t interested me at the
moment:

"This looks good. Keep Anazeh quiet and sober."

Anazeh was beginning to hold forth again, shaking his fist
at Abdul Ali and making the roof echo to his mighty bellowing.
I tugged at the skirt of his cloak, and after a minute he
sat down to discover what I wanted. He seemed to think I
needed reassurance. He began to flood me with promises of
protection. It was about a minute before I could get a word
in edgeways. Then:

"Jimgrim says," said I.

"Jimgrim! Is he here?"

"He surely is."

"How do you know?"

"We have a sign. Jimgrim says, 'Be quiet, and drink no
strong drink.'"

He leaned across to Mahommed ben Hamza, doubting his ears and my
Arabic. I repeated the message, and ben Hamza translated.

"I don't believe Jimgrim is here!" said Anazeh. "I would know
him among a million."

"It is true," said ben Hamza, grinning from ear to ear, "for I
myself know where he sits!"

"Where then?" Anazeh demanded excitedly.

"Don't you dare!" said I, and ben Hamza grinned again.

"He is my friend. I say nothing," he answered.

Anazeh put in the next five minutes minutely examining every face
within range, while the din of argument rose louder and more
violent than ever, and suspicion of me seemed to be gaining.

But suddenly Suliman ben Saoud got to his feet and there was
silence. They were all willing to listen to a member of the
Ichwan sect, for the news of its power and political designs had
spread wherever men talk Arabic. He spoke gutturally in a
dialect that ben Hamza did not find it any too easy to follow, so
I only got the general gist of Grim's remarks.

He said that he had much experience of raids and of making
preparations for them. A raid aimed at the Zionists--at this
moment--might be good--perhaps. They were better judges of that
than he. But it was all-important to know who was in favour of
the raid, and exactly why. The words men spoke were not nearly
so impressive as the deeds they did. Therefore, when the
illustrious Sheikh Abdul Ali of Damascus urged a raid on the one
hand, and boasted of provision for a school in El-Kerak on the
other, it would be well to examine this foreign effendi, whom
Abdul Ali claimed to have introduced. The claim was disputed,
but the claim was not made for nothing. In his judgment, based
on vast experience of politics in Arabia, motives were seldom on
the surface. All depended on the motives of the illustrious
A