uch of the
lingo. But the blighter could get on anywhere. He's been all over the
place--Algiers, Egypt, Baghdad. He's been chauffeur to more nabobs in
turbans than you can count. He's a topping mechanic, too. The wheel
hasn't been invented that beggar can't make go 'round. The only trouble
he has is with his own. He keeps time for a year or two, and then
something happens to his mainspring and he gets the sack. But he never
seems to go home. He always moves on to some place where it's hotter and
dirtier. You should hear his stories! He's an amusing devil."

"And perhaps not so different from the rest of us!" threw out Magin.
"What flea bites us? Why do you come here, courting destruction in a
cockleshell that may any minute split on a rock and spill you to the
sharks, when you might be punting some pretty girl up the backwaters of
the Thames? Why do I float around in this old ark of reeds and
bulrushes, like an elderly Moses in search of a promised land, who
should be at home wearing the slippers of middle age? What is it? A
sunstroke? This is hardly the country where Goethe's citrons bloom!"

"Damned if I know!" laughed Matthews. "I fancy we like a bit of a lark!"

The Brazilian laughed too.

"A bit of a lark!" he echoed.

Just then the silent Lur reappeared with a tray.

"I say!" protested Matthews. "Whiskey and soda at five o'clock in the
morning, in the middle of July--"

"1914, if you must be so precise!" added Magin jovially. "But why not?"
he demanded. "Aren't you an Englishman? You mustn't shake the pious
belief in which I was brought up, that you are all weaned with Scotch!
Say when. It isn't every day that I have the pleasure of so fortunate an
encounter." And, rising, he lifted his glass, bowed, and said: "Here's
to a bit of a lark, Mr. Matthews!"

The younger man rose to it. But inwardly he began to feel a little
irked.

"By the way," he asked, nibbling at a biscuit, "can you tell me anything
about the Ab-i-Diz? I dare say you must know something about it--since
your men look as if they came from up that way. Is there a decent
channel as far as Dizful?"

"Ah!" uttered Magin slowly. "Are you thinking of going up there?" He
considered the question, and his guest, with a flicker in his lighted
eyes. "Well, decent is a relative word, you know. However, wonders can
be accomplished with a stout rope and a gang of natives, even beyond
Dizful. But here you see me and my ark still whole--after a night
jo