Not even the Hebron crowd that prides itself on thieving will lay plans to loot a whole quarter of the town and cut three thousand throats without establishing a moral issue first to stalk behind. All humans act that way in the mass and if Hebron is not thoroughly human it is nothing. So old Ali Baba and his fire-gift had come, like many another apparent miracle, in the nick of time to salve the public conscience.
I never found out just to what extent Ali Baba had been opportunist. He may have planned the whole thing with a view to looting; but I think not. I think he only boasted of having planned it, after receiving instruction in the cave from that Egyptian devil; for Ali Baba and all his sixteen sons and grandsons were too childish and direct to have thought the thing out in the first instance. It takes Egypt to invent such a dark scheme.
But whoever invented it, Grim saw through it. He knew Hebron too intimately not to be sure that the Jews would be in deadly danger whenever any sort of uprising occurred anywhere in southern Palestine. Given loyal troops enough, anyone can suppress a mob; but the trouble had come at a moment when all the troops were occupied elsewhere, so the solution demanded genius. And genius is always simple, although it has a way of seeming subtly baffling to the onlooker.
It would be absurd to pretend that I, or any one but Grim himself, saw until afterward the thin thread of principle he followed to the final solution. But you can see it now. He established a clear issue. Without once showing his own hand, he pinned the Moslems down to a definite claim against the Jews.
All
