had made the Avenger and his men, the greater the danger to us in approaching. Men in a panic fire wildly at the slightest sound. Nor could we afford the time to creep up cautiously to the ruined walls and announce ourselves as white-flag bearers from some safe hiding-place among the shadows. Grim had made no secret of the fact that we were taking a horribly long chance.
But I suppose our time hadn’t come yet. Fortune favored us. Ibrahim ben Ah was, of course, a nominal fatalist by religion, and an opportunist by conviction and habit. I’m both or neither, I don’t know which; except that, as I’ve said, “I’ve observed” that fortune favors the right side as a rule. Narayan Singh is a soldier, which is not a profession but a creed, whoever maintains the contrary; his viewpoint was peculiar to the sub-denomination that he follows:
“Many a man has stumbled on good fortune in the dark simply because he dared go forward. It is only they who wait for chances to whom chances never come.”
Three points of view being superior to one, apparently, we rode together into a perfect trap that proved to be our salvation.
The Avenger, scared though he was, had retained a modicum of common sense. We discovered afterwards that he had tried to rally a skirmishing force that should unmask whatever might lurk behind those fires, but his men had threatened to mutiny at the first suggestion of it. So he had had to content himself with minor precautions, and had managed to persuade a few score men that for the sake of their own skins it would be wise to go out on picket duty in the shadow of some sand-hills half a mile beyond the walls.
They were so appalled by our illuminations that they huddled all together in one dark spot. And they kept so quiet for fear of calling attention to themselves, that we never even suspected their presence, or we could very easily have given them a wide berth. As it was, they saw us, counted us, and held their fire, because bullets in the dark have a way of killing camel instead of rider. Camels taken alive are profitable loot; dead ones are only carrion. Dead men more often than not leave blood-feuds to be fought or settled with their relations; whereas living prisoners may be held to ransom (besides which, you can cut their throats at any time).
So we were swooped on suddenly in the utter darkness of a gap between two mounds, dragged from our camels, and would have been disarmed, if Ibrahim ben Ah hadn’t found his tongue and the voice of authority. Age has its recompenses, even in the dark. They respected his age where they might have gagged and bound Narayan Singh and me; and once he had a hearing experience made him convincing.
He called them sons of sixty dogs, of course. You begin most victorious arguments with that in Arabic. Then he cursed their mothers, wives, daughters and female relatives in general for several generations either way, before beginning on their fathers, brothers, uncles, sons and probable descendants —whom he pitied, because Allah wouldn’t. He then called down a murrain on their cattle, and a desecration on their grandsires’ graves, which he hoped would be used by imported sows as nests for raising families.
He was going on to tell them what would happen to their livers, hearts and kidneys in the world to come, when they implored him to desist, and asked him to explain what he was doing, and what he wanted.
So he assured them they were fools and heretics, without good sense in this world or any decent prospects in the world to come.
“Who but a son of a pig and a snake would dream of pulling me from a camel?” he stormed at them. “Who but the offspring of asses and thorns would suspect three men in such a place, riding straight forward, as possible enemies? Are ye the Avenger’s men? Wallahi, he is well served! What will he say when he learns that his invited guest has been put to this indignity by the sons of his dung-hill-builders in the dark under his very walls?”
They were impressed, but still suspicious. They asked him for further information, and he gave it:
“Ye shall be crucified to the last man! Ye shall be flayed and beaten! Ye shall be cast to the kites, without a grave between the lot of you for the jackals to come and desecrate! Who am I? By Allah! Take me to the Avenger, and ask him who I am! Hear what he says, ye sons of promiscuous mothers!”
Whatever his generalship in the field, he knew those ropes all right. They gave him back his camel, and us ours as a natural corollary. They apologized. They begged a blessing from him to offset the curses he had showered so liberally. They promised him protection as far as the Avenger’s door, and implored him to say a kind word for them to their tyrannical master.
Neither Narayan Singh or I said one word during the whole interlude, which I dare say cost us ten valuable minutes, but introduced us without further trouble to the Avenger’s front door. They gave us a guard of a dozen men, who rode before us shouting to the watchers on the walls to hold their fire; and the only opposition we encountered entering Abu Lissan was the snarling of about a hundred scavenger dogs that made enough noise to deafen you.
Ibrahim ben Ah was so careful to ride first, and so short with me when I called out to ask whether he had been hurt in any way when they dragged him from his camel, that I began to suspect him of contemplating treachery. We were going to be hard put to it in that case to find a way of putting through Grim’s plan, to say nothing of the individual risk to Narayan Singh and me. But it was too late then to stop and catechize him, and we rode in through a dark hole that might have been a gap in a wall, or a gate, or the mouth of hell itself, for all you could see of it. There were men on guard there, for we could hear them; and your nose informed you that the dogs hadn’t attended to the sanitation any too efficiently. A backward glance at those reassuring fires of ours was the only comfort to be had.
There wasn’t any reason that looked substantial just then why Ibrahim ben Ah should even regard as treachery the betrayal of Narayan Singh and me. True, he had eaten salt with Grim, not under duress, before witnesses, and likely had too high an opinion of himself to overlook that. But Narayan Singh and I were in different case. We had submitted him to violence, deprived him of his liberty, and—although we had been at pains to save his face for him before his own men—we hadn’t spared his private feelings much on that occasion. He had eaten no salt with us two— an omission for which I felt inclined to blame Grim in the circumstances.
People who attach such high importance to the ceremony are always splitters of fine hairs when it comes to interpreting the spirit of agreements. He might easily consider it within his privilege to denounce us, while going through the farce of loyalty to Grim.
So I did a thing I have often done in advance of awkward situations. I put my pistol out of sight. If Ibrahim ben Ah intended treachery, then I also had a right to my intentions. If any effort should be made to disarm me, I proposed to hand over my rifle, bandolier and knife without any argument. Thereafter, whatever else might happen subsequently, Ibrahim ben Ah was going to get one nickel-coated bullet through the brain.
I would have liked to caution him, as a matter of fair play. But as that would have called his attention to the fact that I had hidden the pistol, it was out of the question. Besides, it was wholly up to him. He was in no kind of danger from me as long as he behaved himself.
I got a chance to whisper to Narayan Singh as we rode through the stinking, narrow streets; but there wasn’t much that I could teach that man about taking care of himself. He had already hidden his revolver.
“If I am to die in this ill-smelling hole, the Avenger and some of his men will journey with me into the beyond, in addition to Ibrahim ben Ah!” he answered.
We halted in front of a stout wooden door set deep in a solid wall; and evidently word had gone ahead of us, for we were admitted without a moment’s delay, and were led up two flights of rickety stairs to a flat roof. The men who had brought us wanted to come, too, but were driven down from the roof by three of the Avenger’s staff with
