xt thing you know, 'e's out
o' sight. Thinks I, that's the last of 'im, an' good riddance!
But not a bit of it!

"The men what fetched the camel for 'im comes down to me an' says
the sheikh 'as left word I'm to be fed an' looked after. They
fixes me up at the inn with a cot an' blankets an' a supper o'
sorts, an' I lies awake listenin' to 'em talkin' Arabic,
understandin' maybe one word out of six or seven. From what I
can make o' their conjecturin', they think 'e ain't no sheikh at
all, but a bloomin' British officer in disguise!

"Soon as morning comes I jump a passing commissariat lorry. As
soon as I gets to Jerusalem I reports that sheikh for arson,
theft, felo de se, busting a gov'ment car, usin' 'is fists when
by right 'e should ha' knifed me, an' every other crime I could
think of. An' all I gets is laughed at! What d'you make of it?
Think 'e was a Harab?"

I wondered whether he was Jimgrim, but did not say so. Grim had
not appeared to me like a man who would use his fists at all
readily; but he was such an unusual individual that it was
useless trying to outline what he might or might not do. It was
also quite likely that the chauffeur had omitted mention of, say,
nine-tenths of the provocation he gave his passenger. What
interested me most was the thought that, if that really was
Jimgrim, he must have been in a prodigious hurry about something;
and that most likely meant excitement, if not danger across the
Dead Sea.

We caught sight of the Dead Sea presently, bowling past the Inn
of the Good Samaritan and beginning to descend into the valley,
twelve hundred feet below sea level, that separates Palestine
from Moab. The moon shone full on the water, and it looked more
wan and wild than an illustration out of Dante's Inferno. There
was no doubt how the legends sprang up about birds falling dead
as they flew across it. It was difficult to believe that
anything could be there and not die. It was a vision of the land
of death made beautiful.

But the one-eyed Arab on the rear seat began to sing. To him
that view meant "home, sweet home." His song was all about his
village and how he loved it--what a pearl it was--how sweeter
than all cities.

"'Ark at 'im!" The driver stopped the car to fill his pipe.
"You'd think 'e lived in 'eaven! I've fought over every hinch o'
this perishin' country, an' tyke it from me, guv'nor, there ain't
a village in it but what's composed of 'ovels wi' thatched