persed them, howling, by means of
well-directed kicks.

"Ah seed you yesterday, Ah did," said his deliverer in English; and,
recalling principle, the terrier bit at him--only to find himself
muzzled by a horny, huge fist that caressed even while it rendered
impotent.

"Ah'm fond of little dogs! Ah'm English!"

Scamp understood nothing of the conversation, but with canine instinct
realized that he was safe; and after that he was satisfied to lie and
pant. With five red inches of tongue hanging out, and no sign whatever
of his white-uniformed guardians to trouble him, a black man's arms were
as good as any other place; he did not waste half a thought on Byng and
Crothers.

But Byng, three turnings back, spat filthy sand out of his mouth the
moment an Arab deemed it safe to leave off sitting on his head, looked
wildly around for Crothers, and bellowed--

"Where's the pup?"

Crothers, spitting out sand, too, twenty yards behind where the swifter
Byng had fallen, called back:

"Dunno. Whistle him!"

Byng tried to whistle, and the Arabs mistook the effort for a signal. In
an instant both men were face-downward again, struggling for breath
and clawing at the dirt. Then worse befell. The gentleman whose brown
anatomy had suffered from the seamen's feet and fists just previous to
their invasion of the town limped up with his eye teeth showing and his
flapping cotton raiment still unmended where the dog had torn it. Any
other wrath, however awful, could be nothing but the shadow of his state
of mind; and since he knew the more vindictive portions of the Koran all
by heart, and was quoting as he came, there was little need of words to
illustrate further his attitude.

He seemed to be a person of authority. An Arab town or village is a
democracy in which each free man has his say; not even a sheik can
overrule the vote of a majority, and this man was no sheik. But rage
and self-assertion will generally exercise a certain weight in tribal
councils, and the crowd in this case was too doubtful of the facts to
have any settled notions of its own.

"To the jail with them!" the new arrival almost shrieked, and about a
dozen in the crowd took up the cry--

"To jail with them!"

"Infidels! Worshipers of dogs! Wine-drinkers! Eaters of pig flesh! Dogs
and the sons of dogs--what mothers gave them birth? Are your hands,
True-believers, fit bonds for them? To the jail! To the jail that Abdul
Hamid caused his men to build for su