supposed to be first-reader
knowledge. It was he who had proved there were no harems--he who coined
the Navy adage, "Search an Arab first, and sit on him, before you come
to terms!"

Yet here he was, advising Byng to disregard a looted Arab's spittle!
There is no accounting, ever, for the ways of shore-leave sailor-men.

"Come on, Joe," he said. "Lead 'the dawg--he can walk now--and let's see
what Adra looks like."

IV.

All might have been well, and both seamen might have reached the Puncher
again with dignity and grace, had they not entered Adra, past the
only jail in that part of Arabia. And an Arab jail being rarer and one
percent more evil than any other evil thing there is, the two of them
quite naturally paused to make its closest possible acquaintance.

"Look out for vermin!" cautioned Curley, standing on tiptoe to peer in
through the close-spaced iron bars.

They forgot the dog. The jail, for the moment, challenged all their
waking senses, the olfactory by no means least.

"Can you see anything?" asked Byng.

Before Crothers could answer him, a snarl, then a yap, then a quick,
determined growl gave warning of the terrier's interest in something
else than fleas.

He had been scratching himself peacefully a moment earlier; now, like a
bower anchor taking charge, he ripped the chain through Byng's hand and
was off--chin, back and tail in one straight, striving line--in full
chase of a pariah.

The yellow cur yapped its agony of fear; the nearest hundred and odd
mangy monsters of the gutter took up the chorus; within five seconds
of the start there was the Puncher's mascot racing after one abominable
scavenger, and after him in just as hot pursuit there raced the whole
street-cleaning force of Adra--tongues out, eyes blazing, and their mean
thin barks all working overtime.

"Good-by, Scamp!" groaned Byng, estimating rapidly.

"Not yet it ain't!" said Crothers, grabbing Byng's arm and nearly
tearing out the muscles.

It was a crude way of rousing Byng's latent speed, both of thought and
movement, but it worked. Before Joe could swear, even, Crothers was
off like the wind, with Joe after him, using the string of oaths he had
meant for Crothers on the sand that gave under him and made him stumble
at every other stride.

Adra turned out, as a colony of prairie dogs might from planless
burrows; only these had more venom in their bite than prairie dogs and
came from structural instead of natural,