armth.... Hark! Is that a signal?" as a long high
wavering note rose from the dry river-bed before us and wailed
lugubriously upon the night, rising and falling in mournful cadence.

"'Twas a genuine jackal-cry, Huzoor. One can always tell the imitation
if jackals have sung one's lullaby from birth--though most Pathans can
deceive white ears in the matter.... Well, this made things no
pleasanter, for Ibrahim crowed like the dung-hill cock he was, and
boasted loudly. Also my mother urged him to do a deed ere he left Mekran
Kot for so long a sojourn in Belait.[14] And to her incitements and his
own inclination and desires was added that which made revenge and my
brother's death the chiefest things in all the world to Ibrahim Mahmud,
and it happened thus.... But do I weary the Sahib with my babble?"

[14] Europe.

"Nay--nay--far from it, Mir Saheb," replied I. "The sentry of talk
challenges the approaching skirmishers of sleep. The thong of narrative
drives off the dogs of tedium. Tell on." And in point of fact I was now
too credulous to be anything but astounded.... _John Robin
Ross-Ellison_!

"Well, one day, my brother and I went forth to shoot sand-grouse,
tuloor,[15] chikor,[16] chinkara[17] and perchance ibex, leaving behind
this black body-servant Moussa Isa, the Somali boy, because he was
sick. And it was supposed that we should not return for a week at the
least. But on the third day we returned, my brother's eyes being
inflamed and sore and he fearing blindness if he remained out in the
desert glare. This is a common thing, as the Sahib knoweth, when dust
and sun combine against the eyes of those who have read over-many books
and written over-much with the steel pen upon white paper, and my
brother was somewhat prone to this trouble in the desert if he exhausted
himself with excessive _shikar_ and--other matters. And this angered him
greatly. Yet it was all ordained by Allah for the undoing of that
unclean dog Ibrahim Mahmud--for, returning and riding on his white camel
(a far-famed pacer of speed and endurance) under the great gateway of
the Jam's fort--high enough for a camel-rider to pass unstooping and
long enough for a _relwey_-tunnel--he came upon Mahmud Ibrahim and his
friends and followers (for he had many such, who thought he might
succeed his father as Vizier) doing a thing that enraged my brother very
greatly. Swinging at the end of a cord tied to his hands, which were
bound behind his back, was t