politics. His orders were
to search thoroughly. He did it. The man whose turn was next
ahead of mine was a Russian priest, whose long black cloak did
not save him from painstaking suspicion. He was still
indignantly refusing to take down his pants and prove that the
hard lump on his thigh was really an amulet against sciatica,
when the car came for me.

It was an ordinary Ford car, and the driver was not in uniform.
He, too, had only one eye in full commission, for the other was
bruised and father swollen. I got in beside him and let the Arab
have the rear seat to himself, reflecting that I would be able to
smell all the Arab sweat I cared to in the days to come.

We are governed much more by our noses than we are often aware
of, and I believe that many people--in the East especially--use
scent because intuition warns them that their true smell would
arouse unconscious antagonism. Dogs, as well as most wild
animals, fight at the suggestion of a smell. Humans only differ
from the animals, much, when they are being self-consciously
human. Then they forget what they really know and tumble
headlong into trouble.

The driver seemed to know which road to take, and to be in no
particular hurry, perhaps on account of his injured eye. He was
an ex-soldier, of course: one of those under-sized Cockneys with
the Whitechapel pallor overlying a pugnacious instinct, who make
such astonishing fighting-men in the intervals between sulking
and a sort of half-affectionate abuse of everything in sight.
Being impatient to begin the adventure, I suggested more speed.

"Oh!" he answered. "So you're another o' these people in an
'urry to get to Jericho! It's strynge. The last one was a
Harab. Tyke it from me, gov'nor, I've driven the very last
Harab as gets more than twenty-five miles an hour out o' me,
so 'elp me--"

He tooled the car out on to the road toward Bethany, and down the
steep hill that passes under the Garden of Gethsemane, before
vouchsafing another word. Then, as we started to climb the hill
ahead, he jerked his chin in the direction of the sharp turn we
had just passed in the bottom of the valley. "Took that corner
las' time on one wheel!"

"For the Arab?"

"Aye. Taught me a lesson. Never agayn! I ain't no Arabian
Night. Nor yet no self-immolatin' 'Indoo invitin' no juggernauts
to make no pancykes out o' me. 'Enceforth, I drives reasonable.
All Harabs may go to 'ell for all o' me."

He was itc