ation of the Will of Allah. They showed sublime
indifference to danger that always comes of ignorance. Ahmed was
for running straight across to cut the voyage short, because of
the wind that sometimes blows from the south at dawn. He said it
might kick up a sea that would roll us over, for the weight of
the Dead Sea waves in a blow is prodigious.

They overruled his protest with loud-lunged unanimity and lots of
abuse. Anazeh continued to steer a diagonal course for a notch
in the Moab Hills that look, until you get quite close to them,
as if they rose sheer out of the sea. The old chief was pretty
amateurish at the helm, whatever his other attainments. Our wake
was like a drunkard's.

What with the danger in that overcrowded boat, and the manifestly
compromising fact that I had now become one of a gang who boasted
of the murder they had done that night, I did some speculation
that seems ridiculous now, at this distance, after a lapse of
time. It occurred to me that Grim might be disguised as a member
of Anazeh's party. As far as possible in the dark I thoroughly
scrutinized each individual. It is easy to laugh about it now,
but I actually made my way to Anazeh's side and tried to discover
whether the old Sheikh's wrinkles and gray-shot beard were not a
very skillfully done make-up. At any rate, I got from that
absurd investigation the sure knowledge that Grim was not in the
boat with us.

I could not talk with Anazeh very well, because when he tried to
understand my amateurish Arabic and to modify his flow of stately
speech to meet my needs, he always put his head down, and the
helm with it. It seemed wisest to let him do one unaccustomed
thing at a time. I did not care to try to talk with any of his
men, because that might possibly have been a breach of etiquette.
Arab jealousy is about as quick as fulminate of mercury: as
unreasonable, from a western viewpoint, as a love-sick woman's.

But there did not seem any objection to talking with Ahmed. He
was at least in theory my co-religionist, and not a person any
Moslem in that boat was likely to be jealous of. He jumped
at the notion of making friends with me. He made no secret of
the reason.

"You are safe, effendi. They will neither rob you, nor kill you,
nor let you get killed. You are their guest. But as for me,
they would cut my throat as readily as that sheep's, more
especially since they have discovered that you know how to start
the e